John Dahl

Biography: American director/screenwriter John Dahl is an unabashed worshipper at the altar of "le film noir." Quoted by John Walker in Filmgoer's Companion, Dahl expressed a lasting affection for noir's "brooding, distressed, frustrated, twisted, neurotic people." He manifested this affection into his first independent project, Kill Me Again (1989). His breakthrough feature was 1993's Red Rock West, a labyrinthine thriller involving the classic triangle of down-and-outer Michael (Nicolas Cage), adulteress Suzanne (Lara Flynn Boyle) and flipped-out hit man Lyle (Dennis Hopper). John Dahl's 1994 The Last Seduction, wherein Linda Fiorentino played a sociopathic femme fatale, became a cause celebre when it failed to qualify for the Oscar nominations because it had been given a brief cable-TV showing before its theatrical release.