Native New Yorker Bill Condon has been a film buff since childhood. After earning a degree in philosophy, he began contributing to such publications as American Film and Millimeter. In the early 1980s, he teamed with director Michael Laughlin as co-scenarist on a pair of cult thrillers, "Dead Kids/Strange Behavior" (1981), which focused on the mysterious murders of teenagers in a Midwestern town, and "Strange Invaders" (1983), a spoof of 50s sci-fi films that received generally positive notices. Moving to the director's chair, Condon steered the atmospheric, "Sister, Sister" (1987), a Southern
