| Norman Jewison Receives the ACE Golden Eddie Award
By Alex Asher Sears and Vincent LoBrutto
Great directors are often defined by the genre in which they are particularly adept. Yet Norman Jewison has never chosen to settle down comfortably into any one cinematic circle. With a curator’s eye he chose some two-dozen films to helm over the last fifty years. Set in turn of the century Russian shtetls, futuristic dystopias and everywhere in between, told in song, dance, and even in silence, they have left their mark on the lexicon of modern cinema. His communion with both actor and editor make him a filmmaker who inspires us and one we aspire to be like. And for his contributions to the art of film, American Cinema Editors (ACE) honors Norman Jewison with the 2008 Golden Eddie.
Born and raised in Toronto, his earliest ambitions were to be an actor. Making his stage debut at the age of five, he aspired to stand before the camera long before he imagined himself behind one. Jewison’s ability to capture so much from a performer must come in part from his own knowledge of the craft. Twelve of these collaborations led to Oscar nominations, for actors Alan Arkin, Rod Steiger, Topol, Leonard Frey, Al Pacino, Adolph Caesar, Anne Bancroft, Meg Tilly, Cher, Vincent Gardenia, Olympia Dukakis and Denzel Washington. Steiger, Cher and Dukakis took home the awards.
At Victoria College he wrote, directed and acted in university productions as well as in local theatre. Post-graduate he found work in London, England writing for children’s television and finding small acting roles on the British Broadcasting Company (BBC). Finding himself out of work, he returned home in 1951 to become a production trainee at the burgeoning Canada Broadcasting Company (CBC). When the CBC premiered on television in 1952, Jewison was on staff as an assistant director. Over the next seven years he wrote, produced and directed variety shows, musical reviews, special programming and dramas for the company. Owned by the Crown Corporation, he found artistic freedom unseen in most network television. In 1958, New York came calling. Jewison was now a leading director at the CBC and his musical specials caught the eye of the William Morris Agency. He arrived at CBS and began directing musical-variety programming including Your Hit Parade, and The Andy Williams Show. He directed Danny Kaye’s first television special with guest Louis Armstrong, The Broadway of Lerner and Loewe, and The Judy Garland Show. In 1959, he directed Harry Belafonte in “Tonight with Belafonte” for The Revlon Revue. It was the first time in American history that an African American took center stage with a primetime special. Jewison once said, “It was the first time a black entertainer had his own special. After the first half-hour, stations all over the South were cutting off the show.”
Jewison’s work with Belafonte was the beginning in a career long desire to address the issues of racism and civil rights in the United States. After serving in the Royal Canadian Navy during World War II, Jewison hitchhiked across the American South. Confronted with the realities of segregation, Jewison said, “I could never understand it. I was never in my life inculcated with any kind of racism. I could never figure out why a country would ask its black citizens to go and give their lives in defense of their country and then when they came home from the war, they couldn’t get a cup of coffee at Woolworth’s.” The impact would affect him personally, politically, and artistically for the rest of his life.
While rehearsing for the first Judy Garland television special in 1961, Jewison met actor Tony Curtis. A year later Jewison was directing Curtis in his diretorial debut, Forty Pounds of Trouble (1962). This was followed by two Doris Day films, The Thrill of It All (1963) and Send Me No Flowers (1964), as well as The Art of Love (1965) with Dick van Dyke and Angie Dickinson. However much he enjoyed movie making, Jewison wanted out of his contract. He was ready for something different; something beyond being “the comedy guy” and found it waiting for him in two extraordinary talents. One was actor Steve McQueen who’d start as The Cincinnati Kid (1965), and later in The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), bringing Jewison critical success. The other was Hal Ashby, who had just progressed from assistant to film editor, and would prove to be one of Jewison’s greatest collaborators and dearest friends.
The Jewison-Ashby relationship continued with The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming (1966), In the Heat of the Night (1967) and The Thomas Crown Affair (1968). “We became very close. Hal and I were very simpatico, we were like brothers. I had a great influence on him and he had a great influence on me and we ended up getting on a plane and flying to Georgia and marching in Martin Luther King’s funeral. We were protesting on the streets together.”
Jewison had also found what would become the common denominator in most of his films: the raising of social consciousness. “Every film you make, or at least every film that I make has got to have some raison d’etre—some sort of reason for me making it. I get a little nervous if there isn’t a strong idea behind the film. Every work of art has a strong idea behind it and I like to make films that are relevant to what’s happening around us today as a society. I think those are the most interesting films and I think as long as you don’t use film as a social vehicle for propaganda it is possible to make a feature film that holds the attention of the audience and really grips them and moves them to either laughter or tears. When they finish the film and they go home, they’re thinking about it.”
“The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming (1966) was my first really political satire—that was a comedy that went to the edge of farce, but it was an important film about détente. It was, before that word was even used, about the absurdity of international conflict. It was a film about Russians and Americans at the height of the Cold War and was important enough to be screened in Washington for the vice president and then two weeks later in Moscow.” The film was nominated for four Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Editing for Asby and J. Terry Williams, and took home the Golden Globe for Film of the Year.
Jewison’s next film, In the Heat of the Night (1967), examined the volatile politics of Southern racism at the height of the Civil Rights movement. Even their Mississippi seting had to be shot on location in Illinois due to the political climate of the era. The crime drama set in the sort of Southern town Jewison hitchhiked through fifteen years prior, starred Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger, and is ranked by the AFI as one of the “greatest films ever made.” Nominated for six Academy Awards including Best Director, it took home five Oscars including Best Editing for Ashby and Best Picture (other nominees included Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate and Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?).
