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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A lot of your comedies had aspects that should be taken seriously and vice versa your dramas had a lot of comedy in them. Is that something that you felt was essential?
Jewison: “Absolutely. I believe that life is full of laughter and tears. It’s not one or the other, and if I’m watching a serious melodrama and it gets too heavy or turgid, one note it starts to turn me off because life isn’t like that. You might be at a funeral and you may have to stifle the giggles because of something that you see or hear. Life is a mixture I think of emotions, and I think that any film that you do no matter how serious a subject it better have a few moments of humor or the audience starts to get bored or feels. It just becomes one note so to speak.”
Did you ever have a movie that you found particularly hard to pull off, but once you were done you were very satisfied with?
Jewison: “Every film [Laughs]. Every film is a struggle that you never feel like you’ll get through to the end. Every film you think that no one is going to come and see it, because making a film is like going into a battle. It’s like going to war. It depends on logistics and weather and there are all these variables and it’s tough. It’s tough making movies. It’s a terrible business. It’s been good to me. I think that, for instance, Jesus Christ Superstar was difficult from a physical standpoint because we were shooting in Israel, out in the desert in a hundred and twenty degrees. So it becomes difficult to shoot dance numbers, and you find that you’re shooting only in the morning and late in the afternoon and that you can’t work during the day because, or in the heat of the day simply because it’s just too hot. So there are physical conditions that make it difficult. And also I think that on that particular film I was working with no dialogue. It was an opera. So therefore you’re trying to create a rock-opera on film and it ended up being the first rock video ever made. I guess because that’s what it was. When you look at it, it’s a ninety minute rock video.”
Did you ever have that experience where you made one film that you thought couldn’t miss and then it didn’t work out that way then conversely made a movie where you weren’t sure how people were going to react and it became a huge hit?
Jewison: “Yeah. I there was one picture that I made that Carl Reiner wrote that we thought was going to be the funniest thing ever since sliced bread. That was Art of Love with Ethel Merman and Elke Sommer and Angie Dickinson and Jim Garner and Dick Van Dyke. We thought that it was hysterically funny, and the first screening was in Westwood and we got in the limo and Carl had brought some champagne and we had our wives, and it was like we were going to a party. That’s how sure we were that this was just hysterical. And we got there and the film started and Carl and I were laughing, man. It was really terrific. We were enjoying ourselves. ‘This is really funny!’ Then I realized that we were the only two laughing [Laughs]. I’ll never forget it. Slowly we realized that it was not making it with the audience. So we kind of slunk out of the theater and ran out in the dark so that we wouldn’t have to talk to anyone. So that happens. I think that when I finished In The Heat of the Night I was very worried that it wasn’t going to be accepted by the audience.”
How quickly did you realize that it was being embraced? How quickly did that movie take off?
Jewison: “Oh, after it was in the theaters for a couple of weeks I realized that critically it was accepted and even though we lost some cities in the South and people wouldn’t take our ads or whatever, slowly it was building and of course it ended up winning six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. So you’re vindicated.”
Once you reached that plateau, that level of filmmaking, how hard does your career become after that, finding material just as good and compelling?
Jewison: “Well, you’re always looking for that story or that idea and that subject matter where the timing will coincide with capturing the imagination of the audience, and that’s what it is about. I think that in that way films are a little bit like books and other works of art, music and painting and so on: if you happen to be dealing with ideas that excite or stimulate the audience they will respond to it. I was surprised that Moonstruck took off the way that it did. I knew that Moonstruck was extremely well written. I was very excited about John Patrick Shanley‘s work as a playwright and as a screenwriter and I worked with him on that screenplay and I liked it very much, and I loved my cast. Everyone I reached for I got, which doesn’t happen to often, but I don’t think that I ever thought that a romantic comedy would critically be pushed to where it was pushed in the Academy Awards that year and as a matter of fact we won two or three. I think that Cher won and John Patrick Shanley won for best screenplay and Olympia Dukakis won. It was that people really embraced the film, and I think that whether it was family dysfunction or whether it was the Italian family or whether it was…I don’t know, whether it was just the brilliance of the writing that grabbed people, but they loved that movie. I meet people today and the picture came out in ’87, I think, and it’s still a favorite.”
