Sam Shepard

He wrote with Bob Dylan, played Dolly Parton’s husband, penned prize-winning off-Broadway plays and maintained a dignity to his work through the years that never betrayed his rough beginnings. When you consider a modern day Renaissance man, you could easily be referring to Sam Shepard.

There are the plays, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Buried Child, as well as the short stories, all of which are sharp-edged and realistic. Then there are the films: Paris, Texas, which won the top prize at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival; The Right Stuff, which earned Shepard an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of Chuck Yeager; and the 1978 Terrence Malick film Days of Heaven, the first time many saw him on the big screen. But you still could turn to the lesser, later film work to get a measure of the man in August: Osage County.

Speaking of his work, Shepard commented, "There are these territories inside all of us, like a child or a father or the whole man, and that’s what interests me more than anything: where those territories lie. I mean, you have these assumptions about somebody and all of a sudden this other thing appears. Where is that coming from? That’s the mystery. That’s what’s so fascinating."

We have plenty of works of this modern day genius to help you find out just where those mysteries lie.