2014 TCM Classic Film Festival to Open with Gala Screening of Newly Restored Oklahoma! (1955), with Live Appearance by Star Shirley Jones
Appearances by Stars Kim Novak and Ryan O’Neal; Filmmakers William Friedkin, Albert Maysles and Ira Wohl; and Editor Thelma Schoonmaker Added to Roster, Plus U.S. Premiere Restoration of Friedkin’s Sorcerer (1977) and Screenings of Bell Book and Candle (1958), Paper Moon (1973), Grey Gardens (1975) and Best Boy (1979)
Fifth Annual Festival Set for April 10-13 in Hollywood,
Coinciding with TCM’s 20th Anniversary
Turner Classic Movies (TCM) will open the 2014 edition of the TCM Classic Film Festival with the world premiere of a brand new restoration of the beloved Rodgers & Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! (1955). TCM’s own Robert Osborne, who serves as official host for the festival, will introduce Oklahoma!, with the film’s star, Academy Award®-winner Shirley Jones, in attendance. Vanity Fair will also return for the fifth year as a festival partner and co-presenter of the opening night after-party. Marking its fifth year, the TCM Classic Film Festival will take place April 10-13, 2014, in Hollywood. The gathering will coincide with TCM’s 20th anniversary as a leading authority in classic film.
In addition, the festival has added several high-profile guests to this year’s lineup, including Oscar®-winning director William Friedkin, who will attend for the screening of the U.S. premiere restoration of his suspenseful cult classic Sorcerer (1977); Kim Novak, who will participate in a screening of the charming Bell Book and Candle (1958); actor Ryan O’Neal, who will introduce the depression-era comedy Paper Moon (1973); legendary documentarian Albert Maysles, who will return to the festival for a screening of his masterpiece Grey Gardens (1975); filmmaker Ira Wohl, who will be on hand for his Academy Award®-winning documentary Best Boy (1979); and three-time Oscar®-winning film editor Thelma Schoonmaker (Raging Bull, The Aviator, The Departed), who will participate in a special conversation at Club TCM, the festival’s central gathering point.
Among the many previously announced events slated for the 2014 TCM Classic Film Festival, TCM will honor legendary actor, filmmaker and humanitarian Jerry Lewis with a multi-tiered celebration of his remarkable career. Lewis will have his hand and footprints enshrined in concrete in front of the world-famous TCL Chinese Theatre IMAX. In addition, Lewis will be on-hand for a screening of one of his most memorable films: The Nutty Professor (1963). This year’s TCM Classic Film Festival will also pay tribute to Quincy Jones, who will appear at multiple events during the festival, including a 50th anniversary screening of Sidney Lumet’s powerful drama The Pawnbroker (1964), which marked Jones’ debut as a film composer; and Richard Dreyfuss, with screenings of two of his most beloved films, The Goodbye Girl (1977) and Mr. Holland’s Opus (1995).
Other previously announced festival events include a screening of the recently restored Gone with the Wind (1939) and a presentation of The Wizard of Oz (1939) in its stunning new IMAX® 3D format. Both films are celebrating their 75th anniversaries in 2014. The festival will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins (1964) with a special presentation, while Mel Brooks will appear for his comedy classic Blazing Saddles (1974), along with Maureen O’Hara for the world premiere restoration of John Ford’s Oscar®-winning How Green Was My Valley (1941), and Margaret O’Brien for Vincente Minnelli’s perennial musical favorite Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). The festival will also include the following world premiere restorations: Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944), which will be celebrating its 70th anniversary; Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil (1958); William Wyler’s Best Picture Oscar® winner The Best Years of Our Lives (1946); the Beatles’ hit A Hard Day’s Night (1964); the Frank Capra comedy-drama Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936); Godzilla: The Japanese Original (1954); and the Lena Horne musical Stormy Weather (1943). In addition, the festival will feature a screening of the Harold Lloyd comedy classic Why Worry? (1923), with legendary silent-film composer Carl Davis conducting the live world premiere performance of his new original score, as well as recent restorations of Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights (1931) and Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger (1927), which will feature the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra performing their original score for the film.
