Marisa Silver (born April 23, 1960) is an American author, screenwriter and film director, as well as the daughter of director Joan Micklin Silver. Marisa Silver directed her first film, Old Enough, while she studied at Harvard University. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 1984, when Silver was 23. Silver went on to direct three more feature films, Permanent Record (1988), with Keanu Reeves, Vital Signs (1990) with Diane Lane and Jimmy Smits, and He Said, She Said (1991), with Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth Perkins. The latter was co-directed with her husband-to-be, Ken Kwapis. After making her career in Hollywood, she switched her profession and entered graduate school to become a short story writer. Her first short story appeared in The New Yorker magazine in 2000 and subsequently several more stories have been published there. Silver published the short-story collection, Babe in Paradise, in 2001. That collection was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and was a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. A story from the collection was included in The Best American Short Stories 2000. In 2005, W. W. Norton & Company published her novel, No Direction Home. Her novel The God of War was published in April 2008 by Simon & Schuster. Her second short-story collection, Alone with You, was published in 2010, and her third novel, Mary Coin, in 2013. She was a visiting Senior Lecturer at the Otis College Graduate Writing Program in 2017 and also on the fiction faculty at Warren Wilson College. She was awarded the 2017 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for Fiction. Her most recent work, a novel titled Little Nothing, was released September 13, 2016.
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Biography from TMDB.
- April 23, 1960 (66)
- Shaker Heights, Ohio, USA
- Director and writer
- 6 on MovieCove · 7 credits in all
What are Marisa Silver's films like?
Across their 5 MovieCove titles with a thematic analysis, their films lean Self and Bonds.
Themes
What they feel like to watch
Ironic 0 · Wry 0 · Earnest 5
Light 2 · Serious 2 · Dark 1
Grounded 5 · Stylized 0 · Heightened 0
Gentle 2 · Charged 3 · Intense 0
Steady 4 · Shifting 1 · Whiplash 0
Straight-faced 2 · Some laughs 2 · Funny 1
A split, not a type: Slow burn 2 · Even-paced 3 · Relentless 0
A split, not a type: Casual 3 · Engaged 2 · Full focus 0
Easy watch 1 · Affecting 3 · Heavy 1
Resolved 3 · Open-ended 2 · Ambiguous 0
Moods and endings
- Happy2
- Bittersweet2
- Tragic1
AI-generated from each title's plot synopsis and cast list, with extra plot summaries, reviews and Parents Guide notes for titles the model may not know, and the model's own knowledge of the ones it recognizes. Only analyzed titles count, so this covers part of the filmography; the feel axes count films only for now.
Where can I watch Marisa Silver's films?
As of October 24, 2026, 2 of their 6 MovieCove titles stream on a subscription or free service.
Subscription and free streaming for Marisa Silver's titles on MovieCove; rent and buy are not counted. Titles are listed by Midcredits score, highest first, at most 12 per service; a dashed chip is a producer credit or a minor one, such as a thanks. A service opens the browse page, which counts movies only, so its number can differ.
Filmography
7 credits, 6 with a MovieCove page.
Indecency(1992)
Midcredits score: 20th percentile of all films
He Said, She Said(1991)
Midcredits score: 28th percentile of all films
Vital Signs(1990)
Midcredits score: 28th percentile of all films
Permanent Record(1988)
Midcredits score: 60th percentile of all films
L.A. Law(1986)
Midcredits score: 56th percentile of all shows
Old Enough(1984)
Midcredits score: 59th percentile of all films
Middletown (not in the MovieCove catalog yet)(1982)
Career shape
A full career of 7 titles from 1982 to 1992.
Biggest box office
He Said, She Said (1991)
Highest rated
Permanent Record (1988)
Most popular right now
Indecency (1992)
Counts from TMDB across their full career, self appearances out; a title counts in every role they held on it. The ring is the typical Midcredits score (the median percentile) of the role's titles that are on MovieCove, shown from 5 scored.
How do Marisa Silver's films land?
Their typical MovieCove film has a Midcredits score in the 28th percentile, the median of all 5; across their 5 films with reception data, the typical film sits in the 35th percentile for acclaim.
- 50th to 74th3
- 25th to 49th2
- Below 25th1
Shape of the crowd
3 of their 6 titles are Crowd Pleasers.
- Crowd Pleaser3
- Broadly Agreed1
- Mixed2
Reviewers score the atmosphere 65/100 and the pacing 41/100 in their films, across 4 reviewed titles. The element that speaks to their work as a director.
Percentiles are each film's standing among all films on MovieCove; the typical film is the median, so one outlier cannot drag it. Percentiles and reviewer scores count the films IMDb credits them on, for now; the Midcredits score bands, the shape of the crowd and the two cards count their MovieCove titles, shows included (a show ranked among shows), appearances as themselves left out. A descriptor is the shape of a title's IMDb rating distribution against the catalog; "most divisive" needs a spread wider than half of all titles, and a card names only a principal credit: a craft role, and on a show a crew role or a run of episodes, never a courtesy credit or a one-off guest spot.
Who does Marisa Silver work with?
People who share at least 2 of Marisa Silver's MovieCove titles, grouped by what they did on them; Miles Goodman shares the most, 3.
Writers
- Larry KetronShared titles: Vital Signs (1990), Permanent Record (1988)See all 2 shared titles with Larry Ketron
Composers and editors
- Miles GoodmanShared titles: Indecency (1992), He Said, She Said (1991), Vital Signs (1990)See all 3 shared titles with Miles Goodman
- Robert BrownShared titles: Vital Signs (1990), Permanent Record (1988)See all 2 shared titles with Robert Brown
Producers
- Frank Mancuso Jr.Shared titles: He Said, She Said (1991), Permanent Record (1988)See all 2 shared titles with Frank Mancuso Jr.