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And you’re working with John Patrick Shanley again?
Jewison: “I am. I am. It’s very exciting. We’re doing an American version of an Italian film called Bread and Tulips. It’s another romantic comedy, but it’s got some strength of character to it that I like, and of course John [Shanley] is excited about and so that’s great, and he just won the Pulitzer and the Tony [for Doubt].”
Getting to this, was it as if that 18-year gap of time between working together never happened? Did you just pick it back up again?
Jewison: “Yeah. Oh, yeah. We’ve always been close, and as a matter of fact he wrote the introduction to my book, which I’m very grateful for. And then I have a political satire that I’m working on similar to The Russians Are Coming which is trying to make a comment on our society today: the paranoia and fear that America now has and lives under, which is building as we speak, and so I think that it’s time to analyze that and put the balloon of fear out there.”
There’s definitely a theme of a community of people, different races and different nationalities coming together in your films. Where does that come from in your life?
Jewison: “I don’t know. I don’t know. When I was very, very young I hitchhiked through the Southern United States and experienced a segregated society for the first time in my life, and I couldn’t quite understand it or empathize with it. I wasn’t prepared for it when I was eighteen years old, because I couldn’t understand why you would ask black citizens to go fight for their country and die for their country and when they came home from the war they couldn’t get a cup of coffee at Woolworth’s or drink out of a water fountain or go to the bathroom or sit in the front of the bus. I didn’t understand that. I didn’t think that was logical. It’s not logical that you would expect people to accept things like that. So that’s what bothered me when I was 18 years old, and I guess that was reflected later on into A Soldier’s Story and In the Heat of the Night and The Hurricane. Those are kind of a trilogy of films that do deal with racism in America.”
To what do you attribute your professional longevity? What’s your secret?
Jewison: “[Laughs] Luck. Willy Wyler, who I was a big fan of, he was in my mind one of the great directors that preceded me and my generation, and I said to him once when he was getting on in age, I said, ‘When it’s all over, Willy?’ He said, ‘It’s all over when your legs give out, kid.’ So I do a lot of skiing and try to stay in shape and I hope that I have another one or two in me.”
I just watched one of my favorite DVDs, the TV special that you directed for Judy Garland, with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin guest-starring on it. I was so surprised to see your name in the credits. Was that pretty wild experience?
Jewison: “Oh my God. That was before you born wasn’t it? That was 1959. Judy had come back more than anyone else in show business, I think. But that was her last comeback. That was her first live television performance, and we were lucky enough to get Sinatra and Martin. It was just a blast. It was a happening, and when you capture that like quicksilver, when you capture it and it works, there’s nothing as exciting as live television. It was like the Superbowl.”
Which directors today get you excited when you see their films?
Jewison: “Ang Lee. David Cronenberg. I think that there are so many talented directors that are emerging from so many countries, because as we move into a digital age there’s just so many more films made. I just came from the Toronto Film Festival and there were some 325 odd films, and some of them were quite remarkable. As I said before I don’t think that there’s any scarcity of talent, but I do think that it’s more difficult today in making films in the studio system. That’s difficult, because we’re down to five multi-national, multi-global corporations that kind of control everything, and now it’s corporate thinking. The marketing forces have taken over, and when the marketing forces take over we’re in trouble because talent is the creative engine that runs everything, and when talent is ignored or told what to do or bypassed, and all it becomes is marketing and hype, then things start to get off of course a little bit. So I think that the last five or six years in American film have not been its greatest contribution towards cinema.”
But you think there’s still hope?
Jewison: “Absolutely. We live on hope. [Laughs]”