Passes for the 2014 TCM Classic Film Festival can be purchased exclusively through the official festival website: http://www.tcm.com/festival. Descriptions for the newly announced additions to the festival lineup are included below. Additional screenings and events for the 2014 TCM Classic Film Festival will be announced over the coming months.
Opening Night Gala – Shirley Jones and Oklahoma! (1955)
The Shirley Jones success story could not have been more perfect if concocted by a studio press agent. Born in tiny Smithton, Pa. (pop. 877), the only daughter of the Jones family (brewers of popular Stoney’s Beer), the feisty and precocious Shirley Mae was an early handful, but showed signs of a particularly mellow vocal range. Her church, her teachers, and her parents were all savvy enough to see her talent and Shirley’s local music lessons opened the door to summers at the Pittsburgh Playhouse.
Someone suggested that 18-year-old Shirley Mae sign up for the “Miss Pittsburgh” competition. It was not Shirley’s passion, but she went along, and took the crown in 1952. Here the plot thickens some, because through all this conspicuous show business calling, Shirley Jones alerted the world around her that she had decided to be a veterinarian. And so, with all other bets off, she enrolled in New Jersey’s Centenary College and prepared for the journey east with a one-week vacation stopover in New York.
With her week, and her money, spent, Shirley received a call from a friend who told her that the Rodgers & Hammerstein show South Pacific, then on Broadway, would be having open auditions to replace two parting chorus members. And so, Shirley took that fateful bus ride downtown to the St. James Theater and the line of umpteen showbiz hopefuls where the stage had been meticulously set to deliver Smithton’s Shirley Mae Jones not to a veterinary college but to the time and place of her remarkable million-to-one public destiny. Shirley got to the front of the line and sang her song, “The Best Things in Life are Free.”
“Please wait,” the man said.
Another line and another trip out front to sing followed. Finally, almost exhausted, the line whittled down to a handful, a fourth performance, Shirley heard a voice from the back of the darkened theater.
“Thank you, Miss Jones, for being here so long. If you don’t mind, I’d like to call my partner, Mr. Hammerstein, and ask that he come down and hear you.”
“Oh, sure,” the always gracious Shirley said, “And what is YOUR name?”
His name was Richard Rodgers.
Mr. Hammerstein arrived and the Shirley Jones whirlwind began. Put under immediate “personal management” contract to the Rodgers & Hammerstein partners—the first and last time ever—it was not fully a year later that 19 year-old Shirley Mae Jones was screen testing in Hollywood along with the heavyweight likes of Kathryn Grayson, Debbie Reynolds and Jane Powell for the coveted role of Laurey in the 1955 film version of the long running Broadway play OKLAHOMA!. She got the part and many others followed, including roles in Carousel (1956), April Love (1957), The Music Man (1962), an Oscar for her role as Lulu Baines, the prostitute opposite Burt Lancaster in Elmer Gantry (1960), to the harried head of television’s The Partridge Family.
Her movie, television and stage roles, a record breaking Broadway run, two recent Emmy nominations, and an ongoing career of symphony concerts and speaking engagements world wide has earned Shirley Jones an incandescent place in the heart of all America that doesn’t ever seem to go away. And so, the only question left in the glorious Shirley Jones American icon story is, “Did anybody ever call Centenary College to tell them Shirley isn’t coming?”
Oklahoma! (1955)
4K restoration presented in collaboration with Twentieth Century Fox
Few actresses get to make their big-screen debuts in a film as eagerly awaited as Oklahoma!, but that’s just what happened to Shirley Jones when Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein chose her over Joanne Woodward to star in the film version of their first big hit. The songwriters held up making the film until they could get just the right picture. With the arrival of Todd-AO, Mike Todd’s patented wide-screen process, they finally knew they could reveal the majesty of the frontier in all its glory, including corn as high as an elephant’s eye (16 feet tall, to be exact). But despite the production’s mammoth size, the focus remained simple, detailing the romance of farm girl Jones and cowboy Gordon MacRae. Agnes de Mille re-created much of her stage choreography, which had introduced modern dance to the stage musical, while director Fred Zinnemann brought a surprisingly realistic approach to the production.
