Burnett, Allison (James)

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Burnett, Allison (James)

PERSONAL: Born in Evanston, IL; son of Allison Lee (a biology professor and poet) and Marie Grace (Miranti) Burnett; Education: Received degree in speech from Northwestern University; attended Juilliard School.

ADDRESSES: Home—Los Angeles, CA. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Broadway Books, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

CAREER: Playwright and novelist; studio screenwriter, 1990-; director of film Red Meat, 1997. Worked variously as an English tutor and legal proofreader.

WRITINGS:

Christopher: A Tale of Seduction, Broadway Books (New York, NY), 2003.

Contributor to periodicals, including Lodestar Quarterly.

SCREENPLAYS

Bloodfist III: Forced to Fight, 1991.

Bleeding Hearts, 1994.

(And director) Red Meat, 1996.

Autumn in New York, 2000.

If Only, 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: Playwright, screenwriter, and novelist Allison Burnett struggled for ten years in New York City to make it as a writer before moving to Los Angeles in 1990, where he began working for Disney and other studios as a screenwriter. In 1996 he wrote the screenplay for Red Meat, for which he also debuted as a director.

Burnett wrote the screenplay for the popular film Autumn in New York, starring Richard Gere and Winona Ryder, in which a wealthy womanizer in his late forties falls in love with a delicate, artistic twenty-two-year-old hatter with a fatal illness. A contributor to Movie Man's Guide found the film "sad" and "very predictable." Mark Steyn, in the Spectator, commented that "the words … never live up to the landscape and the lyrical romance [the film] promises."

Burnett's well-received first novel, Christopher: A Tale of Seduction, is narrated by the middle-aged, gay, scholarly, and homely B. K. Troop, who sets out to seduce his young heterosexual neighbor Christopher Ireland, an aspiring novelist with an idealistic nature. The novel is set in New York City during the 1980s, the time and place of the author's own struggle to succeed as a writer. Dark-haired and handsome, Christopher hopes to start a new life after a bitter divorce, and Troop believes he can woo him into a gay love affair. After a year of playing the role of Christopher's new best friend and confidant, however, Troop realizes that a romance will never be. Yet his friendship and admiration for young Chris are real. The reader, through Troop's narration, follows Chris through a crush on a married waitress, involvement with a student he tutors, work on a political campaign, and weekends with a New Age guru. Chris also struggles to break free of his relationship with his overbearing psychiatrist mother and to write his first novel, which Troop offers to edit as his respect, friendship, and love for Chris solidify. Christopher thus becomes a tale of both unrequited love and self-discovery.

T. R. Salvadori, in a review for Library Journal, found Christopher to be a "bleak" tale with "bitter" humor and palpable isolation. A contributor to Kirkus Reviews concluded that the novel is, "at times both acid-tinged and unbelievably sweet, a hopeless love's lament," while Kristine Huntley, writing in Booklist, called it "both hilariously outlandish and utterly touching."

Commenting on his career for the Slam Dance Film Festival Web site, Burnett wrote that he believes hard work and quality writing led to his breakthrough as a screenwriter in Los Angeles in the 1990s. Speaking of the financial necessity to continue writing studio screenplays while also focusing on his own creative work, he added: "If I can maintain the balance till the day I die, I will count myself among the blessed."