In 1967, Jewison, Ashby and cinematographer Haskell Wexler visited the World’s Fair in Montreal. There they saw a short film that would inspire the iconic multi-frame scene in The Thomas Crown Affair. “There were fifteen to sixteen images on the screen at the same time, and because you can’t control what you hear, but you can control what you see„Ÿin other words the eye is the only selective organ in your body„Ÿwe realized we were able to follow four and five images for stories at the same time. It really excited us so when we went back to Boston we decided to try to use that technique in the film.”
The film’s chess scene is another classic, brought to life by the late Ralph Winters, A.C.E. And is a favorite of the director. “Steve McQueen’s character asks Faye Dunaway, ‘Do you play?’ to which she says, “Try me” and what follows is chess with sex. Now, how do you make a chess scene sexy? I mean it was fascinating a fascinating piece of editing, camera work, performance and music, because there wasn’t a word spoken and I must say, I think that chess scene in The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) will always be a piece of classic cinema.”
The period comedy Gaily, Gaily (1969) brought an end to an era for Jewison. “I was pretty disillusioned with America and Vietnam. Reagan was Governor and Nixon was President. We had been working on Bobby Kennedy’s campaign and Martin Luther King had been assassinated. So when I had the opportunity to direct Fiddler on the Roof I decided to move my whole family to Europe.” Now producing his projects as well as directing, he was developing the film, The Landlord (1970) and brought it to United Artists with Hal Ashby attached to direct. In making Fiddler, he left both the US and his longtime collaborator behind. “I believed that although I mentored him, he went way past me because his knowledge of editing, his concept, his vision was so much more refined than mine was. I wasn’t an editor, I didn’t grow up in movies, I came from live television and before that, I came from the theater. Hal grew up in an editing room literally, and all those years with Bob Swink, A.C.E. and William Wyler, he learned a lot. When we did The Cincinnati Kid together I knew that at the end of that film that we would be together for a number of years and we would stay together as long as we could.”
“I lived in Europe for the next eight years and that’s when I met Antony Gibbs, A.C.E. I knew his work on The Loved One (1965), which was one of my favorite films. So I called Antony up and we got together and he worked with me on Fiddler on the Roof (1971) for two and a half years because it was a huge three-hour film. And then we went straight from that we went to Israel together and made Jesus Christ Superstar (1973).”
These musicals were immensely successful both critically and at the box office. Fiddler on the Roof, which Pauline Kael considered “the most powerful movie musical ever made,” took home the ACE Eddie for Best Edited Feature Film for Antony Gibbs and Robert Lawrence. The movie also garnered thirteen Oscar nominations and five wins.
At Pinewood Studios in England, Jewison and editor Gibbs collaborated on the futuristic drama Rollerball (1975). “I was with Antony Gibbs for the next three or four films. We made F.I.S.T (1978) in America and then took it back to England to finish it, because that’s where we were all living at that time. Then in 1978 I went back to Canada. I was in search of my roots. I have lived all over the world. I’d been making so many films about America and about other cultures. So I went back to Canada because so many films were being made there because of the low dollar. A lot the crews had been developed there „Ÿthe whole film infrastructure in Canada had developed to a point where they were really making some good films. I don’t think it matters where you work, what matters is the talent that’s involved.”
In 1984, Jewison adapted the Pulitzer-prize winning play A Soldier’s Story, his second film about the African American experience and bigotry. Edited by Caroline Biggerstaff and Mark Warner, the film was nominated for Best Picture and introduced the director to actor Denzel Washington. Fifteen years later they would work together again on The Hurricane (1999). He followed this with another stage adaptation, Agnes of God (1985) starring Jane Fonda, Anne Bancroft and Meg Tilly. “The dramatic writing of the theater is about the confrontation of characters with each other…and there are some plays which were very exciting for me to adapt because I’m a very theatrical filmmaker.”
In 1986, Jewison established the Canadian Centre for Advanced Film Studies, now known as the Canadian Film Centre, to “develop the artistic and technical skills of talented directors, writers, and producers in Canadian film.” That same year Jewison and editor Lou Lombardo, A.C.E. began their work together on a romantic comedy, Moonstruck (1987). With six Oscar nominations and three wins including Best Actress for Cher and Supporting Actress for Olympia Dukakis, the project would begin a collaboration with Lombardo which included In Country (1989) and Other People’s Money (1991). Stephen Rivkin A.C.E., mentored by Lombardo, began working with Jewison on the romantic comedy Only You (1994). “(Mentoring) this is very important. Hal Ashby was always mentoring people and so was Tony Gibbs. That’s one of the reasons that Steve Rivkin became my editor; he is so talented and he had a lot of Lou’s style.”
Completing his trilogy of films about the African American experience and the realities of racism, Jewison wanted to bring to the screen the true story of boxer Ruben “Hurricane” Carter, jailed for a murder he did not commit. “Bob Dylan was championing the rights of Rubin Carter long before anybody else and so when it came time to make the film about his life, I went to Dylan and asked if we could use his music; his song. Bob Dylan is great and I think that Steve Rivkin did a remarkable job of editing on that picture. I’ll tell you…Denzel’s performance, when he is in solitary, in the cell alone, that whole sequence is probably some of the best acting ever.”
In 2003, Jewison directed The Statement, with Michael Caine, Charlotte Rampling and Tilda Swinton. Taking on the subject of Nazi War criminals, the film was awarded special recognition by the National Board of Review.
The works of Norman Jewison have garnered forty six Academy Award nominations and twelve wins. In 1999, he received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In addition, Jewison has been named a companion of the Order of Canada by the Governor-General, representative of the Queen. In 2004, Jewison published his memoirs, This Terrible Business Has Been Good To Me. |
