1970s DIRECTORS
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Francis Ford Coppola was born in 1939 in Detroit, Michigan, but grew up in a New York suburb in a creative, supportive Italian-American family. His father, Carmine Coppola, was a composer and musician. His mother, Italia Coppola (née Pennino), had been an actress. Francis Ford Coppola graduated with a degree in drama from Hofstra University, and did graduate work at UCLA in filmmaking. He was training as assistant with filmmaker Roger Corman, working in such capacities as sound-man, dialogue director, associate producer and, eventually, director of Dementia 13 (1963), Coppola's first feature film. During the next four years, Coppola was involved in a variety of script collaborations, including writing an adaptation of "This Property is Condemned" by Tennessee Williams (with Fred Coe and Edith Sommer), and screenplays for Is Paris Burning? (1966) and Patton (1970), the film for which Coppola won a Best Original Screenplay Academy Award. In 1966, Coppola's 2nd film brought him critical acclaim and a Master of Fine Arts degree. In 1969, Coppola and George Lucas established American Zoetrope, an independent film production company based in San Francisco. The company's first project was THX 1138 (1971), produced by Coppola and directed by Lucas. Coppola also produced the second film that Lucas directed, American Graffiti (1973), in 1973. This movie got five Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture. In 1971, Coppola's film The Godfather (1972) became one of the highest-grossing movies in history and brought him an Oscar for writing the screenplay with Mario Puzo The film was a Best Picture Academy Award-winner, and also brought Coppola a Best Director Oscar nomination. Following his work on the screenplay for The Great Gatsby (1974), Coppola's next film was The Conversation (1974), which was honored with the Golden Palm Award at the Cannes Film Festival, and brought Coppola Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay Oscar nominations. Also released that year, The Godfather Part II (1974), rivaled the success of The Godfather (1972), and won six Academy Awards, bringing Coppola Oscars as a producer, director and writer. Coppola then began work on his most ambitious film, Apocalypse Now (1979), a Vietnam War epic that was inspired by Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1993). Released in 1979, the acclaimed film won a Golden Palm Award at the Cannes Film Festival, and two Academy Awards. Also that year, Coppola executive produced the hit The Black Stallion (1979). With George Lucas, Coppola executive produced Kagemusha: The Shadow Warrior (1980), directed by Akira Kurosawa, and Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985), directed by Paul Schrader and based on the life and writings of Yukio Mishima. Coppola also executive produced such films as The Escape Artist (1982), Hammett (1982) The Black Stallion Returns (1983), Barfly (1987), Wind (1992), The Secret Garden (1993), etc.
He helped to make a star of his nephew, Nicolas Cage. Personal tragedy hit in 1986 when his son Gio died in a boating accident. Francis Ford Coppola is one of America's most erratic, energetic and controversial filmmakers.- Producer
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Martin Charles Scorsese was born on November 17, 1942 in Queens, New York City, to Catherine Scorsese (née Cappa) and Charles Scorsese, who both worked in Manhattan's garment district, and whose families both came from Palermo, Sicily. He was raised in the neighborhood of Little Italy, which later provided the inspiration for several of his films. Scorsese earned a B.S. degree in film communications in 1964, followed by an M.A. in the same field in 1966 at New York University's School of Film. During this time, he made numerous prize-winning short films including The Big Shave (1967), and directed his first feature film, Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967).
He served as assistant director and an editor of the documentary Woodstock (1970) and won critical and popular acclaim for Mean Streets (1973), which first paired him with actor and frequent collaborator Robert De Niro. In 1976, Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976), also starring De Niro, was awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and he followed that film with New York, New York (1977) and The Last Waltz (1978). Scorsese directed De Niro to an Oscar-winning performance as boxer Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull (1980), which received eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, and is hailed as one of the masterpieces of modern cinema. Scorsese went on to direct The Color of Money (1986), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Goodfellas (1990), Cape Fear (1991), The Age of Innocence (1993), Casino (1995) and Kundun (1997), among other films. Commissioned by the British Film Institute to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of cinema, Scorsese completed the four-hour documentary, A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (1995), co-directed by Michael Henry Wilson.
His long-cherished project, Gangs of New York (2002), earned numerous critical honors, including a Golden Globe Award for Best Director; the Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator (2004) won five Academy Awards, in addition to the Golden Globe and BAFTA awards for Best Picture. Scorsese won his first Academy Award for Best Director for The Departed (2006), which was also honored with the Director's Guild of America, Golden Globe, New York Film Critics, National Board of Review and Critic's Choice awards for Best Director, in addition to four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Scorsese's documentary of the Rolling Stones in concert, Shine a Light (2008), followed, with the successful thriller Shutter Island (2010) two years later. Scorsese received his seventh Academy Award nomination for Best Director, as well as a Golden Globe Award, for Hugo (2011), which went on to win five Academy Awards.