This unique 4k presentation, painstakingly restored from 65mm Todd-AO elements by Twentieth Century Fox and Fotokem, will be screened at 30 frames per second—the same frame rate as when the film was originally released in 1955. The original 6-track soundtrack has been also restored and re-mastered at Twentieth Century Fox, in collaboration with End Point Audio and Chase Audio by Deluxe.
William Friedkin and Sorcerer (1977)
For sheer cinematic punch, it’s hard to equal the films of director William Friedkin. The Exorcist (1973), The French Connection (1971), Sorcerer (1977) and To Live and Die In L.A. (1985) are such great yet hard-hitting pleasures to watch, so downright addictive, that it’s easy to forget what a meticulous craftsman Friedkin is on every level.
A veteran of live television in the 1950s, Friedkin trained in documentary filmmaking in the mid-1960s – training that led to the unnerving, you-are-there realism of The French Connection and the terrible beauty of The Exorcist and Sorcerer. “What I try to do before each film is immerse myself totally in many tangential phases of that subject before I make it – so I’m literally swimming in it before I expose a frame of film,” Friedkin has observed.
In 1971, his The French Connection was released to wide critical acclaim. Shot in a gritty style more suited for documentaries than Hollywood features, the film won five Academy Awards®, including Best Picture and Best Director.
Friedkin followed up with 1973’s The Exorcist, based on William Peter Blatty’s best-selling novel, which revolutionized the horror genre and is considered by some critics to be the greatest horror movie of all time. The Exorcist was nominated for 10 Oscars®, including Best Picture and Best Director. It won awards for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Sound.
Friedkin’s action movie To Live and Die in L.A. won the Audience Award at the Cognac Film Festival. Starring William Petersen and Willem Dafoe, the movie was a critical favorite and drew comparisons to Friedkin’s own The French Connection.
Friedkin started directing operas in 1998 with a widely acclaimed production of Berg’s Wozzeck at Maggio Musicale in Florence. He followed that in 2002 with a double bill of Bartok’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi at Los Angeles Opera. In 2004 at Los Angeles Opera, he directed R. Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos. Other operas include Saint-Saëns’ Samson and Delilah at the New Israeli Opera, Tel Aviv, and Verdi’s Aida at the Teatro Regio Torino in Torino, Italy, in 2005; Duke Bluebeard’s Castle/Gianni Schicchi for the Washington National Opera at The Kennedy Center and Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich, Germany, as well as new productions of Strauss’ Salome and the world premiere of Wolfgang Rihm’s Das Gehege in 2006 and 2007; and a double bill of Suor Angelica/Il Tabarro at Los Angeles Opera in 2008. Friedkin returned to Maggio Musicale, Florence, in 2011 with Leos Janácek’s The Makropulos Case. And in 2012, he directed Offenbach’s The Tales Of Hoffmann at Theater An der Wien, Vienna, Austria.
Sorcerer (1977) – U.S. Premiere Restoration
Presented in collaboration with Paramount and Warner Bros.
This adaptation of the novel by Georges Arnaud, which also inspired Henri-Georges Clouzot’s suspense classic The Wages of Fear (1953), is director William Friedkin’s favorite of all his films, mainly because it came closer than any other to his original vision. This tale of four men in a South American backwater who sign on to drive a cargo of dynamite through perilous terrain started as a low-budget film. As Friedkin expanded his vision to include nail-biting sequences as the trucks cross a rickety rope bridge and navigate treacherous mountain roads, the budget rose to $22 million. Initially a critical and box-office failure, partly because of overwhelming competition from Star Wars (1977), the film has enjoyed a critical renaissance in recent years. Now hailed as one of the masterpieces of the ’70s, the film has been praised for its economical storytelling, lavish production values and Friedkin’s expert manipulation of the themes of fate and human responsibility. In 2013, the director supervised this new, digital restoration that premiered to great acclaim at the Venice Film Festival.
