American History X
1998 film directed by Tony Kaye
American History X is a 1998 American crime drama film directed by Tony Kaye in his feature directorial debut, and written by David McKenna. Starring Edward Norton, Edward Furlong, Fairuza Balk, Stacy Keach, Elliott Gould, Avery Brooks, and Beverly D'Angelo, the film follows Derek (Norton), and Danny Vinyard (Furlong), two European-American, skinhead brothers from Los Angeles who are involved in the White supremacist movement. After Derek serves three years in prison for killing two gang members, he is released on parole as a changed man, and tries to prevent Danny from being indoctrinated further.
McKenna wrote the script based on his own childhood and experiences of growing up in San Diego. He sold the script to New Line Cinema, which was impressed by the writing. Steve Tisch and Lawrence Turman served as executive producers on the film. Principal photography began in Los Angeles on March 17, 1997, and concluded on May 21. Prior to the film's release, Kaye and New Line Cinema were in disagreements over the final cut of the film, which Norton had played a pivotal role in editing. The final version was 40 minutes longer than Kaye's 95-minute cut, which resulted in him publicly disowning the film through dozens of trade paper advertisements, thus negatively affecting his directing career.
American History X was theatrically released in limited screenings in the United States on October 30, 1998, before expanding to wide release on November 20.
The public source identifies “American History X” as 1998 film directed by Tony Kaye. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around American, History and film.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q208572. VIAF identifies the subject as 204623391. The Library of Congress control number is no2021099512. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1998 and 1997.
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This entry incorporates text from “American History X” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.