Scorsese also serves as executive producer on the HBO series Boardwalk Empire (2010) for which he directed the pilot episode. Scorsese's additional awards and honors include the Golden Lion from the Venice Film Festival (1995), the AFI Life Achievement Award (1997), the Honoree at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's 25th Gala Tribute (1998), the DGA Lifetime Achievement Award (2003), The Kennedy Center Honors (2007) and the HFPA Cecil B. DeMille Award (2010). Scorsese and actor Leonardo DiCaprio have worked together on five separate occasions: Gangs of New York (2002), The Aviator (2004), The Departed (2006), Shutter Island (2010) and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).- Director
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Sidney Lumet was a master of cinema, best known for his technical knowledge and his skill at getting first-rate performances from his actors -- and for shooting most of his films in his beloved New York. He made over 40 movies, often complex and emotional, but seldom overly sentimental. Although his politics were somewhat left-leaning and he often treated socially relevant themes in his films, Lumet didn't want to make political movies in the first place. Born on June 25, 1924, in Philadelphia, the son of actor Baruch Lumet and dancer Eugenia Wermus Lumet, he made his stage debut at age four at the Yiddish Art Theater in New York. He played many roles on Broadway in the 1930s and also in the film ...One Third of a Nation... (1939). After starting an off-Broadway acting troupe in the late 1940s, he became the director of many television shows in the 1950s. Lumet made his feature film directing debut with 12 Angry Men (1957), which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and earned three Academy Award nominations. The courtroom drama, which takes place almost entirely in a jury room, is justly regarded as one of the most auspicious directorial debuts in film history. Lumet got the chance to direct Marlon Brando in The Fugitive Kind (1960), an imperfect, but powerful adaptation of Tennessee Williams' "Orpheus Descending". The first half of the 1960s was one of Lumet's most artistically successful periods. Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962), a masterful, brilliantly photographed adaptation of the Eugene O'Neill play, is one of several Lumet films about families. It earned Katharine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Dean Stockwell and Jason Robards deserved acting awards in Cannes and Hepburn an Oscar nomination. The alarming Cold War thriller Fail Safe (1964) unfairly suffered from comparison to Stanley Kubrick's equally great satire Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), which was released shortly before. The Pawnbroker (1964), arguably the most outstanding of the great movies Lumet made in this phase, tells the story of a Holocaust survivor who lives in New York and can't overcome his experiences in the Nazi concentration camps. Rod Steiger's unforgettable performance in the title role earned an Academy Award nomination. Lumet's intense character study The Hill (1965) about inhumanity in a military prison camp was the first of five films he did with Sean Connery. After the overly talky but rewarding drama The Group (1966) about young upper-class women in the 1930s, and the stylish spy thriller The Deadly Affair (1967), the late 1960s turned out to be a lesser phase in Lumet's career. He had a strong comeback with the box-office hit The Anderson Tapes (1971). The Offence (1973) was commercially less successful, but artistically brilliant - with Connery in one of his most impressive performances. The terrific cop thriller Serpico (1973), the first of his films about police corruption in New York City, became one of his biggest critical and financial successes. Al Pacino's fascinating portrayal of the real-life cop Frank Serpico earned a Golden Globe and the movie earned two Academy Award nominations (it is worth noting that Lumet's feature films of the 1970s alone earned 30 Oscar nominations, winning six times). The love triangle Lovin' Molly (1974) was not always convincing in its atmospheric details, but Lumet's fine sense of emotional truth and a good Blythe Danner keep it interesting. The adaptation of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (1974), an exquisitely photographed murder mystery with an all-star cast, was a big success again. Lumet's complex crime thriller Dog Day Afternoon (1975), which Pauline Kael called "one of the best "New York" movies ever made", gave Al Pacino the opportunity for a breathtaking, three-dimensional portrayal of a bisexual man who tries to rob a bank to finance his lover's sex-change operation. Lumet's next masterpiece, Network (1976), was a prophetic satire on media and society. The film version of Peter Shaffer's stage play Equus (1977) about a doctor and his mentally confused patient was also powerful, not least because of the energetic acting by Richard Burton and Peter Firth. After the enjoyable musical The Wiz (1978) and the interesting but not easily accessible comedy Just Tell Me What You Want (1980), Sidney Lumet won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for his outstanding direction of Prince of the City (1981), one of his best and most typical films. It's about police corruption, but hardly a remake of Serpico (1973). Starring a powerful Treat Williams, it's an extraordinarily multi-layered film. In his highly informative book "Making Movies" (1995), Lumet describes the film in the following way: "When we try to control everything, everything winds up controlling us. Nothing is what it seems." It's also a movie about values, friendship and drug addiction and, like "Serpico", is based on a true story. In Deathtrap (1982), Lumet successfully blended suspense and black humor. The Verdict (1982) was voted the fourth greatest courtroom drama of all time by the American Film Institute in 2008. A few minor inaccuracies in legal details do not mar this study of an alcoholic lawyer (superbly embodied by Paul Newman) aiming to regain his self-respect through a malpractice case. The expertly directed movie received five Academy Award nominations. Lumet's controversial drama Daniel (1983) with Timothy Hutton, an adaptation of E.L. Doctorow's "The Book of Daniel" about two young people whose parents were executed during the McCarthy Red Scare hysteria in the 1950s for alleged espionage, is one of his underrated achievements. His later masterpiece Running on Empty (1988) has a similar theme, portraying a family which has been on the run from the FBI since the parents (played by Christine Lahti and Judd Hirsch) committed a bomb attack on a napalm laboratory in 1971 to protest the war in Vietnam. The son (played by River Phoenix in an extraordinarily moving, Oscar-nominated performance) falls in love with a girl and wishes to stay with her and study music. Naomi Foner's screenplay won the Golden Globe. Other Lumet movies of the 1980s are the melancholic comedy drama Garbo Talks (1984); the occasionally clichéd Power (1986) about election campaigns; the all too slow thriller The Morning After (1986) and the amusing gangster comedy Family Business (1989). With Q&A (1990) Lumet returned to the genre of the New York cop thriller. Nick Nolte shines in the role of a corrupt and racist detective in this multi-layered, strangely underrated film. Sadly, with the exception of Night Falls on Manhattan (1996), an imperfect but fascinating crime drama in the tradition of his own previous genre works, almost none of Lumet's works of the 1990s did quite get the attention they deserved. The crime drama A Stranger Among Us (1992) blended genres in a way that did not seem to match most viewers' expectations, but its contemplations about life arouse interest. The intelligent hospital satire Critical Care (1997) was unfairly neglected as well. The courtroom thriller Guilty as Sin (1993) was cold but intriguing. Lumet's Gloria (1999) remake seemed unnecessary, but he returned impressively with the underestimated courtroom comedy Find Me Guilty (2006) and the justly acclaimed crime thriller Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007). In 2005, Sidney Lumet received a well-deserved honorary Academy Award for his outstanding contribution to filmmaking. Sidney Lumet tragically died of cancer in 2011.- Director
