The Emmy and Humanitas-Award winner has also gotten Oscar nominations for his work on Tootsie and Oh, God!; three Tony Awards and seven Writers Guild Awards, including the prestigious Laurel for career achievement and the Valentine Davies Award for being one of the biggest mensches in Hollywood. He talked to Eric Estrin about finding the rhythm, ignoring cold shoulders, and this thing called rewrite. You know, whether you’re a success or a failure, you always have to keep proving yourself in this business.
Hollywood Breakthrough
Think of a TV drama that started as an edgy cult hit and zoomed to cultural prominence over the past 20 years, and Howard Gordon may well have been among the producers. Now, as show-runner for Fox's "24," he has amassed an impact that he never reached with the dark fable "Beauty and the Beast," "Angel," or even the long-running hit "The X-Files." He talked with Eric Estrin about what it takes to make a great show last and why he senses failure always lurking in the shadows.
With his brother Jerry and their friend Jim Abrahams, David Zucker created a modern take on the spoof movie genre with the 1980 instant classic “Airplane,” named by the American Film Institute among the ten funniest films of all time. Working as a writer, producer and director, Zucker has been involved with a long string of box office smashes, from the critically acclaimed “Naked Gun” series to the more recent “Scary Movie” franchise.
For nearly 30 years, Eric Braeden has played Victor Newman, the ruthless billionaire of daytime television’s highest rated drama, “The Young and the Restless,” earning a Daytime Emmy and seven other nominations along the way. He also stars in the DVD movie "The Man Who Came Back," a feature he produced while on hiatus. But before “Y&R,” he starred in a slew of other projects, mostly under his original German name.
KEYWORDS Eric Braeden | The Young & the Restless
J. Michael Straczynski has 10 different feature projects in various stages of development, all of them launched in the two years since he sold his first spec feature, “Changeling,” to Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment. Before that Joe, as he is called, worked in television, for which he created the long-running cult hit “Babylon 5.” He talks with Eric Estrin about trying to sell what people aren’t buying and about gritting your teeth until it hurts.
A decade ago, Bill Mechanic was a buyer, running Twentieth Century Fox Filmed Entertainment during one of its most successful periods. Now, through his independent production company Pandemonium, he is a seller of high-end projects ranging from Terrence Malick’s “The New World” to the upcoming “Miss March.” He talks with Eric Estrin about his surprise hit “Coraline” -- and why scaring children isn’t such a bad thing.
The obsessive nature of the artist has been a recurring theme in the films of Scott Hicks, who skyrocketed to international attention in 1996 with “Shine” and whose acclaimed 2007 documentary “Glass: A portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts” premieres as an “American Masters” profile on PBS April 8. Hicks is himself something of an obsessive, having struggled for 10 years to get “Shine” off the ground.
KEYWORDS scott hicks | shine
With Fox’s wide release this weekend of “12 Rounds,” director Renny Harlin returns to the action genre where he made his name with box office hits “Die Hard 2” and “Cliffhanger.” Harlin’s first Hollywood success came with “Nightmare on Elm Street 4,” whose producers, he says, rejected him five times before the 1988 writers’ strike turned his luck around. Harlin talks with Eric Estrin about boyhood dreams, persistence, and Don Siegel’s cigar.
KEYWORDS Nightmare on Elm Street | Renny Harliin
Cathy Schulman’s rise from Yale theater studies major and playwright to her current position as president of Mandalay Pictures included stints in film production, development, acquisitions, financing and three years programming the Sundance Film Festival. She won an Academy Award as producer for best picture “Crash,” and suffered through a much publicized legal battle with Michael Ovitz, whose one-time production company, APG, she briefly headed.
