A Conversation with Master Director Norman Jewison
By Scott Huver, Hollywood.com Staff
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Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Norman Jewison |
Talk about a track record.
Though he’s made fewer than 30 feature films, at age 79 director Norman Jewison’s films have amassed an enviable 12 Academy Awards and 46 nominations, including a Best Picture win for 1967’s racially charged, culture-changing 1967 film In the Heat of the Night.
Jewison’s earliest days in show biz included directing television specials for Jackie Gleason and Danny Kaye before breaking into film with such fresh and enduring comedies as The Cincinnati Kid and The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming. Over the years the director proved he could deliver in any genre, from stylish capers (The Thomas Crown Affair) to splashy musicals (Fiddler on the Roof, Jesus Christ Superstar) to courtroom dramas (...And Justice For All) and all the way back to comedy (Moonstruck). And his films would continue to explore the themes of race and equality again in 1984’s A Soldiers Story and in his most recent big-screen triumph, 1999’s The Hurricane.
Jewison recently revisited his long and anecdote-packed career behind the camera in his juicy new autobiography, This Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me--juicy not for personal dish, of which he insists there is none, but for its fascinating look behind the scenes of the films of one of Hollywood’s most respected helmers. Already prepping his next big screen effort when we met in the lobby of a Santa Monica hotel for a sunlit chat overlooking the Pacific Ocean, Jewison showed the energy and enthusiasm of a man half his age, and had more stories than most people could gather in twice his lifetime.
What was it like to sit down to write this book and take a long look at the entire tapestry of your life?
Norman Jewison: “Well, my life is my work. I guess most filmmakers, that's what most people ever want to talk about [Laughs]. ‘What was Cher like? What was it like working with Judy Garland?’ So it's like writing about your children. Every film is going to take, what, a year or a year and a half out of your life and that specific two years is a lot of time to give up.”
At the risk of making a Sophie's Choice kind of decision, do you have a favorite of your children?
Jewison: “Of my children? Probably the smartass answer is the one that I'm going to do tomorrow. But of all of them. I think the one that kind of changed my career, kind of helped me when I was a young filmmaker, was The Cincinnati Kid simply because my first four films were all comedies. Everyone was happy and went to the seashore. They were all commercial. Two with Doris Day--one with Tony Curtis, one with Dick Van Dyke and James Garner. And although I thought some of them were smartly written, I had Carl Reiner, I was working with Send Me No Flowers which was a very smart, funny play. It wasn't so much the material, but it was the fact that I was being pigeonholed as a comedy director. And when I made The Cincinnati Kid it was a fairly successful film and it kind of reflected on me. I was taken more seriously as a filmmaker, and also there is a lot of me in that film…I was young and I was loose and defiant to the studio--all of those things. I didn't do what I was told, and what emerged I realized was some pretty good stuff, and so it gave me a lot of confidence.”
When you started turning a corner and began doing movies with a conscience, with social messages, was that something that you were really excited to do and ran with, or was that something that you fell into because the material came your way? Was it a conscious choice?
Jewison: “No. I'm just excited about stories with ideas, strong ideas. I'm interested in ideas more than I'm interested in anything, and I think that it's the idea behind the film that becomes important. The Russians Are Coming was about détente and about the absurdity of international warfare. It was, in a way, a very serious plea for coexistence at a time when Russia was the Red Menace in America. We were at each others’ throats and everyone was frightened that there was going to be nuclear war. So if you can make a comedy, a political satire that captures the imagination of the Russians and the Americans and everyone laughs at themselves and the absurdity of the situation, then you feel like you've done something. I mean, The Russians Are Coming is one of the few films that is in the Congressional Record. But I think that it's all timing. Everything is timing.”
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