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Robert Altman was born on February 20th, 1925 in Kansas City, Missouri, to B.C. (an insurance salesman) and Helen Altman. He entered St. Peters Catholic school at the age six, and spent a short time at a Catholic high school. From there, he went to Rockhurst High School. It was then that he started exploring the art of exploring sound with the cheap tape recorders available at the time. He was then sent to Wentworth Military Academy in Lexington, Missouri where he attended through Junior College. In 1945, he enlisted in the US Army Air Forces and became a copilot of a B-24. After his discharge from the military, he became fascinated by movies and he and his first wife, LaVonne Elmer, moved to Hollywood, where Altman tried acting (appearing in the film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947)), songwriting (he wrote a musical intended for Broadway, "The Rumors are Flying"), and screen-writing (he co-wrote the screenplay for the film Bodyguard (1948) and wrote the story (uncredited) for Christmas Eve (1947)), but he could not get a foot hold in Tinseltown. After a brief fling as publicity director with a company in the business of tattooing dogs, Altman finally gave up and returned to his hometown of Kansas City, where he decided he wanted to do some serious work in filmmaking. An old friend of his recommended him to a film production company in Kansas City, the Calvin Co., who hired him in 1950. After a few months of work in writing scripts and editing films, Altman began directing films at Calvin. It was here (while working on documentaries, employee training films, industrial and educational films and advertisements) that he learned much about film making. All in all, Altman pieced together sixty to sixty-five short films for Calvin on every subject imaginable, from football to car crashes, but he kept grasping for more challenging projects. He wrote the screenplay for the Kansas City-produced feature film Corn's-A-Poppin' (1955), he produced and directed several television commercials including one with the Eileen Ford Agency, he co-created and directed the TV series The Pulse of the City (1953) which ran for one season on the independent Dumont network, and he even had a formative crack at directing local community theater. His big-screen directorial debut came while still at Calvin with The Delinquents (1957) and, by 1956, he left the Calvin Co., and went to Hollywood to direct Alfred Hitchcock's TV show. From here, he went on to direct a large number of television shows, until he was offered the script for M*A*S*H (1970) in 1969. He was hardly the producer's first choice - more than fifteen other directors had already turned it down. This wasn't his first movie, but it was his first success. After that, he had his share of hits and misses, but The Player (1992) and, more recently, Gosford Park (2001) were particularly well-received.- Writer
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Ernst Ingmar Bergman was born July 14, 1918, the son of a priest. The film and T.V. series, The Best Intentions (1992) is biographical and shows the early marriage of his parents. The film Sunday's Children (1992) depicts a bicycle journey with his father. In the miniseries Private Confessions (1996) is the trilogy closed. Here, as in 'Den Goda Viljan' Pernilla August play his mother. Note that all three movies are not always full true biographical stories. He began his career early with a puppet theatre which he, his sister and their friends played with. But he was the manager. Strictly professional he begun writing in 1941. He had written a play called 'Kaspers död' (A.K.A. 'Kaspers Death') which was produced the same year. It became his entrance into the movie business as Stina Bergman (not a close relative), from the company S.F. (Swedish Filmindustry), had seen the play and thought that there must be some dramatic talent in young Ingmar. His first job was to save other more famous writers' poor scripts. Under one of that script-saving works he remembered that he had written a novel about his last year as a student. He took the novel, did the save-poor-script job first, then wrote a screenplay on his own novel. When he went back to S.F., he delivered two scripts rather than one. The script was Torment (1944) and was the fist Bergman screenplay that was put into film (by Alf Sjöberg). It was also in that movie Bergman did his first professional film-director job. Because Alf Sjöberg was busy, Bergman got the order to shoot the last sequence of the film. Ingmar Bergman is the father of Daniel Bergman, director, and Mats Bergman, actor at the Swedish Royal Dramatic Theater. Ingmar Bergman was also C.E.O. of the same theatre between 1963-1966, where he hired almost every professional actor in Sweden. In 1976 he had a famous tax problem. Bergman had trusted other people to advise him on his finances, but it turned out to be very bad advice. Bergman had to leave the country immediately, and so he went to Germany. A few years later he returned to Sweden and made his last theatrical film Fanny and Alexander (1982). In later life he retired from movie directing, but still wrote scripts for film and T.V. and directed plays at the Swedish Royal Dramatic Theatre for many years. He died peacefully in his sleep on July 30, 2007.- Director
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Director. Writer. Producer. Actor. Poet. He studied history, literature and theatre for some time, but didn't finish it and founded instead his own film production company in 1963. Later in his life, Herzog also staged several operas in Bayreuth, Germany, and at the Milan Scala in Italy. Herzog has won numerous national and international awards for his poetic feature and documentary films.- Director
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Friedkin's mother was an operating room nurse. His father was a merchant seaman, semi-pro softball player and ultimately sold clothes in a men's discount chain. Ultimately, his father never earned more than $50/week in his whole life and died indigent. Eventually young Will became infatuated with Orson Welles after seeing Citizen Kane (1941). He went to work for WGN TV immediately after graduating from high school where he started making documentaries, one of which won the Golden Gate Award at the 1962 San Francisco film festival. In 1965, he moved to Hollywood and immediately started directing TV shows, including an episode of the The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962); Hitchcock infamously chastised him for not wearing a tie.- Director
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Roman Polanski is a Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. Having made films in Poland, Britain, France and the USA, he is considered one of the few truly international filmmakers. Roman Polanski was born in Paris in 1933.
His parents returned to Poland from France in 1936, three years before World War II began. On Germany's invasion in 1939, as a family of mostly Jewish heritage, they were all sent to the Krakow ghetto. His parents were then captured and sent to two different concentration camps: His father to Mauthausen-Gusen in Austria, where he survived the war, and his mother to Auschwitz where she was murdered. Roman witnessed his father's capture and then, at only 7, managed to escape the ghetto and survive the war, at first wandering through the Polish countryside and pretending to be a Roman-Catholic kid visiting his relatives. Although this saved his life, he was severely mistreated suffering nearly fatal beating which left him with a fractured skull.
