Harry Hurwitz

Independent filmmaker/artist Harry Hurwitz is perhaps most famous for his innovative 1971 cult film The Projectionist, the story of a lonesome projectionist whose imaginary adventures as a super hero are superimposed over old film clips. The highly-acclaimed movie featured the film-debut of comic Rodney Dangerfield. In the late '70s, Hurwitz, billing himself as "Harry Tampa" gained a further underground following with three films: Fairy Tales, Auditions (both 1978) and Nocturna (1979). The bulk of Hurwitz's filmography is comprised of highly creative, often funny low-budget fare ranging from mockumentaries to musicals to comedies to thrillers. Before becoming a director, the New York City-born and raised Hurwitz was a professor of film and drawing at the NYU, Cooper Union and the Parsons School of Design. Hurwitz had a lifelong love and fascination with silent comedian Charlie Chaplin and it was therefore fitting that his first film Chaplinesque: My Life and Hard Times (1964) was a fascinating documentary-account of the genesis of Chaplin's Tramp. The film was released under the title The Eternal Tramp. Other notable Hurwitz efforts include Richard (1972), a scathing but funny look at the pre-Watergate life and career of President Richard M. Nixon and That's Adequate (1990) a psuedo-documentary account of a fictional film studio that first showed at the 1988 Sundance Festival. The off-beat thriller Fleshtone (1994) was Hurwitz's last completed film. At the time of his death from heart failure on September 21, 1995, Hurwitz was in production with an all-star film comprised of the director's favorite themes, Remake.

~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide