Sam Pillsbury Trailers
National Lampoon Presents: Endless Bummer TrailerRaising Waylon TrailerThe King and Queen of Moonlight Bay Trailer
Sam Pillsbury is an American film director and producer.
Connecticut-raised Sam Pillsbury emigrated to New Zealand at the age of 14. Aged 23, he began working at the Government-owned National Film Unit, joining a group of emerging filmmakers who were investigating new subjects and styles.
Pillsbury directed seven films at the National Film Unit, including a multi-faceted study of artist Ralph Hotere, and a satirical look at workplace relations (Men and Supermen). He was also part of the directing team on Commonwealth Games chronicle Games 74, and worked both on set and at the editing bench for Paul Maunder's Gone Up North for a While.
Pillsbury went solo in 1975. Documentary Birth with R.D.Laing won awards on both sides of the Tasman, and controversy in England and the United States. The film featured controversial Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing critiqueing Western medical handling of childbirth. Pillsbury also worked on four documentaries for TV slot Seven Days, which variously looked into life for a solo mother, an ex-convict, hospital patients, and young Māori in the city.
More TV docos followed, then in 1978, Against the Lights, a short drama based on a Witi Ihimaera tale. Pillsbury's Round the Bays doco The Greatest Run on Earth won awards at festivals in Chicago and Torino.
Pillsbury's feature film debut in 1981 was with The Scarecrow, based on the gothic novel by Ronald Hugh Morrieson. Presented through the eyes of two teenage boys, the film chronicles the arrival in a 50s town of a mysterious stranger (played by American movie legend John Carradine). In 1982 The Scarecrow became the first Kiwi film to win invitation to the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, in the non-competitive Director's Fortnight section. Teen star Jono Smith later reinvented himself as a cinematographer in England.
Pillsbury then worked extensively on a screen adaptation of end of the world sci-fi novel The Quiet Earth, before handing the project to director Geoff Murphy after deciding it needed fresh eyes (he later joked at being one of the only directors who had fired himself). Instead Pillsbury helmed 1880s immigrant tale Heart of the High Country for TV (based on a novel by Elizabeth Gowans), then segued into period road movie Starlight Hotel, which starred Smash Palace discovery Greer Robson.
Since Starlight Hotel, Pillsbury has directed extensively, mainly on American tele-movies. He returned to Kiwi moviemaking in 2000 for Crooked Earth, the tale of a clash between two Māori: a militant drug-dealer, and former military man Temuera Morrison.
Pillsbury's other features include Free Willy 3: The Rescue, 2008 road movie Endless Bummer and Knight Rider 2010.
These days Pillsbury has a second career as a winemaker. In 2000 he and a business partner sold Arizona wine company Dos Cabezas to a group headed by the lead singer for rock group Tool (band). Pillsbury Wine Company was launched soon afterwards.
Most Popular Sam Pillsbury Trailers
Total trailers found: 27
03 May 2003
Set in the Ozark Mountains during the Great Depression, Billy Coleman works hard and saves his earnings for 2 years to achieve his dream of buying two coonhound pups.
19 January 1998
Based on a true story, 15 year old Tina Spangler discovers she is pregnant. Her choices are abortion, adoption, or a lonely, exhausting life as a single parent.
22 February 2004
Café-owner Reg and photographer Julia become the unplanned guardians of their godson Waylon after his parents pass away.
03 February 1994
Loosely based on the popular television series of the 80's, this movie brings the story into an apocalyptic time and a new "KITT".
14 February 1995
Steve Collura is an undercover cop out to infiltrate Carlo Gambino's mob. He soon falls in love with Gambino's daughter Maria and must make a choice between his duties as a police officer, his love for Maria, and his allegiance to Carlo Gambino.
20 October 2009
From National Lampoon, the masters of raunchy comedy, comes a summer tale of beers, babes, and bros! In the surf town of Ventura, California, JD's surf board is stolen by a surfer from Los Angeles.
27 November 2001
Three escaped convicts hide out in the home a reclusive woman as they wait to catch a ferry.
08 September 1985
After a top-secret experiment misfires, a scientist may be the only man left alive in the world.
09 May 1991
Bored with her marriage to burnt out poet turned corporate executive Thierry, Zandalee falls prey to an old friend of her husband, the manipulative and egotistical Johnny and becomes enmeshed in a sensual, passionate and destructive affair.
18 March 1994
Dr. Jesse Newman is assigned to treating David, a grieving policeman who lost his partner in a shootout.
30 April 1982
The same night as a girl is slain in the woods, the teenagers Sam and Les are robbed of all of their hard earned hens.
17 May 1994
A woman haunted by disturbing flashbacks discovers through hypnotherapy that she and her boyfriend led parallel lives with a doomed couple from 1927.
27 November 1987
During the Great Depression, Kate (Greer Robson) is a 13-year-old girl living on New Zealand's South Island.
20 May 1996
A disgruntled worker rigs a bomb, triggered by a motion sensor, on the roller coaster at a financially troubled amusement park.
06 August 1997
Willy the whale is back, this time threatened by illegal whalers making money off sushi. Jesse, now 16, has taken a job on an orca-researching ship, along with old friend Randolph and a sarcastic scientist, Drew.
13 March 1996
Holly Mitchell a divorcee, remarries widower, Carl Gibbons, the father of two small boys. When she begins to question his past, he disappears with the boys.
15 June 2003
A college girl decides to get to know her estranged father before she begins her education, but his life turns out to be nothing that she expected.
01 October 1974
Directed by Sam Pillsbury, this 1974 film observes Ralph Hotere — one of New Zealand’s greatest artists — at a moment when excitement is gathering about his work.
27 October 1992
James Guthrie is a candidate for the presidency of the United States. Eight years ago he fell in love with Elizabeth Hemming, nowadays a famous hostess/reporter.
20 September 1994
A woman is torn between her love for a gentle man, and her secret passion for his dangerous brother.
11 May 2003
Audrey Walker has given up her hopes and dreams, until an ex-love returns to town and helps her realize a second chance at life.
25 November 1999
As Christmas approaches, a single mother struggles to raise her son and keep up the payments on her Oregon ranch, which is difficult since she's heavily in debt.
10 December 2001
A true story about a concerned housewife, Pat Melancon, who tries to block Shintech, a massive Japanese petrochemical conglomerate, from building a plant in her toxic township already known as "cancer alley".
24 July 1991
A bounty hunter searches the west for a wanted outlaw named Red Roundtree.
28 October 2001
When Hannah Pinkham's fiancé writes he's finally shipping home, her mother makes a fairy tale wedding dress, but while she's fitting it the knock on the door is not him, but the dreaded officer-messenger.
23 August 2001
Will Bastion returns home from the army after an absence of 20 years to bury his father, the former chief of thee Maori tribe, Ngati Kaipuku.
20 February 1996
A former nun who has become a rape counselor defies a court order to release her file on a rape victim.