Local people usually ignored the cinemas where German films were shown, but Polanski seemed little concerned by the propaganda and often went to the movies. As the war progressed, Poland became increasingly war-torn and he lived his life as a tramp, hiding in barns and forests, eating whatever he could steal or find. Still under 12 years old, he encountered some Nazi soldiers who forced him to hold targets while they shot at them. At the war's end in 1945, he reunited with his father who sent him to a technical school, but young Polanski seemed to have already chosen another career. In the 1950s, he took up acting, appearing in Andrzej Wajda's A Generation (1955) before studying at the Lodz Film School. His early shorts such as Two Men and a Wardrobe (1958), Le gros et le maigre (1961) and Mammals (1962), showed his taste for black humor and interest in bizarre human relationships. His feature debut, Knife in the Water (1962), was one of the first Polish post-war films not associated with the war theme. It was also the first movie from Poland to get an Oscar nomination for best foreign film. Though already a major Polish filmmaker, Polanski chose to leave the country and headed to France. While down-and-out in Paris, he befriended young scriptwriter, Gérard Brach, who eventually became his long-time collaborator. The next two films, Repulsion (1965) and Cul-de-sac (1966), made in England and co-written by Brach, won respectively Silver and then Golden Bear awards at the Berlin International Film Festival. In 1968, Polanski went to Hollywood, where he made the psychological thriller, Rosemary's Baby (1968). However, after the brutal murder of his wife, Sharon Tate, by the Manson Family in 1969, the director decided to return to Europe. In 1974, he again made a US release - it was Chinatown (1974).
It seemed the beginning of a promising Hollywood career, but after his conviction for the sodomy of a 13-year old girl, Polanski fled from he USA to avoid prison. After Tess (1979), which was awarded several Oscars and Cesars, his works in 1980s and 1990s became intermittent and rarely approached the caliber of his earlier films. It wasn't until The Pianist (2002) that Polanski came back to full form. For that movie, he won nearly all the most important film awards, including the Oscar for Best Director, Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or, the BAFTA and Cesar Award.
He still likes to act in the films of other directors, sometimes with interesting results, as in A Pure Formality (1994).- Additional Crew
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The most famous Soviet film-maker since Sergei Eisenstein, Andrei Tarkovsky (the son of noted poet Arseniy Tarkovsky) studied music and Arabic in Moscow before enrolling in the Soviet film school VGIK. He shot to international attention with his first feature, Ivan's Childhood (1962), which won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival. This resulted in high expectations for his second feature Andrei Rublev (1966), which was banned by the Soviet authorities for two years. It was shown at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival at four o'clock in the morning on the last day, in order to prevent it from winning a prize - but it won one nonetheless, and was eventually distributed abroad partly to enable the authorities to save face. Solaris (1972), had an easier ride, being acclaimed by many in Europe and North America as the Soviet answer to Kubrick's '2001' (though Tarkovsky himself was never too fond of his own film nor Kubrick's), but he ran into official trouble again with Mirror (1975), a dense, personal web of autobiographical memories with a radically innovative plot structure. Stalker (1979) had to be completely reshot on a dramatically reduced budget after an accident in the laboratory destroyed the first version, and after Nostalghia (1983), shot in Italy (with official approval), Tarkovsky defected to Europe. His last film, The Sacrifice (1986) was shot in Sweden with many of Ingmar Bergman's regular collaborators, and won an almost unprecedented four prizes at the Cannes Film Festival. He died of lung cancer at the end of the year. Two years later link=Sergei Parajanov dedicated his film Ashik Kerib to Tarkovsky.- Producer
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One of the most influential personalities in the history of cinema, Steven Spielberg is Hollywood's best known director and one of the wealthiest filmmakers in the world. He has an extraordinary number of commercially successful and critically acclaimed credits to his name, either as a director, producer or writer since launching the summer blockbuster with Jaws (1975), and he has done more to define popular film-making since the mid-1970s than anyone else.
Steven Allan Spielberg was born in 1946 in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Leah Frances (Posner), a concert pianist and restaurateur, and Arnold Spielberg, an electrical engineer who worked in computer development. His parents were both born to Russian Jewish immigrant families. Steven spent his younger years in Haddon Township, New Jersey, Phoenix, Arizona, and later Saratoga, California. He went to California State University Long Beach, but dropped out to pursue his entertainment career. Among his early directing efforts were Battle Squad (1961), which combined World War II footage with footage of an airplane on the ground that he makes you believe is moving. He also directed Escape to Nowhere (1961), which featured children as World War Two soldiers, including his sister Anne Spielberg, and The Last Gun (1959), a western. All of these were short films. The next couple of years, Spielberg directed a couple of movies that would portend his future career in movies. In 1964, he directed Firelight (1964), a movie about aliens invading a small town. In 1967, he directed Slipstream (1967), which was unfinished. However, in 1968, he directed Amblin' (1968), which featured the desert prominently, and not the first of his movies in which the desert would feature. Amblin' also became the name of his production company, which turned out such classics as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Spielberg had a unique and classic early directing project, Duel (1971), with Dennis Weaver. In the early 1970s, Spielberg was working on TV, directing among others such series as Rod Serling's Night Gallery (1969), Marcus Welby, M.D. (1969) and Murder by the Book (1971). All of his work in television and short films, as well as his directing projects, were just a hint of the wellspring of talent that would dazzle audiences all over the world.
Spielberg's first major directorial effort was The Sugarland Express (1974), with Goldie Hawn, a film that marked him as a rising star. It was his next effort, however, that made him an international superstar among directors: Jaws (1975). This classic shark attack tale started the tradition of the summer blockbuster or, at least, he was credited with starting the tradition. His next film was the classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), a unique and original UFO story that remains a classic. In 1978, Spielberg produced his first film, the forgettable I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978), and followed that effort with Used Cars (1980), a critically acclaimed, but mostly forgotten, Kurt Russell/Jack Warden comedy about devious used-car dealers. Spielberg hit gold yet one more time with Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), with Harrison Ford taking the part of Indiana Jones. Spielberg produced and directed two films in 1982. The first was Poltergeist (1982), but the highest-grossing movie of all time up to that point was the alien story E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Spielberg also helped pioneer the practice of product placement. The concept, while not uncommon, was still relatively low-key when Spielberg raised the practice to almost an art form with his famous (or infamous) placement of Reese's Pieces in "E.T." Spielberg was also one of the pioneers of the big-grossing special-effects movies, like "E.T." and "Close Encounters", where a very strong emphasis on special effects was placed for the first time on such a huge scale. In 1984, Spielberg followed up "Raiders" with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), which was a commercial success but did not receive the critical acclaim of its predecessor. As a producer, Spielberg took on many projects in the 1980s, such as The Goonies (1985), and was the brains behind the little monsters in Gremlins (1984). He also produced the cartoon An American Tail (1986), a quaint little animated classic. His biggest effort as producer in 1985, however, was the blockbuster Back to the Future (1985), which made Michael J. Fox an instant superstar. As director, Spielberg took on the book The Color Purple (1985), with Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey, with great success. In the latter half of the 1980s, he also directed Empire of the Sun (1987), a mixed success for the occasionally erratic Spielberg. Success would not escape him for long, though.
The late 1980s found Spielberg's projects at the center of pop-culture yet again. In 1988, he produced the landmark animation/live-action film Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). The next year proved to be another big one for Spielberg, as he produced and directed Always (1989) as well as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), and Back to the Future Part II (1989). All three of the films were box-office and critical successes. Also, in 1989, he produced the little known comedy-drama Dad (1989), with Jack Lemmon and Ted Danson, which got mostly mixed results. Spielberg has also had an affinity for animation and has been a strong voice in animation in the 1990s. Aside from producing the landmark "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", he produced the animated series Tiny Toon Adventures (1990), Animaniacs (1993), Pinky and the Brain (1995), Freakazoid! (1995), Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain (1998), Family Dog (1993) and Toonsylvania (1998). Spielberg also produced other cartoons such as The Land Before Time (1988), We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story (1993), Casper (1995) (the live action version) as well as the live-action version of The Flintstones (1994), where he was credited as "Steven Spielrock". Spielberg also produced many Roger Rabbit short cartoons, and many Pinky and the Brain, Animaniacs and Tiny Toons specials. Spielberg was very active in the early 1990s, as he directed Hook (1991) and produced such films as the cute fantasy Joe Versus the Volcano (1990) and An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991). He also produced the unusual comedy thriller Arachnophobia (1990), Back to the Future Part III (1990) and Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990). While these movies were big successes in their own right, they did not quite bring in the kind of box office or critical acclaim as previous efforts. In 1993, Spielberg directed Jurassic Park (1993), which for a short time held the record as the highest grossing movie of all time, but did not have the universal appeal of his previous efforts. Big box-office spectacles were not his only concern, though. He produced and directed Schindler's List (1993), a stirring film about the Holocaust. He won best director at the Oscars, and also got Best Picture. In the mid-90s, he helped found the production company DreamWorks, which was responsible for many box-office successes.
As a producer, he was very active in the late 90s, responsible for such films as The Mask of Zorro (1998), Men in Black (1997) and Deep Impact (1998). However, it was on the directing front that Spielberg was in top form. He directed and produced the epic Amistad (1997), a spectacular film that was shorted at the Oscars and in release due to the fact that its release date was moved around so much in late 1997. The next year, however, produced what many believe was one of the best films of his career: Saving Private Ryan (1998), a film about World War Two that is spectacular in almost every respect. It was stiffed at the Oscars, losing best picture to Shakespeare in Love (1998).
Spielberg produced a series of films, including Evolution (2001), The Haunting (1999) and Shrek (2001). he also produced two sequels to Jurassic Park (1993), which were financially but not particularly critical successes. In 2001, he produced a mini-series about World War Two that definitely *was* a financial and critical success: Band of Brothers (2001), a tale of an infantry company from its parachuting into France during the invasion to the Battle of the Bulge. Also in that year, Spielberg was back in the director's chair for A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), a movie with a message and a huge budget. It did reasonably at the box office and garnered varied reviews from critics.
Spielberg has been extremely active in films there are many other things he has done as well. He produced the short-lived TV series SeaQuest 2032 (1993), an anthology series entitled Amazing Stories (1985), created the video-game series "Medal of Honor" set during World War Two, and was a starting producer of ER (1994). Spielberg, if you haven't noticed, has a great interest in World War Two. He and Tom Hanks collaborated on Shooting War: World War II Combat Cameramen (2000), a documentary about World War II combat photographers, and he produced a documentary about the Holocaust called Eyes of the Holocaust (2000). With all of this to Spielberg's credit, it's no wonder that he's looked at as one of the greatest ever figures in entertainment.- Writer
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Bernardo Bertolucci, the Italian director whose films were known for their colorful visual style, was born in Parma, Italy. He attended Rome University and became famous as a poet. He served as assistant director for Pier Paolo Pasolini in the film Accattone (1961) and directed The Grim Reaper (1962). His second film, Before the Revolution (1964), which was released in 1971, received an Academy Award nomination for best screenplay. Bertolucci also received an Academy Award nomination as best director for Last Tango in Paris (1972), and the best director and best screenplay for the film The Last Emperor (1987), which walked away with nine Academy Awards.- Writer
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George Walton Lucas, Jr. was raised on a walnut ranch in Modesto, California. His father was a stationery store owner and he had three siblings. During his late teen years, he went to Thomas Downey High School and was very much interested in drag racing. He planned to become a professional racecar driver. However, a terrible car accident just after his high school graduation ended that dream permanently. The accident changed his views on life.
He decided to attend Modesto Junior College before enrolling in the University of Southern California film school. As a film student, he made several short films including Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB (1967) which won first prize at the 1967-68 National Student Film Festival. In 1967, he was awarded a scholarship by Warner Brothers to observe the making of Finian's Rainbow (1968) which was being directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Lucas and Coppola became good friends and formed American Zoetrope in 1969. The company's first project was Lucas' full-length version of THX 1138 (1971). In 1971, Coppola went into production for The Godfather (1972), and Lucas formed his own company, Lucasfilm Ltd.
