He began his career as a playwright with the 1969 play
The Predators, which was staged as a workshop production at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. In the 1970s, he wrote a series of plays that were staged at
The American Place Theatre in New York City. The first of these plays,
The Carpenters, premiered during the 1970-1971 season.
Baba Goya made its debut at the theater in May 1973; the cast included
Olympia Dukakis and
John Randolph. Later that year, the play was staged at the Cherry Lane Theatre under a different name (
Nourish the Beast). The play
The Carpenters starring
Vincent Gardenia,
Jon Korkes, and
Kitty Winn, presented on the Hollywood Television Theatre's Conflicts series, was shown on
PBS on December 19, 1973 in a telecast from 8:30-9:30 PM EST. The theme of the play, directed by
Norman Lloyd, was the disintegration of an American family divided by the generation gap.
John Randolph,
Eileen Brennan, and
John Beck starred in the comedy
Nourish the Beast on PBS on Thursday, February 12, 1974, also presented as part of the Hollywood Television Theatre's Conflicts series. The play, also directed by Norman Lloyd, is about a dysfunctional family headed by the eccentric Baba Goya who confronts crises with her husband, son, and daughter. Tesich's screenplay for
Breaking Away (1979) had its origins in his college years. He had been an alternate rider in 1962 for the Phi Kappa Psi team in the
Little 500 bicycle race. Teammate
Dave Blase rode 139 of 200 laps and was the victorious rider crossing the finish line for his team. They subsequently developed a friendship. Blase became the model for the main character in
Breaking Away. The working title of the film script was
Bambino. The film was a hit, and Tesich won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He also created a short-lived TV series
of the same name. His play
Division Street opened on Broadway at the Ambassador Theatre in New York City on October 8, 1980. The production starred
John Lithgow and
Keene Curtis. It closed after 21 performances. The play was revived in 1987 at the Second Stage, with
Saul Rubinek in the lead role. Tesich reunited with
Peter Yates, the director of
Breaking Away, on the 1981 thriller
Eyewitness starring
Sigourney Weaver,
William Hurt,
Morgan Freeman, and
Christopher Plummer. His next screenplay was for the semi-autobiographical film
Four Friends which was directed by
Arthur Penn which covered the activism and turbulence of the 1960s.
Vincent Canby of the
New York Times wrote in his review: "For Mr. Tesich, it is another original work by one of our best young screenwriters."
Roger Ebert wrote in the
Chicago Sun-Times that it was "a very good movie." He adapted John Irving's novel
The World According to Garp for the screen in 1982 directed by
George Roy Hill and starring
Robin Williams and
Glenn Close in her film debut. The best-selling novel had been described as unfilmable. The screenplay was nominated for Best Drama Adapted from Another Medium by the
Writers Guild of America (WGA) in 1983. Tesich returned to the sport of cycling with the screenplay for
American Flyers (1985). The main characters were two brothers, played by
Kevin Costner and
David Marshall Grant, who enter a long-distance bicycle race in the Colorado Rockies. His final screenplay was for the 1985 film
Eleni, starring
John Malkovich,
Kate Nelligan, and
Linda Hunt, based on the
Nicholas Gage book, also directed by Peter Yates. His novel
Karoo was published posthumously in 1998. Arthur Miller described the novel: "Fascinating—a real satiric invention full of wise outrage." The novel was a
New York Times Notable Book for 1998. The novel also appeared in a German translation as
Abspann, and it was also translated in France in 2012 where it was acclaimed by the critics and became a best-seller.
Oxford Dictionaries credits Tesich with the first use of the term "
post-truth," which Oxford defined as "circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief."
Ralph Keyes, author of
The Post-Truth Era (2004), also says he first saw the term "in a 1992 Nation essay by the late Steve Tesich." Post-truth was Oxford's 2016 Word of the Year. ==Death==