Kim Novak and Bell Book and Candle (1958)
Audiences have always understood and loved Kim Novak, yet many critics misjudged her work as too simplistic when compared to actors whose stylized performances are now viewed as outdated. In retrospect, Novak’s work is receiving more acclaim with the passage of time. She is being recognized and honored for her acting ability. Novak’s most recent awards include the prestigious Golden Bear for lifetime achievement at the Berlin International Film Festival. In 2003 Novak was presented with the Eastman (Kodak) Archives Award for her major contribution to film (prior honorees include Greta Garbo, Audrey Hepburn, James Stewart, Martin Scorsese and Meryl Streep).
Novak was also the recipient of a special tribute from the American Cinematheque in Hollywood where her films were shown at the Egyptian Theatre in January 2004. She made a rare personal appearance with a Q&A onstage between the showings of Bell Book and Candle (1958) and Vertigo (1958).
In 1956 Novak became the #1 box office star in the world and held that position for three solid years of outstanding filmmaking. Knowing that nothing lasts forever and not wanting to fall prey to the tragic endings that often resulted when stars and sex symbols got lost in identity crises, Novak made a decision to walk away from Hollywood. It took great courage to turn her back on a successful and lucrative career when she was at her peak, but she felt the need to go in search of herself to learn what she really wanted out of life. Novak moved to a cliffside dwelling along the wild coast of Big Sur, Calif., with the purpose of creating a new lifestyle in harmony with nature while combining it with her love of painting and writing poetry. One of her poems was made into a song and recorded by the Kingston Trio and Harry Belafonte.
Novak was born Marilyn Pauline Novak in Chicago, the daughter of a history teacher who, during the Depression, became a railroad freight dispatcher. In her mother’s attempt to help Novak overcome her shyness and become more outgoing, she encouraged her daughter to join a teenage club where she soon began modeling. She job appearing in two movies along with 20 other models when she was discovered by an agent and signed to a contract at Columbia Pictures.
Novak’s first assignment was opposite Fred MacMurray in Pushover (1954), a moody film noir directed by Richard Quine. She was the breakout performer and that film and it led to her second film, playing a beautiful Broadway playgirl in the George Axelrod comedy, Phffft (1954), opposite Judy Holliday and Jack Lemmon. 5 Against the House (1955) followed, after which she was loaned to independent producer-director Otto Preminger for The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) in which she played the compassionate concerned girlfriend of a drug addict, played by Frank Sinatra. Even more spectacular were her starring roles as the small-town country girl in the film version of William Inge’s Picnic (1955), directed by Joshua Logan, and as the socialite wife of Tyrone Power in The Eddy Duchin Story (1956).
In Jeanne Eagels (1957), opposite Jeff Chandler, Novak portrayed the title role of the tempestuous Broadway star of the 20s. In the Rodgers and Hart musical, Pal Joey (1957), she starred with Rita Hayworth and Frank Sinatra. In 1958 she starred with James Stewart in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, a film the Library of Congress named as a national treasure, picked the first time the National Film Registry decided to start adding 25 films a year to the Library. She followed Vertigo with a comedy Bell Book and Candle, again opposite Stewart and Jack Lemmon. In her next film, Middle of the Night (1959), she played a much less glamorous love interest of her aging employer, Fredric March, and she really shone as an actress. Her films in the early 1960s displayed her versatility in Strangers When We Meet (1960), with Kirk Douglas, and the off-beat comedy The Notorious Landlady (1962), with Jack Lemmon again.
In a landmark move for all the actors to come after her, Novak was the first actor (and woman) to negotiate an ownership deal of her own product, as soon as her original Columbia contract ended. The deal was negotiated by her long-time agent, Norman Brokaw, now chairman of the board of William Morris. She formed her own production company and did Boys Night Out (1962), and then flew to Ireland to star in the third version of Somerset Maugham’s novel, Of Human Bondage (1964), with Laurence Harvey. Her next film, Billy Wilder’s Kiss Me, Stupid (1964), shocked the Legion of Decency when it was released, but it was rediscovered and acclaimed for its forward thinking in 2001, and has been playing special engagements in art houses ever since to rave re-reviews, particularly for Novak’s performance as “Polly the Pistol.”