In 1973, he wrote and directed the semiautobiographical American Graffiti (1973) which won the Golden Globe and garnered five Academy Award nominations. This gave him the clout he needed for his next daring venture. From 1973 to 1974, he began writing the screenplay which became Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977). He was inspired to make this movie from Flash Gordon and the Planet of the Apes films. In 1975, he established ILM. (Industrial Light & Magic) to produce the visual effects needed for the movie. Another company called Sprocket Systems was established to edit and mix Star Wars and later becomes known as Skywalker Sound. His movie was turned down by several studios until 20th Century Fox gave him a chance. Lucas agreed to forego his directing salary in exchange for 40% of the film's box-office take and all merchandising rights. The movie went on to break all box office records and earned seven Academy Awards. It redefined the term "blockbuster" and the rest is history.
Lucas made the other Star Wars films and along with Steven Spielberg created the Indiana Jones series which made box office records of their own. From 1980 to 1985, Lucas was busy with the construction of Skywalker Ranch, built to accommodate the creative, technical, and administrative needs of Lucasfilm. Lucas also revolutionized movie theaters with the THX system which was created to maintain the highest quality standards in motion picture viewing.
He went on to produce several more movies that have introduced major innovations in filmmaking technology. He is chairman of the board of the George Lucas Educational Foundation. In 1992, George Lucas was honored with the Irving G. Thalberg Award by the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his lifetime achievement.
He reentered the directing chair with the production of the highly-anticipated Star Wars prequel trilogy beginning with Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) . The films have been polarizing for fans and critics alike, but were commercially successful and have become a part of culture. The animated spin-off series Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) was supervised by Lucas. He sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012, making co-chair Kathleen Kennedy president. He has attended the premieres of new Star Wars films and been generally supportive of them.- Writer
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Woody Allen was born on November 30, 1935, as Allen Konigsberg, in The Bronx, NY, the son of Martin Konigsberg and Nettie Konigsberg. He has one younger sister, Letty Aronson. As a young boy, he became intrigued with magic tricks and playing the clarinet, two hobbies that he continues today.
Allen broke into show business at 15 years when he started writing jokes for a local paper, receiving $200 a week. He later moved on to write jokes for talk shows but felt that his jokes were being wasted. His agents, Charles Joffe and Jack Rollins, convinced him to start doing stand-up and telling his own jokes. Reluctantly he agreed and, although he initially performed with such fear of the audience that he would cover his ears when they applauded his jokes, he eventually became very successful at stand-up. After performing on stage for a few years, he was approached to write a script for Warren Beatty to star in: What's New Pussycat (1965) and would also have a moderate role as a character in the film. During production, Woody gave himself more and better lines and left Beatty with less compelling dialogue. Beatty inevitably quit the project and was replaced by Peter Sellers, who demanded all the best lines and more screen-time.
It was from this experience that Woody realized that he could not work on a film without complete control over its production. Woody's theoretical directorial debut was in What's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966); a Japanese spy flick that he dubbed over with his own comedic dialogue about spies searching for the secret recipe for egg salad. His real directorial debut came the next year in the mockumentary Take the Money and Run (1969). He has written, directed and, more often than not, starred in about a film a year ever since, while simultaneously writing more than a dozen plays and several books of comedy.
While best known for his romantic comedies Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1979), Woody has made many transitions in his films throughout the years, transitioning from his "early, funny ones" of Bananas (1971), Love and Death (1975) and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask (1972); to his more storied and romantic comedies of Annie Hall (1977), Manhattan (1979) and Hannah and Her Sisters (1986); to the Bergmanesque films of Stardust Memories (1980) and Interiors (1978); and then on to the more recent, but varied works of Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), Husbands and Wives (1992), Mighty Aphrodite (1995), Celebrity (1998) and Deconstructing Harry (1997); and finally to his films of the last decade, which vary from the light comedy of Scoop (2006), to the self-destructive darkness of Match Point (2005) and, most recently, to the cinematically beautiful tale of Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008). Although his stories and style have changed over the years, he is regarded as one of the best filmmakers of our time because of his views on art and his mastery of filmmaking.- Writer
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"If they move", commands stern-eyed William Holden, "kill 'em". So begins The Wild Bunch (1969), Sam Peckinpah's bloody, high-body-count eulogy to the mythologized Old West. "Pouring new wine into the bottle of the Western, Peckinpah explodes the bottle", observed critic Pauline Kael. That exploding bottle also christened the director with the nickname that would forever define his films and reputation: "Bloody Sam".
David Samuel Peckinpah was born and grew up in Fresno, California, when it was still a sleepy town. Young Sam was a loner. The child's greatest influence was grandfather Denver Church, a judge, congressman and one of the best shots in the Sierra Nevadas. Sam served in the US Marine Corps during World War II but - to his disappointment - did not see combat. Upon returning to the US he enrolled in Fresno State College, graduating in 1948 with a B.A. in Drama. He married Marie Selland in Las Vegas in 1947 and they moved to Los Angeles, where he enrolled in the graduate Theater Department of the University of Southern California the next year. He eventually took his Masters in 1952.
After drifting through several jobs -- including a stint as a floor-sweeper on The Liberace Show (1952) -- Sam got a job as Dialogue Director on Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954) for director Don Siegel. He worked for Siegel on several films, including Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), in which Sam played Charlie Buckholtz, the town meter reader. Peckinpah eventually became a scriptwriter for such TV programs as Gunsmoke (1955) and The Rifleman (1958) (which he created as an episode of Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre (1956) titled "The Sharpshooter' in 1958). In 1961, as his marriage to Selland was coming to an end, he directed his first feature film, a western titled The Deadly Companions (1961) starring \Brian Keith and Maureen O'Hara. However, it was with his second feature, Ride the High Country (1962), that Peckinpah really began to establish his reputation. Featuring Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott (in his final screen performance), its story about two aging gunfighters anticipated several of the themes Peckinpah would explore in future films, including the controversial "The Wild Bunch". Following "Ride the High Country" he was hired by producer Jerry Bresler to direct Major Dundee (1965), a cavalry-vs.-Indians western starring Charlton Heston. It turned out to be a film that brought to light Peckinpah's volatile reputation. During hot, on-location work in Mexico, his abrasive manner, exacerbated by booze and marijuana, provoked usually even-keeled Heston to threaten to run him through with a cavalry saber. However, when the studio later considered replacing Peckinpah, it was Heston who came to Sam's defense, going so far as to offer to return his salary to help offset any overages. Ironically, the studio accepted and Heston wound up doing the film for free.
