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Jane Hamsher |
| Jane Hamsher | |
| Born | July 25, 1959 Massachusetts |
|---|---|
| Residence | Falls Church, Virginia |
| Nationality | United States |
| Education | The Peter Stark Producing Program of the USC School of Cinema-Television (CNTV) |
| Occupation | film producer, author, blogger, and publisher |
| Home town | Seattle, Washington |
| Known for | Co-producer, Natural Born Killers (1994) Publisher, The Fire Dog Lake Company, firedoglake.com (2004 – the present) |
| Political party | Democrat |
| Website http://firedoglake.com/ |
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Jane Hamsher (born July 25, 1959) is an American film producer, author, and blogger best known as the author of Killer Instinct, a memoir about co-producing the 1994 movie Natural Born Killers with Don Murphy and others,1 and as the founder and publisher of the politically-progressive blog FireDogLake (2004 – the present).2 With Murphy, she also co-produced the subsequent films Apt Pupil (1998), Permanent Midnight (1998), and From Hell (2001).23 A contributor to The Huffington Post, she posts also in other liberal Websites and political magazines, such as AlterNet and The American Prospect.2
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This article or section is missing citations or needs footnotes. Using inline citations helps guard against copyright violations and factual inaccuracies. (November 2008) |
Hamsher was born in Massachusetts and raised in Seattle, Washington.citation needed
In the early 1990s, she studied how to become a film producer in The Peter Stark Producing Program in the School of Cinema-Television (CNTV), of the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, a program leading to a Master of Fine Arts, and later resided in Santa Monica, California.citation needed
Hamsher was diagnosed with breast cancer for the third time in December 2006, when she was 47.4 In January 2007 she successfully underwent surgery at St. John's Health Center, in Santa Monica, California, and then traveled to Washington, DC, to "live-blog" the Libby trial for FireDogLake.5
After residing in Santa Monica and in Guilford, Connecticut,6 Hamsher lives in Falls Church, Virginia.27
At USC, Hamsher became friends with Don Murphy, they formed a production company, Jane and Don Productions, Inc., and, with a loan from her mother,citation needed they secured an option to produce the 1994 satirical crime film Natural Born Killers, whose original screenplay was written by a then-unknown Quentin Tarantino,1 though "the film, directed by Oliver Stone, departed significantly from Tarantino's original screenplay, so much so that Tarantino removed his name from the screenplay credits."8 The film starred Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis, Tom Sizemore, Rodney Dangerfield, Robert Downey, Jr., and Tommy Lee Jones; also co-produced with Thom Mount and Arnon Milchan, its credited screenwriters included Stone, Dave Veloz, and Richard Rutowski. In addition to co-producing the film, Hamsher also had an uncredited cameo in it as a female demon.citation needed Subsequently, Hamsher and Murphy also co-produced two 1998 films, Brandon Boyce's screen adaptation Apt Pupil, from the Stephen King novella, directed by Bryan Singer and starring Ian McKellen, Brad Renfro, and David Schwimmer, and Permanent Midnight, adapted by Jerry Stahl and David Veloz from Stahl's autobiographical novel and starring Ben Stiller, Maria Bello, and Elizabeth Hurley; and the 2001 thriller From Hell, based on Terry Hayes and Rafael Yglesias' adaptation of the graphic novel From Hell, by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, directed by the Hughes Brothers, and starring Johnny Depp, Heather Graham, Ian Holm, Robbie Coltrane, Ian Richardson, and Jason Flemyng. Hamsher also produced or co-produced the 1990 dramatic feature film An American Summer and the 1994 live-action film adaptation Double Dragon, based on Double Dragon, a video game franchise.3
In 1997, Hamsher published the memoir Killer Instinct recounting her and her co-producers' experiences making Natural Born Killers.1 Thomas Ferlauto, an attorney who had reached a settlement in a civil lawsuit against them for fraud on behalf of Rand Vossler, a friend of Tarantino's who was originally to direct the film––litigation criticized in the book––filed a subsequent unsuccessful lawsuit against both producers and Hamsher's publisher, Broadway Books, an imprint of Random House, charging defamation of his own character in the book, although Hamsher did not identify him by name in it.9
In December 2004, Hamsher founded FireDogLake (FDL), naming it after her favorite activity at the time, sitting by the fire with her dog while watching Los Angeles Lakers games.7 Hosted initially on Blogger.com's Blogspot service, it won a 2005 Koufax Award for "Best Series" for its detailed coverage of the Plame affair, while being in close contention for "Best New Blog" and "Best Group Blog".10
In late 2005, Hamsher expanded FDL into a group blog, featuring such regular contributors as Christy Hardin Smith (aka "Reddhead"), Marcy Wheeler (aka "emptywheel"), "TRex", "Pachacutec", and "Siun", who have since been joined by others; Hamsher publishes it utilizing WordPress, enabling moderated and filtered commenting. According to Hamsher (in 2008), "FireDogLake has about 20 people who write for it, maybe a dozen site administrators who watch what's happening on the blog."7
