Directors

Susan Beth Lehman

Description

Despite the increasing popularity of academic filmmaking programs in the United States, some of contemporary America’s most exciting film directors have emerged from the theater world.  Directors: From Stage to Screen and Back Again features a series of interviews with directors who did just that, transitioning from work on stage productions to work in television and on full-length features.

 

Taken together, these interviews demonstrate the myriad ways in which a theater background can engender innovative and stimulating work in film. As unique and idiosyncratic as the personalities they feature, the directors’ conversations with Susan Lehman range over a vast field of topics. Each one traces its subject’s personal artistic journey and explores how he or she handled the challenge of moving from stage to screen. Combined with a foreword by Emmy award–winning screenwriter Steve Brown, the directors’ collective knowledge and experience will be invaluable to scholars, aspiring filmmakers, theater aficionados, and film enthusiasts.

Sujets

• Arts visuels
• Arts visuels
• Cinéma
• Cinéma
• Cinéma
• Cinema
• Theater
• Performing Arts
• Theatre
• Performance art
• General officer
• Art
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 28 janvier 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781841507828
• Langue: English

Extrait

‘Insight made interesting – that’s how Susan Lehman’s interviews reveal the thought processes and experiences of successful directors. This is not a cookbook of recipes for success. The comments of the directors vary but the interviews provoke discussion about what is common and which experiences contribute to success. This is an enjoyable read for film and theater fans and should be required reading for students. I thoroughly enjoyed it.’
Richard Ruggiero Ed.D, Professor Emeritus, California State University at Northridge
‘A superb introduction to some of the top directors of our time. Susan Lehman’s book is a collection of truly engaging dialogues with twelve of today’s most successful directors from stage and screen.’
Guy Gunderson, Emmy award-winning editor
‘ Directors: From Stage To Screen And Back Again is an inspirational read for every director and every lover of the dramatic arts. The “conversations” give an indispensable insight into the minds of some of the great directors of our time. I learned things that I can’t wait to apply to my craft.’
Sal Romeo, artistic director of Friends and Artists Studio
‘Miss Lehman’s book is a must for every actor – to hear and learn first hand from a spectacular group of directors sharing their approach to working on and off set, shattering all misconceptions and empowering actors as to what to really expect when the Big Break comes!’
John Kirby, premier Hollywood acting coach