Post-production conflicts led to Sam engaging in a bitter and ultimately losing battle with Bresler and Columbia Pictures over the final cut and, as a result, the disjointed effort fizzled at the box office. It was during this period that Peckinpah met and married his second wife, Mexican actress Begoña Palacios. However, the reputation he earned because of the conflicts on "Major Dundee" contributed to Peckinpah being replaced as director on his next film, the Steve McQueen film The Cincinnati Kid (1965), by Norman Jewison.
His second marriage now failing, Peckinpah did not get another feature project for two years. However, he did direct a powerful adaptation of Katherine Anne Porter's 'Noon Wine" for Noon Wine (1966)). This, in turn, helped relaunch his feature career. He was hired by Warner Bros. to direct the film for which he is, justifiably, best remembered. The success of "The Wild Bunch" rejuvenated his career and propelled him through highs and lows in the 1970s. Between 1970-1978 he directed The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), Straw Dogs (1971), Junior Bonner (1972), The Getaway (1972), Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973), Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), The Killer Elite (1975), Cross of Iron (1977) and Convoy (1978). Throughout this period controversy followed him. He provoked more rancor over his use of violence in "Straw Dogs", introduced Ali MacGraw to Steve McQueen in "The Getaway", fought with MGM's chief James T. Aubrey over his vision for "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid" that included the casting of Bob Dylan in an unscripted role as a character called "Alias." His last solid effort was the WW II anti-war epic "Cross of Iron", about a German unit fighting on the Russian front, with Maximilian Schell and James Coburn, bringing the picture in successfully despite severe financial problems.
Peckinpah lived life to its fullest. He drank hard and abused drugs, producers and collaborators. At the end of his life he was considering a number of projects including the Stephen King-scripted "The Shotgunners". He was returning from Mexico in December 1984 when he died from heart failure in a hospital in Inglewood, California, at age 59. At a standing-room-only gathering that held at the Directors Guild the following month, Coburn remembered the director as a man "who pushed me over the abyss and then jumped in after me. He took me on some great adventures". To which Robert Culp added that what is surprising is not that Sam only made fourteen pictures, but that given the way he went about it, he managed to make any at all.- Actor
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Mel Brooks was born Melvin Kaminsky on June 28, 1926 in Brooklyn, New York. He served in WWII, and afterwards got a job playing the drums at nightclubs in the Catskills. Brooks eventually started a comedy act and also worked in radio and as Master Entertainer at Grossinger's Resort before going to television.
He was a writer for, Your Show of Shows (1950) Caesar's Hour (1954) and wrote the Broadway show Shinbone Alley. He also worked in the creation of The 2000 Year Old Man (1975) and Get Smart (1965) before embarking on a highly successful film career in writing, acting, producing and directing.
Brooks is famous for the spoofs of different film genres that he made such as Blazing Saddles (1974), History of the World: Part I (1981), Silent Movie (1976), Young Frankenstein (1974), Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993), High Anxiety (1977), Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995), and Spaceballs (1987).- Actor
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Clinton Eastwood Jr. was born May 31, 1930 in San Francisco, to Clinton Eastwood Sr., a bond salesman and later manufacturing executive for Georgia-Pacific Corporation, and Ruth Wood (née Margret Ruth Runner), a housewife turned IBM clerk. He grew up in nearby Piedmont. At school Clint took interest in music and mechanics, but was an otherwise bored student; this resulted in being held back a grade. In 1949, the year he is said to have graduated from high school, his parents and younger sister Jeanne moved to Seattle. Clint spent a couple years in the Pacific Northwest himself, operating log broncs in Springfield, Oregon, with summer gigs life-guarding in Renton, Washington. Returning to California in 1951, he did a two-year stint at Fort Ord Military Reservation and later enrolled at L.A. City College, but dropped out to pursue acting.
During the mid-1950s he landed uncredited bit parts in such B-films as Revenge of the Creature (1955) and Tarantula (1955) while digging swimming pools and driving a garbage truck to supplement his income. In 1958, he landed his first consequential acting role in the long-running TV show Rawhide (1959) with Eric Fleming. Although only a secondary player the first seven seasons, he was promoted to series star when Fleming departed--both literally and figuratively--in its final year, along the way becoming a recognizable face to television viewers around the country.
Eastwood's big-screen breakthrough came as The Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's trilogy of excellent spaghetti westerns: A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). The movies were shown exclusively in Italy during their respective copyright years with Enrico Maria Salerno providing the voice of Eastwood's character, finally getting American distribution in 1967-68. As the last film racked up respectable grosses, Eastwood, 37, rose from a barely registering actor to sought-after commodity in just a matter of months. Again a success was the late-blooming star's first U.S.-made western, Hang 'Em High (1968). He followed that up with the lead role in Coogan's Bluff (1968) (the loose inspiration for the TV series McCloud (1970)), before playing second fiddle to Richard Burton in the World War II epic Where Eagles Dare (1968) and Lee Marvin in the bizarre musical Paint Your Wagon (1969). In Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970) and Kelly's Heroes (1970), Eastwood leaned in an experimental direction by combining tough-guy action with offbeat humor.
