Biography

Unconventional filmmaker who moved from independent cinema into the Hollywood mainstream. Moyle became a sought-after writer-director after the surprising success of Pump Up the Volume (1990), a sleeper hit about teen angst starring Christian Slater. His previous directorial outing occurred a full decade earlier: the critically lambasted Times Square (1980), a flop which concerned the surprisingly tame adventures of two runaway teenage girls in the Big Apple. This film--Moyle's first studio directing assignment--was such an unpleasant experience for the neophyte filmmaker that he succumbed to a stress-related disorder that caused all his hair to fall out.

Moyle began his career as an actor and screenwriter working in close collaboration with Frank Vitale, a Canada-based independent filmmaker. Their film Montreal Main (1974) was a loosely structured quasi-documentary about gay life in Montreal. Moyle made his directorial debut with The Rubber Gun (1977), an exploration of the city's drug culture. In addition to acting in his own films, Moyle appeared in David Cronenberg's Rabid (1977) and had a major supporting role in Richard Benner's cult favorite, Outrageous! (1977). After the failure of TIMES SQUARE he left the industry for a ten-year period during which he wrote a novel and several screenplays, before PUMP UP THE VOLUME restored his commercial credibility.