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Breaking In: How 20 Film Directors Got Their Start

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Overview

A naked-truth collection of interviews with today's hottest film directors detailing how they made their first films and "broke into" the movie industry. When Nicholas Jarecki graduated from New York University's film school at the age of nineteen, he knew that he wanted to make movies, but the fortress-like wall around the film industry proved hard to crack. So he set out to talk to some of Hollywood's greatest filmmakers about how they got started, thinking that if he learned their stories, he might well find his own road to success. The end result is Breaking In, a sizzling look at the movie industry that delivers candid advice from twenty of today's most provocative directors--from the blockbuster kings to the arthouse visionaries.

Editorial Reviews

Young NYU film school graduate Jarecki began this project as a "selfish" endeavor (he wanted to know how he could get his own start), but it evolved into an expansive collection of interviews with three generations of directors about how films are conceived, shot and distributed. The directors included span decades and genres, from John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy) to Amy Heckerling (Clueless) to Ben Younger (Boiler Room), but nearly all agree on the need for perseverance and the belief that writing a good script is, as Younger says, the "easiest and most direct route to success." These directors generally praise film programs, like those at Columbia, NYU and AFI (American Film Institute), as training grounds, and they view Sundance and other festivals with both starry and jaundiced eyes. Aside from offering advice, the book also provides directors' views on the purpose of filmmaking. Edward Zwick (Glory) sees film as a way to communicate feelings and "organize" experience;Peter Farrelly (Dumb and Dumber) considers it "telling a good story." Like a fine movie, the book generates memorable images, including Farrelly frozen by fear in bed before his first shoot and a teenaged John Dahl (The Last Seduction) trying to seduce a girl at a drive-in showing A Clockwork Orange. For future filmmakers, the book grants an extended community; for movie fans,it encourages faith in future films made by directors like Brett Ratner (Money Talks) who aim to inspire people, because "that's what movies ultimately are supposed to do." (Jan.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Nicholas Jarecki

Since graduating from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 1999, Nicholas Jarecki has directed several short films and music videos, as well as a documentary about the building of a New York nightclub. He has also directed and produced television pieces for clients such as IBM and HBO. Currently at work on scriptwriting and directing projects, Jarecki lives in New York City.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Broadway

Filesize

1.70 MB

Number of Pages

336

eBook ISBN

9780767910903

Excerpt from: Breaking In by Nicholas Jarecki

Edward Zwick ABOUT LAST NIGHT

EDWARD ZWICK was born in 1952 in Wyneck, Illinois. He attended Harvard University and began publishing work at the New York Observer and other publications by the time he was twenty-one. During a year abroad in France he met Woody Allen, who gave Zwick his first job working on a film. This exposure pushed Zwick to begin developing his own material. At the age of twenty-six he became producer of the television show "Family." He went on to direct his first feature, About Last Night, starring Demi Moore and Rob Lowe. Subsequently he created the television series "thirtysomething," and directed and produced many more films including Glory and The Siege, starring Denzel Washington and Bruce Willis. He also produced the Steven Soderbergh film Traffic. Zwick lives in Los Angeles with his family.

I grew up in Wyneck, Illinois, an affluent, middle-class suburb of Chicago. I went to a public high school, but it was a very progressive one, called Nutrier High. It's a bit odd, but a disproportionate number of people from this school have gone into the entertainment business, mostly as actors. I can't necessarily say why, but they have a very good drama department and I think it's that combined with the privilege of the suburb. Growing up there you're exposed to a number of artistic things as a child and indeed are given the presumptuous notion that you can go out into the world and succeed. There may be some sense of entitlement that comes from growing up in that particular way.

My mother had once been the assistant director in the high school class play. That was the extent of her theatrical involvement and yet it struck a chord in her. She loved the theater. She loved films. My father had loved film too, and it was important to my mother that we go see movies and important to my father that we go see them the first night. He was very into the glitz and allure of it and I think she was more aesthetically interested in the films themselves. When I was a kid I was initially very drawn to the theater. I first worked on a school play in fifth or sixth grade. By the time I was in eighth or ninth grade I was directing these little productions and acting in them and lighting them and doing all the things that somebody does when you're that age. We lived in a little split-level house that had three bedrooms. I have two younger sisters, and when they no longer wanted to share a room, I moved out of my bedroom and into the den of our house. In the den there was a television set, and although it was scandalous to have a television set in your room, particularly at age twelve or thirteen, I was now in the den, where it was somehow okay. That meant that I could stick a towel under the door so the light wouldn't show and turn the sound down and keep watching. When they thought I was asleep I could watch late-night movies.