First published in the UK in 2013 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2013 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2013 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover designer: Holly Rose
Copy-editor: MPS Technologies
Production manager: Tim Mitchell
Typesetting: Planman Technologies
ISBN 978-1-84150-490-2
eISBN 978-1-84150-782-8
Printed and bound by Hobbs, UK
Photo Credits:
Lenore Dekoven
  George Kunze (photographer)
Oz Scott
Gordon Hunt
Paul Aaron
  Neil Reinhold (photographer)
Joel Zwick
  Jeremy Armstrong (photographer)
Conversations with successful directors who have transitioned from working in live theater to working in feature film and television.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Preface
Good Story, Well Told
Brief History of the Modern Director
Chapter 1: Paul Aaron, August 2010
Chapter 2: Gilbert Cates, October 2010
Chapter 3: Judy Chaikin, October 2011
Chapter 4: Lenore Dekoven, August 2010
Chapter 5: Gordon Hunt, June 2010
Chapter 6: Neil LaBute, August 2011
Chapter 7: Rob Marshall, June 2011
Chapter 8: Jiri Menzel, July 2011
Chapter 9: Oz Scott, May 2010
Chapter 10: Matt Shakman, September 2010
Chapter 11: Jerry Zaks, April 2011
Chapter 12: Joel Zwick, July 2010
Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Thank you to the directors who shared their time and experiences so generously. Hopefully, you all had as much fun as I did.
Many thanks to my eagle eye friends; Marie Golboro, Jane Ralston Pahr, and Brenda Lewis-Ruggiero Ph.D. My work always takes a village of proofreaders. Thank you to Richard Ruggiero Ed.D for his enthusiastic support. I’ve used up a lot of karma.
Also, thank you to my assistants; Brenna Bajor, Christy Czerpak, and Elisabeth Jacobs, who had the very appreciated job of transcribing hours and hours of interviews. Thanks to my colleagues Elizabeth Rosa and Chuck Gloman at DeSales University for helping this accidental academic.
Thank you to Megan Steele for her wholehearted assistance. Thank you to Matt Pirrall and Drew Robinson who were both so helpful with research, technical expertise and their keen insight.
Enormous thanks to Tim Mitchell at Intellect Books for his great patience in guiding me through the publishing process, to Troy Bauer who inspired the cover, and to Holly Rose for interpreting our thoughts into a dynamic cover design.
And thank you, Michael Hoffberg, who trouble shoots everything for me and has supported (i.e. puts up with) all my crazy pursuits.
Research and editing assistance:
Andrew Robinson
Megan Steele
Matthew Pirrall
Brenna Bajor
Christy Czerpak
Elizabeth Jacobs
Marie Golboro
Jane Ralston Pahr
Brenda Lewis-Ruggiero, Ph.D
William Whitney, PhD
and
Michael Hoffberg
Foreword
Theater and Film, born millennia apart, are nonetheless fraternal twins, children of a common dramatic parentage. One twin is perhaps more verbal, the other more visual, but, from cinema’s beginning, they have shared a deep symbiotic relationship. As early as 1897, Georges Melies filmed scenes from Parisian stage comedies; by 1900, Sarah Bernhardt was before the cameras starring in short scenes from Hamlet; in America, theater pieces were filmed by Adolph Zukor when he founded Famous Players. The company eventually morphed into Paramount Pictures.
It did not take long, however, for audiences to tire of the static camera set mid-auditorium simply recording actors as they went through their stage paces. Each sister art demanded to be treated as the different personality she was; both needed to stretch, to grow, to fulfill their own individual potentials. The role of the director, like that of a parent, became to encourage the growth of each sibling, to nurture them individually, to foster each art’s unique appeal. Some directing skills applied equally to both theater and film. But, again like parenting, techniques that worked wonderfully when rearing one were useless, even destructive, when forced on the other. The director who could move comfortably and successfully from stage to screen and back again became the exception rather than the rule.
Which brings us to Michael Gordon.
Susan Lehman and I both knew Michael as a senior professor of theater at UCLA. I was not surprised when Susan said it was the memory of Michael that first made her want to explore the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Broadway.
Michael Gordon was the kind of director who has virtually vanished from the film business today. Before the age of auteurs, he was a self-described “blue collar director,” one who had long careers in both New York and Hollywood, encompassing a wide range of genres. As a young man in the 1930s, Michael’s first credits were with the famous Group Theater, where he developed into a stage director of a half-dozen Broadway plays that included Arthur Laurents’ first drama Home of the Brave . Hired by Columbia Studios, he worked his way up from helming hackwork like Boston Blackie Goes to Hollywood (1942) to directing more than a dozen A-List films, among them Jose Ferrer’s Academy Award-winning performance in Cyrano De Bergerac (1950) and Lillian Hellman’s Another Part of the Forest (1948). Blacklisted in the 1950s, Michael retreated to New York where he amassed another 13 Broadway credits before his triumphant return to the screen with the classic comedy Pillow Talk (1959). He followed this massive hit with another eight major studio pictures. Some were successful, most were middling, but all were thoroughly professional. In other words, Michael Gordon was the walking definition of a working director, a man whose long career included success and failure, but who continued to be hired and who continued to produce a competent body of work over a very long career.
Sadly, during his last years teaching in the Theater Department, the Film Department – its doors not 50 feet from Michael’s office – never once asked him to lecture, or even screened one of his films. In retrospect, it seems less an oversight than an appalling waste of an invaluable resource.
Even we students who knew and admired Michael were too caught up in our own burgeoning egos to ask about his life, his experiences. At best we might sit for an occasional incidental anecdote of his career, our minds already racing ahead to where we had to go, what we had to do. Here was a man who had done professional work at a level that we could only aspire to, and we never asked how he did it, what mistakes he had made that we might avoid, how we might eventually have careers that were even a shadow of his. In the callowness of youth, we just could not be bothered. It is a neglect that has dogged my conscience for years.
Michael Gordon’s insights into living such a fascinating dual career died with him. It was this realization that first prompted Susan Lehman’s interest in producing a book like this. I am grateful because, in it, she makes recompense for our neglect by interviewing 12 directors whose professional lives, like Michael Gordon’s, have successfully spanned these same interconnected but disparate worlds. She has mined their minds for insights into their process, extracting unique perspectives on both the similarities between stage and screen, and how their art differs when they work “live” and when they work on celluloid.
I think Michael would be pleased. I know he would be proud.
Steve Brown
A long successful television writer and producer, Mr. Brown has won two Emmy Awards, holds an MFA in playwriting from UCLA, and spent a career working with professionals that have bridged the theater and film worlds.
Preface
Allowing the noun “film” to encompass all filmic art forms, film is the pre-eminent art of the twenty-first century. With ever-advancing technology, there are few places on the globe that are not connected to a screen. Theater, in contrast, needs only an actor, an audience, and a place to play. It has been practiced since humans gathered around fires telling stories. Both of these performing arts nurture the creative spirit and continue to entertain, provoke, and illuminate the pathos, foibles, and humor of life.
Ma