Happy 79th Birthday, Jim McBride! Born today in 1941 as James McBride, this American author, screenwriter, film producer and television and film director is one of the most active and least heralded of the Manhattan-based experimental filmmakers of the 1960s.
Born in New York City, New York, McBride, years later, was a Fine Arts major at Hunter College (CUNY). Post-graduation, he later married his first wife, Fern Dulman, in 1966.
The following year, McBride became one of the most important new American filmmakers. This was just after making one film, and also the film of which he is best known for writing and directing,
This was the 1967 American black and white documentary/mockumentary (or work of metacinema) film 'David Holzman's Diary'.
In McBride's deadpan spoof of pretentious 1960s cinéma vérité documentaries, the idealistic but easily confused young filmmaker David Holzman (L.M. Kit Carson) decides to document every waking moment of his life in an attempt to understand himself and his world.
This includes television commercials, people on the street, his model girlfriend Penny Wohl (Eileen Dietz) sleeping in the nude and perhaps his most difficult subject: himself.
Unsurprisingly, the people around Holzman, from his easily irritated girlfriend to the strangers whose own lives he begins spying upon, don't appreciate his newfound obsession.
On a budget of $2,500, the film was shot and produced by American film director and cinematographer Michael Wadleigh (also known as Michael Wadley).
Today, he is renowned for his three-hour, groundbreaking epic 1970 American documentary/musical film 'Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music'.
The following year, 'David Holzman's Diary' won First Prize at the 3rd Pesaro International Festival on New Cinema in June 1968.
It was in that year Jean-Luc Godard and Pier Paolo Pasolini were judges. Later that same year, McBride and Dulman were divorced.
Nonetheless, McBride eventually went on to receive great critical acclaim in the United States and Britain on the basis of 'David Holzman's Diary'.
Three years later, McBride was given the chance to direct a commercially-budgeted feature-length work. The result was the 1971 American post-apocalyptic sci-fi/drama film 'Glen and Randa'.
Upon release, 'the film was a box-office failure, but was later listed on several “ten best of the year” lists, including Times. Fortunately, the 1980s would see McBride achieving box office status.
Eleven years later, McBride married his second and final wife. This was English costume designer and Los Angeles-based writer Tracy Tynan. They had two children together.
The following year, McBride co-wrote (alongside Carson) and directed the 1983 American neo-noir romance/drama film 'Breathless'.
However, the original screenplay was written by Godard and François Truffaut. This wasregarding Godard's eponymous 1960 French black and white crime/drama film.
The film starred Richard Gere as cocky, nihilistic Las Vegas drifter Jesse Lujack. The score was composed by American musician, arranger, songwriter, composer and record producer Jack Nitzsche.
On a budget of $7 million, 'Breathless' grossed $19,910,002 at the box office. It was released in France under the title 'A Bout de Souffle Made in USA'.
Three years later, McBride directed the 1986 American neo-noir thriller drama/romance film 'The Big Easy'.
Later that same year, McBride co-directed the one-hour 1986 American drama fantasy horror "The Once and Future King (S02E25a) and "A Saucer of Loneliness" (S02E25b).
Both had aired on September 1986. This was for the CBS American television series The Twilight Zone (1985–1989).
This American television series was a 1980s revival of the classic sci-fi series, in which featured a similar style to the original anthology series.
Three years later, McBride co-wrote and directed the 1989 American biographical music/drama film 'Great Balls of Fire!'
The film tells of the early career of rockabilly pioneer, American singer-songwriter, musician, and pianist (often known by his nickname The Killer) Jerry Lee Lewis (Dennis Quaid).
It depicts how Lewis' rise to rock and roll stardom in the 1950s to the controversial marriage to Myra Gale Brown (Winona Ryder), his thirteen-year-old cousin once removed, led to Lewis' downfall.
Until the scandal of the marriage depreciated his image, many had thought that Lewis would supplant American singer and actor Elvis Presley as the "King of Rock and Roll" during that decade.
'Great Balls of Fire!' was based on the 1982 biographical novel Great Balls of Fire: The Uncensored Story of Jerry Lee Lewis by Brown and American writer Murray M. Silver Jr.
Roger Ebert did not like the film because of its screenplay, and wrote: "This is a simpleminded rock 'n' roll history in which the pleasures are many and the troubles are few.
Lewis, played by Dennis Quaid as a grinning simpleton with a crazy streak and a manic piano style, climbs the same career ladder as many of the stars of musical biographies, but he does it with lightning speed."
However, Ebert also said that Quaid did a nice job of reproducing Lewis' stage persona.
Unfortunately, it was after 'Great Balls of Fire!' that McBride's box office status began to decline.
The following year, McBride again tried his hand at the small screen in directing three episodes for the American comedy-drama series The Wonder Years (1988–1993).
In 1991, 'David Holzman's Diary' was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
Three years later, McBride co-wrote and directed the 1994 American thriller/mystery film 'Uncovered'.
It was based off of Spanish novelist and journalist Arturo Pérez-Reverte's 1990 mystery crime fiction novel La tabla de Flandes (The Flanders Panel), and shot under the title 'The Flemish Board.
Two years later, 'The Big Easy' was adapted for an American crime/drama television series, of which lasted for two seasons on the USA Network from August 11, 1996 – October 12, 1997.
During this time, McBride had directed the 1997 American cable television drama film 'The Informant'. Produced by Showtime, it starred Timothy Dalton and Carey Elwes.
Four years later, McBride directed "Brotherhood". This was an episode of American writer, director, and producer for television, film, and theater Alan Ball's American drama television series Six Feet Under (S01E07). It had aired on July 15, 2001.
On the list of the 1001 Songs You Must Hear Before You Die, "Great Balls of Fire" is placed at #87.
Among his credits, McBride is also known for directing 'My Girlfriend's Wedding' (1969), 'Pictures from Life's Side' (1971), 'Hot Times' (1974), 'Blood Ties' (1991) and 'The Wrong Man' (1993).
According to McBride's personal life, he was the son-in-law of American novelist, biographer, journalist, actress and playwright Elaine Dundy, and English theatre critic and writer Kenneth Tynan.
'David Holzman's Diary' has since had varying distribution on videotape, laserdisc, DVD, and online.
Richard Brody, writing for the New Yorker, named McBride as one of the twelve greatest living narrative filmmaker.
He cited 'Daivd Holzman's Diary' as a "time capsule of sights and sounds, ideas and moods, politics and history", and "one of the greatest first films", but noted that he only considered him one of the greatest for that specific film.
McBride went on to an often-fascinating career after his debut, one that included a couple of slice-of-counterculture-life documentaries, all filled with self-aware energy that demonstrates it’s possible to go mainstream without playing it safe.
McBride had been active from 1967–2010.
#borntodirect
#cageyfilms
#Films101
#1001Songs
@libraryofcongress
@bampfa
@RogerEbert
@Kanopy
@tubi
@secondrundvd
@newyorker
@filmcommentmagazine
@thedisolve
@world.biographical.encyclopedia
@FilmwaxRadio
No comments:
Post a Comment