Novak returned to England to star in The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (1965), and married her co-star Richard Johnson. In The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968), Novak again played a dual role (which seemed to be a theme in her work) as an early day screen star and the younger actress chosen by an obsessed director to recreate her. Following The Great Bank Robbery (1969), Novak returned to Big Sur.
Though Novak’s first priority is her private life, she has never lost the love of acting because she views it as another expression of her art. She has occasionally left “the wilds” for a project such as Just a Gigolo (1978) opposite David Bowie, or The Mirror Crack’d (1980), with Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and Tony Curtis. Several years later she worked with Ben Kingsley on The Children (1990), then later on appeared in Mike Figgis’ Liebestraum (1991).
Over the past few years, Novak has chosen to express herself through her art. Her paintings are primarily impressionistic and extraordinarily emotional. She had her first public exhibition of her art in 2012 at the Historical Museum of San Francisco.
Bell Book and Candle (1958)
Presented in collaboration with Sony Pictures
The same year James Stewart and Kim Novak co-starred in Vertigo, which was recently declared the greatest movie ever made by the British Film Institute, they also teamed for this amiable romantic comedy with a supernatural twist. The two very different films are closely associated, as Paramount and Columbia worked out a deal to cast Stewart in this film and use Novak’s services on the Hitchcock picture. Novak stars as a Greenwich Village witch who casts a love spell on Stewart to steal him from an old college rival. It’s hard to believe she would need magic to make a man fall in love with her, particularly with James Wong Howe’s cinematography capturing her at her most beautiful. And as if Novak weren’t alluring enough to turn anyone to the dark arts, she has a family of delightful eccentrics – brother Jack Lemmon and aunt Elsa Lanchester – to sweeten the deal. A year before he shot to stardom in Some Like It Hot (1959), Lemmon steals all of his scenes as a mischievous warlock who plays bongos at the local jazz club and uses his magic to punk passersby.
Ryan O’Neal and Paper Moon (1973)
Born Patrick Ryan O’Neal on April 20, 1941, in Los Angeles, Ryan O’Neal seemed destined for show business as the son of writer Charles “Blackie” O’Neal and actress Patricia O’Callaghan. Determined to make his own way, O’Neal trained to become a professional boxer, competing in two Golden Gloves championships in Los Angeles in 1956 and 1957. He had an impressive amateur fighting record – 18 wins to 4 losses, with 13 knockouts.
In the late 1950s, O’Neal and his family moved to Germany for his father’s job writing broadcasts for Radio Free Europe. O’Neal continued his schooling at the Munich American High School until he landed his first job in the entertainment industry as a stuntman on the American television series Tales of the Vikings.
In the early 1960s, O’Neal married actress Joanna Moore, and the couple had two children: Tatum and Griffin. The two split a few years later, and O’Neal later married actress Leigh Taylor-Young, whom he met on the set of Peyton Place, his first major television role. They had one child, Patrick.
O’Neal made his feature film debut in Elmore Leonard’s The Big Bounce (1969). O’Neal went on to make Twentieth Century Fox’s The Games (1970), where he first met writer/marathon runner, Erich Segal. His big break soon followed when he was chosen from more than 300 hopefuls for the role of Oliver Barrett opposite Ali MacGraw in Arthur Hiller’s adaptation of Erich Segal’s bestseller Love Story in 1970. The film was a huge success and landed O’Neal both Oscar® and Golden Globe® nominations for Best Actor.
After Love Story, O’Neal turned to comedy and starred opposite Barbra Streisand in smash hit What’s Up, Doc? (1972). He then starred with Warren Oates and Jacqueline Bisset in The Thief Who Came To Dinner (1973). O’Neal next took on the role of a drifter working con games with his daughter, played by real life daughter, Tatum. in the critically acclaimed hit Paper Moon (1973), for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Actor. Tatum won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role.
O’Neal then went on to star in Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 historical drama Barry Lyndon; Oliver’s Story, a sequel to Love Story in 1978; and the noir hit The Driver, also in 1978. In 1979, O’Neal scored another box office win with The Main Event, starring again with Barbra Streisand. And in 1984, he co-starred with Drew Barrymore, Shelley Long and Sharon Stone in Irreconcilable Differences.
