Sam Shepard the poet of America’s level interstates, huge expanses and injuring, broken families, has kicked the bucket at 73 years old in his home in Kentucky from confusions from Lou Gehrig’s malady.
Conceived in Fort Sheridan, Ill., in 1943, the once-productive writer was the writer of such fundamental sensational fills in as “The Tooth of Crime” (1973), the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Buried Child” (1978) set in downstate Illinois, “Curse of the Starving Class” (1978) and “True West” (1980).
A broadly exceptional and distant performer, Shepard likewise showed up in such motion pictures as “The Right Stuff” (1983), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award, “Days Of Heaven” (1978) and Wim Wenders’ acclaimed “Paris, Texas” (1984) for which he co-wrote the screenplay. He played the Weston patriarch in the movie version of “August: Osage County.”
