Instructive, engaging, entertaining—enough to make a reader believe filmmaking really isn’t a terrible business.
Film director/producer Jewison recalls what went into the making of his films.
Looking back over a career spent directing and sometimes producing films, Jewison writes with an unassuming, good-humored, yet often forceful voice. Those same qualities may explain Jewison’s strong track record—he helmed such award-winners as Moonstruck, Fiddler on the Roof and In the Heat of the Night. Jewison took to directing when he wrote and staged college musicals at the University of Toronto. In the late ’50s and early ’60s, he went on to call the shots for several Canadian, then US, television variety shows. A Judy Garland special gave him entrée to Hollywood, where he cut his teeth on Doris Day comedies, eventually getting a shot at something serious, with The Cincinnati Kid. Jewison’s extended account of directing that film is a primer on the collaborative art of filmmaking. He details drawing out a taciturn Steve McQueen, designing a color palette with cinematographer Philip Lathrop, spending long editing sessions with Hal Ashby and getting the kind of musical score he needed from Lalo Schifrin. Equally valuable accounts of work on The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!, The Thomas Crown Affair, A Soldier’s Story, etc., follow. Throughout his career, it appears, Jewison was straight up, though not arrogant, about going for what he wanted; he could handle difficult talent (with the possible exception of Sylvester Stallone on F.I.S.T.); and he went after a film only if it was about something that mattered—rights for blacks, the American legal system, the union movement. In the wake of his concerns came skirmishes with the F.B.I., an uneasy dinner party with John Wayne—and a roster of worthy films.
Instructive, engaging, entertaining—enough to make a reader believe filmmaking really isn’t a terrible business.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2005
ISBN: 0-312-32868-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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