The Director Within: Storytellers of Stage and Screen

302 Pages·2014·40.337 MB·English

by  Rose Eichenbaum, Aron Hirt-Manheimer


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