Biography
Writer, producer, and director Sarah Kernochan first made her mark on the cinema with
Marjoe, her Oscar-winning 1972 documentary about B-movie actor and evangelist Marjoe Gortner. A 1968 graduate of Sarah Lawrence University, Kernochan got her start as a ghostwriter for the Village Voice, but she tired of journalism after a year and moved toward documentary filmmaking. Following
Marjoe, she switched gears again, recording two albums as a singer-songwriter.
After publishing two novels and working for a time as a playwright, Kernochan began pursuing a career as a Hollywood screenwriter. In 1986, she earned a certain dose of infamy as the screenwriter for
Adrian Lyne's controversial 9 1/2 Weeks, and she subsequently went on to write over 15 more screenplays. Included amongst them were the
Jodie Foster/
Richard Gere romantic drama
Sommersby (1993) and
Impromptu (1990), a 19th century comedy of manners that starred
Judy Davis and
Hugh Grant and was directed by her husband, James Lapine.
In 1998, Kernochan directed her first non-documentary feature, Strike! A semi-autobiographical story about a group of friends at an all-girls boarding school in the 1960s, it starred
Lynn Redgrave, Kirstin Dunst,
Gaby Hoffmann, and
Heather Matarazzo. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide