The Director Within: Storytellers of Stage and Screen PDF
Preview The Director Within: Storytellers of Stage and Screen
The Director Within publication of this book is funded by the Beatrice Fox auerBach Foundation Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving a The Director Within storytellers of stage and screen Rose Eichenbaum photographs and text by edited by Aron Hirt-Manheimer Wesleyan University Press Middletown, Connecticut Wesleyan university Press Middletown CT 06459 www.wesleyan.edu/wespress © 2014 Rose Eichenbaum All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Designed by Richard Hendel Typeset in Minion by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Eichenbaum, Rose. The director within: storytellers of stage and screen / photographs and text by Rose Eichenbaum; edited by Aron Hirt-Manheimer. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. isBn 978-0-8195-7289-9 (cloth : alk. paper) — isBn 978-0-8195-7494-7 (ebook) 1. Theatrical producers and directors—United States— Interviews. 2. Motion picture producers and directors— United States—Interviews. I. Eichenbaum, Rose, author photographer. II. Hirt-Manheimer, Aron, 1948– editor. Pn2285.d55 2014 792.02′32092273—dc23 2014013665 5 4 3 2 1 publication of this book is funded by the Beatrice Fox auerBach Foundation Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving Front cover: Peter Bogdanovich and (insets, left to right) Mel Brooks, Julie Taymor, John Carpenter, Reginald Hudlin, Hal Prince. Photographs by Rose Eichenbaum. Contents Foreword ix Emily Mann 135 Preface xi Michael Mayer 143 Acknowledgments xv Susan Stroman 150 Mel Brooks 158 Peter Bogdanovich 2 Hal Prince 168 Arthur Hiller 11 Walter Hill 175 Mark Rydell 18 John Landis 183 Rob Marshall 26 Barry Levinson 190 Kathleen Marshall 32 John Carpenter 198 Doug Hughes 39 Lesli Linka Glatter 207 Julie Taymor 45 Jonathan Frakes 214 Gary Ross 52 Brett Ratner 221 Rod Lurie 59 Richard Donner 228 Robert Benton 66 Lawrence Kasdan 237 Paul Mazursky 74 Tim Van Patten 244 Reginald Hudlin 82 Taylor Hackford 252 James Burrows 91 Robert Towne 260 Jay Sandrich 99 James L. Brooks 107 Recommended Viewing 267 Mira Nair 115 Bibliography 275 Michael Apted 120 Index 277 Joseph Cedar 129 vii Foreword I have often wondered about the power of iconic film images to imprint themselves so indelibly upon our memories. My earliest is of Charlie Chaplin eating a bowl of spaghetti, each strand sliding up toward his mustache and then disappearing. The fact that I have remembered that scene so vividly while forgetting everything else I experienced under age three is a testament to creative talents of fine filmmakers to magically transform even the most mundane of activities into a memorable image. Not only that, such images can even change the course of our lives. The scene in Flower Drum Song of Nancy Kwan dancing gleefully in her bedroom singing “I Enjoy Being a Girl” inspired ten-y ear- old Rose to pursue a career as a dancer, and, in recent years, to study and document the creative world of choreographers, dancers, actors, and now direc- tors—the fourth book in her series after Masters of Movement (choreog- raphers), The Dancer Within, and The Actor Within. In interviewing her subjects for The Director Within, Rose quickly found that most had themselves been captivated by certain films or stage shows they had watched in their youth that had led them to careers in the art of cinematic or theatrical storytelling. John Carpenter told Rose, “My drive to become a movie director goes back to when I was eight years old, after I first saw Forbidden Planet (1956). That’s when I fell in love with cinema.” Walter Hill was eleven or twelve when he first saw Shane (1953): “It made an enormous impression on me. I cried at the end.” For Mel Brooks it was Cole Porter’s Anything Goes: “I was about nine when I first saw it on Broadway and my whole world sort of lit up.” With few exceptions, directors, unlike actors, are rarely in the spot- light; they work behind the scenes. “Their presence,” Rose tells me, “is embedded in their works.” Rose’s greatest challenge, therefore, was to convince them to step out of the shadows and shed some light on how they managed to enlighten, entertain, and inspire audiences through the magic of storytelling in their chosen media. Somehow Rose succeeded in casting herself as a confessor to thirty- five directors, men and women who opened their hearts to a personable stranger bearing a tape recorder and camera. If the directors were ini- tially guarded, they quickly opened up when it became evident to them ix
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