In 2006 Hamsher launched the FDL Sunday Book Salon, in which participants discuss recent books, usually non-fiction political books, with a standing invitation for the books' authors to take part.citation needed On September 4, 2006, the topic was the book Conservatives Without Conscience, attended by its author, John W. Dean; political and legal blogger and Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald; and former Ambassador Joe Wilson.11
On September 6, 2006, Hamsher announced a book imprint called FDL Books, later adding Vaster Books, in collaboration with Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, founder of Daily Kos; its first release is a volume about the Valerie Plame affair by FireDogLake and Daily Kos contributor Marcy Wheeler ("emptywheel") entitled Anatomy of Deceit: How the Bush Administration Used the Media to Sell the Iraq War and Out a Spy (Berkeley: Vaster Books [Dist. by Publishers Group West], 2007).121314 To finance the publication of Wheeler's book, Hamsher sought to raise $65,000 in donations at FireDogLake,15 ultimately raising $29,000 through PayPal contributions, according to the hyperlinked "dedicated fund-raising page" tracking results.16
Taking turns with Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft, Christy Hardin Smith (aka "Reddhead"), Marcy Wheeler (aka "emptywheel"), "Pachacutec", and "egregious", Hamsher live-blogged the Scooter Libby trial from the courtroom for FireDogLake, as she had applied for and been granted one press pass which they all shared to attend and report on the trial in Washington, D.C.417 The New York Times reporter Scott Shane observes: "With no audio or video feed permitted, the Firedoglake 'live blog' has offered the fullest, fastest public report available. Many mainstream journalists use it to check on the trial," and noted that "for blogs, the Libby trial marks a courthouse coming of age."18 Online donors contributed to defray FDL's trial coverage costs, including travel expenses of the live-bloggers and rental of a Washington, D.C. apartment which they shared.18
Hamsher supported Connecticut Democrat Ned Lamont in his successful run for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate in 2006, against ultimately-successful incumbent senator Joe Lieberman, who had to run as an Independent as his support for the Iraq war and other Bush policies drew the ire of progressive Democrats. Although Hamsher was not on the campaign staff,19 she was among several bloggers who traveled with Lamont's campaign, and she promoted Lamont's candidacy and helped raise money for him through her blog.20 Hamsher stated that if Joe Lieberman were chosen by John McCain for his running mate, she and other Lamont supporters would "wind up in Guantanamo Bay."21
Hamsher posted a partly-fictitious image depicting Lieberman depicted in superimposed blackface embracing Bill Clinton created from a photograph of Lieberman and Clinton that had been graphically altered using Adobe Photoshop in both FireDogLake and in her guest blog in The Huffington Post, and she was publicly criticized by Lieberman's campaign and others for doing so.22 The Lieberman campaign objected publicly that it found the image offensive and racist, with Lieberman in a oublic statement calling the use of blackface in the image "one of the most disgusting and hurtful images that has been used in American history, it's deeply offensive to people of all colors, and it has absolutely no place in the political arena today" and demanding that Lamont prohibit Hamsher from traveling with his campaign and to refuse any money that she may have raised for him.20
Questioned about the image and his campaign's connections to Hamsher, Lamont responded, "I don't know anything about the blogs. I'm not responsible for those. I have no comment on them," but a spokesman for Lamont was quoted in The Washington Post as calling the image "offensive and inappropriate."20
Hamsher removed the image after receiving a request from the Lamont campaign, later apologizing in FireDogLake "to anyone who was genuinely offended by the choice of images," and criticized Lieberman for using the controversy about the image to score political points.19
In firedoglake on November 27, 2007, Hamsher posted that she had determined that Priscilla Painton, then Deputy Managing Editor of Time Magazine, had edited a controversial column by Joe Klein, which he had published on November 21, 2007,2324 in which Klein allegedly published false information, according to Hamsher and several articles by Glenn Greenwald posted online in Salon,25262728 and as reported in The Chicago Tribune29 and The National Review, regarding legislation that amends the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA): Protect America Act of 2007, based upon claims by Pete Hoekstra, a Republican operative who opposed that bill.30 After Klein had qualified central statements in his article, commenting "I may have made a mistake in my column this week about the FISA legislation passed by the House," Hamsher telephoned Painton and asked her "what the editing process was, and how a piece with so many errors made it into print," to which Painton reportedly replied: "That assumes there are any errors," ending the phone call.23 In response to Hamsher's account of her telephone conversation with Painton, Greenwald questioned the integrity of Time and its editor Painton.25
In her media appearances, Hamsher has been a guest on CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera, PBS, and the BBC, and, among other blogger conference programs, she participated in the panel on "Political Blogging: Macaca Mania" at the BlogWorld & New Media Expo 2008, in Las Vegas, Nevada, on September 20, 2008.31
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