CAST & CREW

Ben McKenzie ('Joe Bonham')

Ben McKenzie was born and raised in Austin, Texas. Following his graduation from the University of Virginia, he spent a summer at Williamstown Theater Festival, and then moved to New York, where he appeared in several Off-Broadway plays. He soon landed in LA, where he booked the lead part of 'Ryan Atwood' on the Fox hit television series The OC. His film work includes the critically-acclaimed Junebug and 88 Minutes, in which he co-starred opposite Al Pacino.

Rowan Joseph (Director)

Rowan Joseph has worked as a producer and director in the American theatre for over 25 years. As the founding Managing Director of The Century Theater in New York City, he presented the Off-Broadway production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama How I Learned to Drive starring Mary Louise Parker & David Morse. He served as the Executive Director of the West Bank Downstairs Theatre in Manhattan for seven seasons. Under his management, the West Bank premiered some of the early works of such award-winning writers as Alan Ball, Aaron Sorkin, Warren Leight, and Donald Marguiles. Joseph helped conceive and create Tapestry, The Music of Carole King, which he produced Off-Broadway at the Union Square Theatre. He also produced and directed the Off-Broadway production of The Queen of Bingo and the New York premiere of Washing the Car by playwright Dick Hepburn, brother of legendary actress Katharine Hepburn. Relocating to Los Angeles, he joined the staff of director/producer Garry Marshall's Falcon Theatre in the fall of 2001. As Producing Director, he created and launched the Falcon's inaugural 5-play subscription series. Under his management the Falcon established itself as one of the premiere, award-winning, professional theatres in Southern California. Joseph left the Falcon at the end of the 2005-2006 season, having produced over 50 productions. Additionally, Joseph co-owns and operates Theatre A Go-Go, Inc., a nationally recognized commercial theatrical production company which has produced the national tours of An Evening With Jack Klugman and an all-male production of The Queen of Bingo, directed by Joseph. In the summer of 2007, Joseph formed his own film production company, Greenwood Hill Productions. Dalton Trumbo's JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN marks the first time he has directed for film. Joseph created the shooting script from the 1982 Off-Broadway play of the same title.

Dalton Trumbo (Writer)

Dalton Trumbo was arguably the most talented and most famous of the blacklisted film professionals known to history as the Hollywood 10. Born in Montrose, Colorado, Trumbo got his start working for Vogue magazine. He started in movies in 1937; by the 1940s he was one of Hollywood's highest paid screenwriters for work on such films as 1940's Kitty Foyle, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), and Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945). After his blacklisting, he moved to Mexico with Hugo Butler and his wife Jean Rouverol, who had also been blacklisted. There, Trumbo wrote thirty scripts under pseudonyms, such as the co-written Gun Crazy (1950) written under the pseudonym Millard Kaufman. He won Oscars for Roman Holiday (1953) and The Brave One (1956), both written under fictitious names. In December 1992 the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences decided to change the records and to credit Mr. Trumbo with the achievement. In 1960 he received full credit (due in part to the efforts of actor Kirk Douglas) for the motion-picture epics Exodus and Spartacus, much to the chagrin of many conservatives/right wingers in the film industry, and thereafter on all subsequent scripts, and he was reinstated as a member of the Writers Guild of America. Trumbo's vivid anti-war novel, Johnny Got His Gun, won a National Book Award (then known as an American Book Sellers Award) in 1939. The inspiration for the novel came to Trumbo when he read an article about a British officer who was horribly disfigured during World War I. Shortly after the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union, Trumbo ordered all copies of Johnny Got His Gun to be recalled and he stopped any further publication of the book until 1946. Since that time the book has sold 100 million copies, having been printed in 40 separate editions in 30 different languages; the most recent in July 2007 with a new forward written by Cindy Sheehan, whose solider son died in Iraq on April 4, 2004. In 1971 Trumbo directed his own film adaptation of the novel, which starred Timothy Bottoms, Diane Varsi and Jason Robards. Footage and dialogue from the movie were licensed for use in the music video for the rock band Metallica's 1989 song, "One". Dalton Trumbo died from a heart attack in California on September 10, 1976.

Bradley Rand Smith (Playwright)

Bradley Rand Smith is author of the adaptation of Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun, which opened Off-Broadway at Circle Repertory Theatre and received an Obie Award for actor Jeff Daniels, as well as several N.Y. Drama Desk nominations. It has also received critical acclaim in international productions: France, Spain, Portugal, Czechoslovakia, Paraguay, Argentina, Israel, Germany, and Greece, with a planned production in Africa in 2008. Under Smith's direction, the Los Angeles production received awards for Best Adaptation, Actor, Lighting, and Sound from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, Backstage West, and LA Weekly. A new bilingual production recently opened at the New York Fringe Festival with actors performing the play in repertory both in English and Spanish. Each performance received critical acclaimed with one reviewer calling it, "One of the most moving, life-affirming, and masterfully executed plays I've ever seen." Smith's play, Mojave, opened at the West Bank Theater in New York and had its L.A. premiere at the Odyssey Theatre. A third play, Nocturne, recently opened in Chicago and was selected for inclusion in the Skirball/Kennis Theatre Collection at the Los Angeles Public Library. A fourth play, Theatricals, about Charles Dickens, was optioned for Broadway. He is currently developing his latest play, Son/Daughter, a controversial, secular retelling of the life of Jesus. He has also written a theater piece, Jazz Lives, for renowned bassist John B. Williams and his equally renowned wife, singer Jessica Williams. Lyrics Smith wrote for Mr. Williams can be heard on the jazz CD "The Maupin/Williams Project." In 2001 Bradley adapted for the stage the record-breaking New York Times best-selling books, Conversations With God, Books I-III for author Neale Donald Walsh. His musical, Exmass, co-written with Comedy Central's The Daily Show regular and Emmy Award-winning stand-up comic, Lewis Black, with music & lyrics by Mark Houghtaling, premiered at the West Bank Theater in New York. The musical is currently being developed into a screenplay. In addition, Smith is the author of several screenplays and teleplays, including In A Workmanlike Manner, originally optioned by Hearst Entertainment/CBS, currently in development with Donald Zuckerman, Steven Goldmann attached to direct; Stealing Thunder, originally optioned by Ed Pressman Films; The Descent for Don Baer Productions; and The Rubicon for Wilshire Court.