Biography for
Peter Spirer More at IMDbPro »

Mini Biography

Peter Spirer was born in New York City. His rock group The Toyz opened for Joan Jett, Survivor, Motorhead, Zebra and the Ramones. While playing in the band he began directing music videos, corporate films, commercials and MTV spots. His first documentary, _Blood Ties: The Life and Work of Sally Mann (1993)_, was nominated for an Academy Award.

Mini Biography

After attending the University of Miami film program, Peter moved to New York to seek fame as a guitarist with his band Z Toyz. While at film school, he directed a music video for his band as his "film" project. This video ended up winning the MTV Basement Tape award. Subsequently Peter shot numerous promos and segments of MTV's House of Style and directed and shot music videos.

Leaving the music biz behind, Peter moved on to his love of filmmaking, becoming a documentary director. His first attempt at a short doc garnered him an Academy Award nomination for best short subject documentary for Blood Ties: The Life and Work of Sally Mann. Around the same time, Peter directed a PSA for the NBA entitled "You Can be Anything" which received an Emmy nomination.

Shortly after completing these projects, Peter began his next film Rhyme & Reason, which would subsequently be released by Miramax on over 250 screens nationwide, and become the definitive documentary on hip-hop and rap. It was one of the highest grossing documentary at 13.1 million, and it's soundtrack released by Priority Records went gold with over 500,000 copies sold.

In the summer of 2001, Peter collaborated with Michael Andrews (screenwriter) on Dunsmore their first foray into the narrative feature arena. It was shot in five weeks on location in the towns of Lake Helen, Mont Verde and Cassadaga, Florida. This 90 minute film features veteran actors: Talia Shire (The Godfather, Rocky), Barry Corbin (Dallas, Northern Exposure, Lonesome Dove), Kadeem Hardison (A Different World, Panther, White Men Can't Jump), along with W. Earl Brown (Something About Mary, Vanilla Sky), Jeanetta Arnette (Boys Don't Cry, Head of the Class), and newcomers Rus Blackwell, a local Florida actor, and Alicia Lagano. In 2003, Dunsmore was selected to the Florida Film Festival, Bermuda International Film Festival and Methodfest, Ojai Film Festival and Marco Island Film Festival . Dunsmore is being released on DVD in February 2005 from Image Entertainment. Shoreline Entertainment is representing the foreign rights.

Since Dunsmore, Peter has directed and produced hip-hop related documentaries with Quincy Jones and his son, music producer Quincy D. Jones, III through his company QD3 Entertainment. The first film was Thug Angel: The Life of an Outlaw on the life of slain rapper Tupac Shakur that was released by Image Entertainment in the fall of 2002 and featured a heavy rotation on VH-1's wildly successful series "Driven." The follow up films were Beef (2003), Beef 2 (2004) on the conflict and tension in the hip hop world, and soon to be released are: The MC: How We Do It, The MC 2 (working title), Black and Blue: Hip Hop Cops.

Peter recently started a band called the Sacred Cowboys with the lead in Dunsmore, W. Earl Brown; they had their "debut" on the Sunset Strip at the world famous Cat Club. Peter lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two beautiful children.

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