Kurt Voss
Kurt Voss is an American film director, screenwriter, and musician-songwriter. Voss's credits include Will Smith's debut Where The Day Takes You; the Justin Theroux, Alyssa Milano and Ice-T action film Below Utopia; actress Jaime Pressly's debut feature Poison Ivy: The New Seduction, and rock and roll related films including Down and Out with the Dolls and Ghost on The Highway: A Portrait of Jeffrey Lee Pierce and The Gun Club.
Voss has frequently collaborated with fellow UCLA alumnus Allison Anders. Working together over twenty-five years, the duo created a trilogy of rock films: Border Radio, a portrait of the L.A. punk scene featuring John Doe and Dave Alvin and published by The Criterion Collection; the Sundance-premiered Sugar Town, featuring John Taylor and Rosanna Arquette; and Strutter, a Kickstarter-financed independent film.
Training at UCLA and ''Border Radio''
Voss graduated at age twenty with the designation of most promising graduate. Border Radio began as a sub rosa project at the UCLA film school by Allison Anders, Dean Lent and Kurt Voss, who pooled their talents as co-producers, co-writers and co-directors to turn out their $82,000 black and white film, which the Los Angeles Times called "quite simply one of the best films ever made about the world of rock music". Critic Kevin Thomas added, "The music and image go together so powerfully, it's poetry." Chris D. Stars as an underground L.A. rocker who flees to Mexico to hang out and drink beer after robbing the safe of a club owner who cheated his band. Upon its theatrical release, L.A. Weekly critic Johnathan Gold wrote, "This is the movie Penelope Spheeris wishes she had made, a movie that explores the punk aesthetic without condescending to it, a sweet, funny no-future movie that hints there is a future after all."Creem Magazine called it "The sort of small film one longs to see more often" and praised
"...A subtle, dynamic score by Dave Alvin." It was not only the opportunity to do a full-fledged soundtrack that attracted Alvin to Border Radio. "The film was different," he says. "It had three directors, which is very different. I realized that what I do as a musician is very close to what independent filmmakers do." Alvin also felt akin with Border Radio because the film is set on his turf, inside the Los Angeles rock scene; in fact, its main actors are Alvin's longtime friends Chris D. of Divine Horsemen and X's John Doe."
The Hollywood Reporter had deemed Border Radio "A wonderfully quixotic look at vanishing dreams and misplaced integrity." But Voss' first feature experience was almost his last, when he became fed up with financial and distribution problems and turned to the track to support himself, with mixed result.
''Horseplayer''
His bad luck with horses led to two films dealing with the subject. Hollywood Reporter critic Duane Byrge found the first feature, Horseplayer, an "eerie and nauseating look into the most twisted form of artistic inspiration." Reclusive Bud Cowan is a weirdo who works in a liquor store. All bundled up in down jacket, ski mask and gloves, he sits in the cold box, making sure the shelves stay stocked with beverages. Bud's well-defended seclusion is breached when Mathew and Randi, a pair of siblings, force themselves into his life. Mathew is an artist whose inspirations come from his sister's lovers. Randi seduces Bud, in effect mentally raping him, but Bud turns out to be a good deal less balanced than any of her previous conquests. Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called the film "winning, thrilling... The L.A. minimalist movie at its best. A dry, deadpan psychological thriller that makes a virtue of its no-budget." Critic Betsey Sherman of theBoston Globe wrote, "This psychothriller is one of the best American independent films this year." The L.A. Reader's critic Andy Klein said, "The story bears a certain resemblance to "The Servant;" the difference is that none of director-cowriter Kurt Voss's characters, even the largely loathsome Mathew, are reduced to unreal symbols. 'Horseplayer' is one of the most professional and engrossing independents of the year." Lead actor Brad Dourif explained his attraction to the role of Bud thusly: "I'd done 'Horseplayer' roles before, but the writing in it is so terrific. There just aren't that many scripts that are that good."Columnist Stephen Saban chronicled the production of "Horseplayer" in an article entitled "Horse D'Oeuvre" in the February 1990 issue of Details Magazine.
"Horseplayer" had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and was released theatrically by Greycat Films.
''Genuine Risk''
With a 1950-ish jazz score and dark tone, Genuine Risk tells the story of Henry, a boyishly naive loser at the track who ends up a runner for racketeer Paul Hellwart. Voss considered casting the veteran Stamp a coup. Upon the film's theatrical release, Los Angeles Times critic Michael Wilmington said, "Probably young writer-director wanted the kind of high-style gritty mix Stephen Frears achieves in The Grifters. But Genuine Risk is safer, slighter: a formula job that only rarely breaks the mold." LA Weekly called Genuine Risk "...A chance to show tough-guy untraviolence accompanied by crisp, state-of-the-art sound effects of bones cracking...glossy, vapid, morally bankrupt."Alain Silver, editor of Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style, found elements to appreciate in the film: "Genuine Risk has the deadliest of the femme fatales and is the most traditional in approach. It is also the most self-conscious, as locations, lighting style, and art direction constantly underscore the sordidness of the milieu. Even more overt is the script which features lines like, 'A racetrack is like a woman...a man weathers so much banality in pursuit of the occasional orgasmic moment.' What distinguishes Genuine Risk is the offhandedness of its violence, where people are beaten or die painfully, abruptly and without reason in stagings that capture the disturbing tone of videotapes of real events from surveillance cameras. It also has some wryness and novelty in its plot and casting, most notably Terrence Stamp as a 60's British pop star turned petty mobster." Voss himself said, "Genuine Risk was a movie with Peter Berg and Terence Stamp that was done as part of the noir wave of the time. Actually a better example of the genre was Delusion , which I was a writer on. But Genuine Risk had some good stuff in it, too. I really liked working with Terence Stamp, because he's so economical an actor."
''Delusion''
The L.A. Weekly summarized Delusion's plot thusly: George, an executive who's embezzled $450,000 to start his own computer firm in Reno, falls prey instead on dat old debbil road to a flaky Mafia contract killer named Chevy and his lippy sidekick. A collaboration between Voss and the film's debut director, Carl Colpaert,"Delusion" was featured in Paper Magazine's 'Best of Guide', where film critic Dennis Dermody called it "...A nerve-racking desert noir thriller...a moody and unnerving film." Gary Franklin from KABC-TV said, "...It's A 10!...A major sleeper...Trust me - See 'Delusion.'" Critic Stuart Klawans of The Nation wrote, "It's a delight...Discover and cherish.".Village Voice's Georgia Brown claimed: "An auspicious first film... easily beats most of the studio competition."
Terry Kelleher of Newsday opined: "A 90's film noir...visually striking and refreshingly feminist." Seattle Times writer John Hartl said: "An amusingly twisty, and entertaining film noir homage." Debut actress Jennifer Rubin also earned acclaim, Playboy resident critic Bruce Williamson asserting,"...Jennifer Rubin steals every scene she has." Boston Globe writer Robin Adam Sloan agreed, writing, "Jennifer Rubin has charged the screen with sex appeal." Kevin Thomas of the L.A. Times wrote, "The clever way in which Colpaert and his co-writer Kurt Voss bring "Delusion" to its conclusion allows the film to wryly comment on the capacity of two seemingly very different men to give way to a macho posturing that reveals money is more important than any person,"
Daily News film critic Bob Strauss adding, "'Delusion's' climactic sequence injects contemporary strains of greed any misogyny into a classic western motif—it's funny and a little frightening to see that the frontier is not only open, but getting wider."
''Where the Day Takes You''
"The final verdict on "Where the Day Takes You"-successful street-wise melodrama with roots in grim reality or malodorous vagabond project with too many stars and too much direction-could go either way," wrote David Hunter of The Village View, continuing: "Produced before the spring L.A. riots, written with no intrusive political viewpoint, director Marc Rocco's ambitious tale of teen runaways and career homeless in Hollywood, attempts to marry 80's self-consciousness with 60's group consciousness both in the film's storyline and style of direction."From The Seattle Post-Intelligencer: “The story, which was scripted by Rocco, Michael Hitchcock and Kurt Voss, follows a young man just out of his teens named King and his “family” of runaways.”
“In This case,” Major continues, “King’s “family” consists of speed addict Greg, angry and rebellious Little J, Manny, love hungry and overweight Brenda, and philosophical loner Crasher.”
The film also features Lara Flynn Boyle, Kyle MacLachlan, Alyssa Milano, Steven Tobolowsky and an uncredited Christian Slater as a social worker.”
Major concludes, “In spite of the remarkable stock of fine performances, however, the film’s real gem is it’s [sic] screenplay by Rocco, Kurt Voss, and Michael Hitchcock.”
Janet Maslin of The New York Times said, "This is Rebel Without a Cause without the grown-ups and without boundaries." Critic David Sheehan of KNBC-TV Los Angeles said, "Captures the hard core reality of L.A. street kids with intensity and brilliance." Bob Healy of the Satellite News Network/KBIG Radio spoke of Where the Day Takes You as, "One of the ten best films of the year." Jeff Craig of 60 Second Preview simply claimed, "4 Stars. A stunner."