1971 proved to be his busiest year in film. He starred as a sleazy Union soldier in The Beguiled (1971) to critical acclaim, and made his directorial debut with the classic erotic thriller Play Misty for Me (1971). His role as the hard edge police inspector in Dirty Harry (1971), meanwhile, boosted him to cultural icon status and helped popularize the loose-cannon cop genre. Eastwood put out a steady stream of entertaining movies thereafter: the westerns Joe Kidd (1972), High Plains Drifter (1973) and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) (his first of six onscreen collaborations with then live-in love Sondra Locke), the Dirty Harry sequels Magnum Force (1973) and The Enforcer (1976), the action-packed road adventures Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) and The Gauntlet (1977), and the prison film Escape from Alcatraz (1979). He branched out into the comedy genre in 1978 with Every Which Way But Loose (1978), which became the biggest hit of his career up to that time; taking inflation into account, it still is. In short, The Eiger Sanction (1975) notwithstanding, the 1970s were nonstop success for Eastwood.
Eastwood kicked off the 1980s with Any Which Way You Can (1980), the blockbuster sequel to Every Which Way but Loose. The fourth Dirty Harry film, Sudden Impact (1983), was the highest-grossing film of the franchise and spawned his trademark catchphrase: "Make my day." He also starred in Bronco Billy (1980), Firefox (1982), Tightrope (1984), City Heat (1984), Pale Rider (1985) and Heartbreak Ridge (1986), all of which were solid hits, with Honkytonk Man (1982) being his only commercial failure of the period. In 1988, he did his fifth and final Dirty Harry movie, The Dead Pool (1988). Although it was a success overall, it did not have the box office punch the previous films had. About this time, with outright bombs like Pink Cadillac (1989) and The Rookie (1990), it seemed Eastwood's star was declining as it never had before. He then started taking on low-key projects, directing Bird (1988), a biopic of Charlie Parker that earned him a Golden Globe, and starring in and directing White Hunter Black Heart (1990), an uneven, loose biopic of John Huston (both films had a limited release).
Eastwood bounced back big time with his dark western Unforgiven (1992), which garnered the then 62-year-old his first ever Academy Award nomination (Best Actor), and an Oscar win for Best Director. Churning out a quick follow-up hit, he took on the secret service in In the Line of Fire (1993), then accepted second billing for the first time since 1970 in the interesting but poorly received A Perfect World (1993) with Kevin Costner. Next was a love story, The Bridges of Madison County (1995), where Eastwood surprised audiences with a sensitive performance alongside none other than Meryl Streep. But it soon became apparent he was going backwards after his brief revival. Subsequent films were credible, but nothing really stuck out. Absolute Power (1997) and Space Cowboys (2000) did well enough, while True Crime (1999) and Blood Work (2002) were received badly, as was Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997), which he directed but didn't appear in.
Eastwood surprised again in the mid-2000s, returning to the top of the A-list with Million Dollar Baby (2004). Also starring Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman, the hugely successful drama won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Eastwood. He scored his second Best Actor nomination, too. His next starring vehicle, Gran Torino (2008), earned almost $30 million in its opening weekend and was his highest grosser unadjusted for inflation. 2012 saw him in a rare lighthearted movie, Trouble with the Curve (2012), as well as a reality show, Mrs. Eastwood & Company (2012).
Between acting jobs, he chalked up an impressive list of credits behind the camera. He directed Mystic River (2003) (in which Sean Penn and Tim Robbins gave Oscar-winning performances), Flags of Our Fathers (2006), Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) (nominated for the Best Picture Oscar), Changeling (2008) (a vehicle for Angelina Jolie), Invictus (2009) (again with Freeman), Hereafter (2010), J. Edgar (2011), Jersey Boys (2014), American Sniper (2014) (2014's top box office champ), Sully (2016) (starring Tom Hanks as hero pilot Chesley Sullenberger) and The 15:17 to Paris (2018). Back on screens after a considerable absence, he played an unlikely drug courier in The Mule (2018), which reached the top of the box office with a nine-figure gross, then directed Richard Jewell (2019). At age 91, Eastwood made history as the oldest actor to star above the title in a movie with the release of Cry Macho (2021).
Away from the limelight, Eastwood has led an aberrant existence and is described by biographer Patrick McGilligan as a cunning manipulator of the media. His convoluted slew of partners and children are now somewhat factually acknowledged, but for the first three decades of his celebrity, his personal life was kept top secret, and several of his families were left out of the official narrative. The actor refuses to disclose his exact number of offspring even to this day. He had a longtime relationship with similarly abstruse co-star Locke (who died aged 74 in 2018, though for her entire public life she masqueraded about being younger), and has fathered at least eight children by at least six different women in an unending string of liaisons, many of which overlapped. He has been married only twice, however, with a mere three of his progeny coming from those unions.
His known children are: Laurie Murray (b. 1954), whose mother is unidentified; Kimber Eastwood (b. 1964) with stuntwoman Roxanne Tunis; Kyle Eastwood (b. 1968) and Alison Eastwood (b. 1972) with his first ex-wife, Margaret Neville Johnson; Scott Eastwood (b. 1986) and Kathryn Eastwood (b. 1988) with stewardess Jacelyn Reeves; Francesca Eastwood (b. 1993) with actress Frances Fisher; and Morgan Eastwood (b. 1996) with his second ex-wife, Dina Eastwood. The entire time that he lived with Locke she was legally married to sculptor Gordon Anderson.
Eastwood has real estate holdings in Bel-Air, La Quinta, Carmel-by-the-Sea, Cassel (in remote northern California), Idaho's Sun Valley and Kihei, Hawaii.- Director
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Franklin J. Schaffner was one of the most innovative creative minds in the early days of American network television, utilizing a moving camera in the days when most television directors kept the camera static. His eye for visuals was developed in the dozens of live television programs he directed on prestigious shows such as Studio One (1948) and Playhouse 90 (1956), not to mention his work in news and public affairs on "March of Time" and as one of the directors of TV coverage of the 1948 political conventions in Philadelphia. His visual sense came to be one of the important attributes of his work in feature films, such as the trek taken across the desert by the astronauts at the start of Planet of the Apes (1968). In addition to his Oscar and DGA Awards for Patton (1970), Schaffner also won Sylvania Awards in 1953 and 1954, Emmy Awards in 1954, 1955 and 1962 and a Variety Critics Poll Award in 1960.