Early life

Kusama grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, to father Haruo Kusama, a child psychiatrist, and mother Susan Kusama (née McGuire), an educational psychiatrist. Her father is Japanese and her mother is Caucasian.

Kusama graduated from Ladue Horton Watkins High School in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1990, Kusama received a BFA in Film & TV from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.

Career

After graduating from NYU, where she won a Mobile Prize for a student film called Sleeping Beauties, Kusama worked as an editor on documentary films, in production on independent film and music videos, as a nanny, and painted houses. Through her nanny job she met filmmaker John Sayles and worked as his assistant for three years while he was making the film, Lone Star, as well as the development of his films Men with Guns and Limbo. While working for Sayles, she continued to write screenplays. In 1992, Kusama started boxing at Gleason's Gym in Brooklyn, training with Hector Roca. She began collecting ideas for Girlfight, but didn't start writing it until two years later.

At age 27, Kusama wrote and directed Girlfight. It took two years to find financing for the film. After financing fell through shortly before shooting began, Girlfight was fully financed by film-maker John Sayles, for whom she worked as an assistant at that time. The film was released in 2000 and won the Director's Prize and the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, as well as the Prix de la Jeunesse at the Cannes Film Festival. The independent feature film with a budget of around US$1 million was critically well received. It brought in US$1,667,000.

In 2005, Kusama directed her second film, a Paramount Pictures studio production that starred Charlize Theron called Æon Flux and had a budget of US$62,000,000. The film had been ushered through production by Paramount studio chief Sherry Lansing but during post-production Lansing left, which resulted in the film being recut and reworked from Kusama's original vision. After the experience, Kusama has said that she will never work on a film where she doesn't have final cut. Its worldwide gross was estimated at around US$52,000,000.

In 2009, Kusama directed the film Jennifer's Body, which was written by Diablo Cody. The film grossed approximately US$31,000,000 and was produced with a budget of around US$16,000,000.

In 2015, Kusama directed The Invitation, a horror movie written by Kusama's husband Phil Hay and his writing partner, Matt Manfredi and starring Logan Marshall-Green. The film was funded by a film consortium called Gamechanger Films who fund films directed by women. The film premiered at the 2015 SXSW Festival to great acclaim. The film was acquired by Drafthouse Films for distribution.

Part of the movie's inspiration is based on the experiences of loss that Kusama, Hay, and Manfredi had. Kusama's brother, Kevin, died when she was young, as did a close friend in New York. The film was shot in sequence, cost US$1 million, and was shot in 20 days in Los Angeles.

Starting in 2015, Kusama began working regularly in TV as a director on shows like Halt and Catch Fire, Casual, and Billions.

Personal life

Kusama married screenwriter Phil Hay in October 2006. They have a son. Although they knew each other since meeting at Sundance when Girlfight premiered in 2000, it wasn't until they worked together on Æon Flux that they began dating.

Filmography

Film

• 1991: Sleeping Beauties (short)
• 2000: Girlfight, also screenplay
• 2005: Æon Flux
• 2009: Jennifer's Body
• 2015: The Invitation

TV

• 2007: The L Word, episode: "Little Boy Blue"
• 2015: Chicago Fire, episode: "Forgiving, Relentless, Unconditional"
• 2015: Halt and Catch Fire, episodes: "High Plains Hardware" and "Working for the Clampdown"
• 2015: The Man in the High Castle, episode: "End of the World"
• 2016: Casual, episodes: "Such Good Friends" and "Big Green Egg"
• 2016: Billions, episode: "Quality of Life"

Awards

Year	Film	Role	Notes
2000	Girlfight	Director, Writer	Director's Prize at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival Prix de la Jeunesse at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival Grand Prize at the 2000 Deauville Film Festival Best Feature Independent Feature Project's Gotham Awards Silver Spike at the 2000 Valladolid International Film Festival FIPRESCI Prize - Special Mention at Flanders International Film Festival Ghent

[ Source: Wikipedia ]