In 1979, O’Neal met and fell in love with actress Farrah Fawcett. Together they had one child, Redmond. O’Neal and Fawcett co-starred in the made-for-TV miniseries Small Sacrifices (1989), based on the true story of Diane Downs. O’Neal returned to episodic television, again co-starring with real-life love, Farrah Fawcett in 1991 with the sitcom Good Sports.
O’Neal’s other roles included starring alongside Robert Downey, Jr. in Chances Are (1989); Faithful (1996), co-starring Cher; and the comedic Malibu’s Most Wanted (2003). O’Neal has continued working in television with a recurring role on hit crime drama Bones and recently did a reality show with daughter Tatum on OWN.
Paper Moon (1973)
Presented in collaboration with Paramount Pictures
Peter Bogdanovich’s love affair with the past served him well in this adaptation of Joe David Brown’s novel Addie Pray. Not only does he lovingly re-create rural Kansas and Missouri during the Depression, but his work reflects the best of Hollywood’s top Golden Age directors. The deep-focus black-and-white landscapes capture the scenic expanses of John Ford’s films (at one point, the leads pass a movie theatre showing Ford’s 1935 film Steamboat Round the Bend), while the fast-paced banter between con artist Ryan O’Neal and real-life daughter Tatum, as the tough little girl who becomes his partner in crime, echoes the comic dialogue in Howard Hawks’ films. One critic even referred to the picture as Preston Sturges’ last film. Bogdanovich had been eager to work with O’Neal again after they made What’s Up, Doc? (1973) and convinced O’Neal’s daughter to take a stab at acting. He got such a good performance out of her that she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, even beating co-star Madeline Kahn, who plays the carnival dancer with whom O’Neal memorably takes up.
Albert Maysles and Grey Gardens (1975)
One of America’s foremost documentary filmmakers and cinematographers, Albert Maysles has been making films for more than half a century. With his brother, David (1932-1987), Albert pioneered the “direct cinema movement,” the distinctly American version of French “cinema verité,” in which the drama of human life unfolds as is, without scripts, sets, or narration.
The Maysles brothers used these innovative techniques in making the first non-fiction feature films, including the groundbreaking 1968 film, Salesman. Such Maysles classics as Gimme Shelter (1970) and Grey Gardens (1975), soon followed and are acclaimed for their exquisite cinematography and sensitive portraits of people, both famous and unsung.
Albert has received numerous awards and acclaim for his films and cinematography from such organizations as The Guggenheim Foundation, the Peabody Foundation, the Emmys®, the American Society of Cinematographers and the International Documentary Association, which chose three films by Albert and David among the best 25 documentary films ever made.
In 2005, Albert founded the Maysles Documentary Center, a non-profit cinema and training center in Harlem, New York. The MDC offers no and low-cost training to aspiring documentary filmmakers in the Harlem community, both youth and adult. The Maysles Cinema is the only independent film house in upper Manhattan and is dedicated to the exhibition and production of documentary films that inspire dialogue and action.
Grey Gardens (1975)
Presented in collaboration with Janus Films and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
This poignant and strikingly original documentary is a tribute to two women who, for more than 20 years, colored outside the lines and did it beautifully. Once the queens of society, Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter, also named Edith Bouvier Beale, withdrew from the world in the ’50s only to be rediscovered by pioneering documentarians Albert and David Maysles. The brothers originally set out to do a film about Princess Lee Radziwill, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ sister. When they met the Beales during their research, however, they were so intrigued by the world they had created in their decaying East Hamptons mansion, they decided to make a film about them instead. One of the Maysles’ greatest gifts in films like Gimme Shelter (1970) and Salesman (1968) is to take themselves out of the picture, and that gift is evident here. In filming mother and daughter, “Big Edie” and “Little Edie,” they let their subjects shape the film through their daily routines, reminiscences, spontaneous musical performances and frequent bickering. The result is a poetic, often comic evocation of eccentricity and of two women who never stopped being themselves.
