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Over the past seven years Tamra Davis has made a name for herself directing cutting-edge videos for some of the thorniest acts in popular music. As director of choice for alternative performers such as N.W.A, Sonic Youth and Black Flag, Davis surprised people familiar with her work when she dipped into Hollywood's past and chose the venerated film noir tradition for her debut film.
However, as can be seen in Davis' "Guncrazy," at the Nuart Theatre as the first in a series exploring violent women in film, this gritty little movie has a lot in common with the renegade faction of the music community she's associated with.
A remake of the 1949 B-movie directed by Joseph H. Lewis, "Guncrazy" is the story of a pair of star-crossed lovers who get backed into a corner by society and shoot their way out. It's inarguably a standard outlaw story, but Davis' film, which stars Drew Barrymore and James Legros, is nonetheless doing well.
"Obviously this story isn't new," Legros says, "but Tamra put a modern spin on the noir recipe. Old noir doesn't have the sense of urgency you feel in this film, and the pacing is much more contemporary." The critics apparently agree with Legros: The film has drawn consistently good reviews, and after airing on Showtime last October, garnered a Golden Globe best actress nomination for Drew Barrymore.
"I was shocked when I was nominated," says Barrymore, who was 16 when the film was shot in November, 1991. "It's a real honor and much of the credit goes to Tamra because she's easily the best director I've ever worked with. Anyone who gets to work with her is lucky because the scope of her talent is huge and her vision is really pure."
The 30-year-old director is an unusually focused and accomplished woman who's covered a lot of ground in a short time, but you'd never guess that by her appearance-she looks as though she'd be more at home on a skateboard than at a Hollywood power lunch.
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