Ira Wohl and Best Boy (1979)
Ira Wohl is the Academy Award®-winning filmmaker of Best Boy (1979), a feature documentary about his 50-year-old mentally challenged cousin Philly’s journey toward greater independence. Wohl is also the maker of the sequel, Best Man (1997), which shows how Philly has survived and thrived, as well as Best Sister (2006), which features Philly’s 80-year-old sister, Frances, living in a time when almost all the people, values and traditions that once gave her life meaning, have ceased to exist
In 2004 Wohl produced People Say I’m Crazy, the first-ever documentary photographed and directed by someone with schizophrenia. John Cadigan, a visual artist who had a psychotic break at age 21, invites audiences to tour the world inside his “beautiful mind” – a chaotic, paranoid and imaginative universe where he struggles to know what is real, yet still manages to live creative and fulfilling life.
Wohl holds a master’s degree in Social Work from University of Southern California and is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with a private practice, as well as a part-time one at UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Hospital and Institute, where he sees the students for psychotherapy. He has just returned from Chicago, where he filmed a series of fourteen in-depth interviews covering the entire spectrum of mental disorders, for a new set of DVDs on the process, utility and philosophy of diagnosis.
Best Boy (1979)
Family and time are the foci of this intensely moving documentary currently marking its 35th anniversary. Filmmaker Ira Wohl spent four years following his elderly aunt and uncle as they dealt with the need to create a future for their mentally challenged son, Philly. Originally, Wohl had simply set out to help Philly become more independent. Two days before Philly’s first meeting with a neurologist to determine exactly what his potential for independent living was, Wohl decided to film the encounter. Within a day, Wohl realized that this was a story he needed to tell, so he continued to document Philly’s growing independence and his development of an extended family of caregivers, as well as the effect this had on his family relationships. Best Boy was met with glowing reviews and won the Oscar® for Best Documentary. It inspired a sequel, Best Man (1997), focusing on Philly’s life in a group home and the preparations for his Bar Mitzvah.
A Conversation with Thelma Schoonmaker
Thelma Schoonmaker Powell was born in Algiers, Algeria, where her father worked for the Standard Oil Company. She grew up on the island of Aruba and after returning to the United States, attended Cornell University, where she studied political science and Russian, intending to become a diplomat. While doing graduate work at Columbia University, she answered a New York Times ad that offered on-the-job training as an assistant film editor. The exposure to the field sparked a desire to learn more about film editing, and her career was set.
During a six-week summer course at New York University’s film school she met Martin Scorsese and Michael Wadleigh. Within a few years, she was editing Scorsese’s first feature, Who’s That Knocking at My Door (1967), after which she edited a series of films and commercials before supervising the editing of Wadleigh’s 1970 film Woodstock, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award®.
In 1981, Schoonmaker won the Academy Award, the American Cinema Editors Eddie and the BAFTA Award for her editing of Scorsese’s Raging Bull (1980). Since then, she has worked on all of Scorsese’s feature films: The King of Comedy (1983); After Hours (1985); The Color of Money (1986); The Last Temptation of Christ (1988); the “Life Lessons” segment of New York Stories (1989); GoodFellas (1990), which earned her another BAFTA Award and another Oscar® nomination; Cape Fear (1991); The Age of Innocence (1993); Casino (1995); Kundun (1997); Martin Scorsese’s documentary on the first 100 years of American film, A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese through American Movies (1995); Bringing Out the Dead (1999); Martin Scorsese’s documentary on the Italian Cinema, Il Mio Viaggio in Italia (2001); Gangs of New York (2002), for which she earned another Oscar nomination and won the American Cinema Editors Eddie Award; The Aviator (2004), for which she won her second Academy Award and the American Cinema Editors Eddie; The Departed (2006), for which she won her third Academy Award and her fourth American Cinema Editors Eddie Award; Shutter Island (2010); Hugo (2011), for which she was nominated for an Oscar; and most recently The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), for which she received an American Cinema Editors nomination and a BAFTA nomination. She is currently working on Martin Scorsese’s documentary about the British cinema.
In addition to editing, Schoonmaker works tirelessly to promote the films and writings of her late husband, the film director Michael Powell, whose body of work includes such titles as The Red Shoes (1948), Black Narcissus (1947), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), A Matter of Life and Death (1946) and Peeping Tom (1960).
