The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (459 page)

It was a huge success, just as the studio of which he had remained a large stockholder foundered with
Cleopatra
. Zanuck returned to replace Skouras, rationalize
Cleopatra
, and install his son Richard as head of production. In those hectic days he still found time to cut George Cukor’s
The Chapman Report
(62) to shreds.

This account does not do justice to Zanuck’s drive or efficiency. He was inadvertently comic (a life of Zanuck might call for, say, Bill Murray). He never compromised with the status of monster-in-his-own-time. But Twentieth Century films in his time know what they are after—that may restrict them, ultimately, but it makes a model of business intelligence that leaves so many lessons. Zanuck was a sportsman (he pioneered polo and croquet), and he believed in keeping your eye on the ball, and giving it a good crack.

Abraham Zapruder
(1905–70), b. Kovel, Ukraine
From the Ukraine, Zapruder came to the New York area when he was fifteen. He got work in the clothing industry, married, and had children. Then in 1941 he moved to Dallas to work for a sportswear company. By 1954 he had formed his own business, Jennifer Juniors, and he had offices off Dealey Plaza. And so it was, on November 22, 1963, that he went out in the plaza at lunchtime with his 8 mm Bell & Howell Zoomatic Director Series Model 414 PD. Using Kodak Kodachrome II film, he photographed the presidential motorcade as it passed by.

The existence of the undeveloped film came to the attention of the Secret Service and they took it to be processed, with Zapruder stipulating that the film could only be used in the investigation of a crime. Four prints were made. Two went to the Secret Service and Zapruder kept two.

The following day, Zapruder sold print rights to
Life
magazine for $50,000. Then
Life
made an offer of $150,000 for all rights. But Zapruder insisted that frame 313 (in a total of 486 frames) was not to be published (it showed the destruction of the president’s head).

Still, the 26.6 seconds of movie coverage proved crucial in the investigation of the shooting and the establishment of a timeline. But the physical reactions of the victims—of President Kennedy especially—were highly suggestive to any moviegoer as to what had happened. Experts then said that the neurophysical response of the president did not necessarily match the conventional movements of actors in an action sequence.

The case, the number of shooters, and their positions may never be fully established. But Abraham Zapruder is an outstanding example of the man on the street with a movie camera. He meant to record reality, but the filmstrip was too complex to serve just that purpose.

Renée Zellweger
, b. Katy, Texas, 1969
It’s a long way from Katy, Texas (just outside Houston), to the London of
Bridget Jones’s Diary
(01, Sharon Maguire), but Renée Zellweger made the transition without spilling a drop of her likability. She wasn’t the most obvious casting, yet her success as Bridget—carrying the film at the box office—was proof of how much she had learned, and of that unshakable inner quality that the audience likes. A lot of young actresses these days don’t bother to be pleasing; others try too hard. But there has always been a natural decency in some players—it was there in Jean Arthur and Carole Lombard—an innate honesty that the public trusts. Ms. Zellweger has it, along with great range. She is one of the few young actresses who could grow old fruitfully before our eyes.

She majored in English at the University of Texas, and benefited from the intriguing creative circles based in Austin. She did a little television and then had small roles in
My Boyfriend’s Back
(93, Bob Balaban) and
Dazed and Confused
(93, Richard Linklater). Her first lead was in the white-trash outlaw picture,
Love and a .45
(94, C. M. Talkington), followed by
Reality Bites
(94, Ben Stiller); and the girl with glasses who survives
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation
(94, Kim Henkel).

She was in
The Low Life
(95, George Hickenlooper) and
Empire Records
(95, Allan Moyle). Her breakthrough came in two roles: as the teacher in love with pulp writer Robert E. Howard (Vincent D’Onofrio) in
The Whole Wide World
(96, Dan Ireland), her exceptional work got her the female lead in
Jerry Maguire
(96, Cameron Crowe).

Since then she has done
Deceiver
(98, Jonas and Joshua Pate);
A Price Above Rubies
(98, Boaz Yakin); excellent as the daughter in
One True Thing
(98, Carl Franklin);
The Bachelor
(99, Gary Sinyor);
Nurse Betty
(00, Neil LaBute); with Jim Carrey—her onetime companion—in
Me, Myself & Irene
(00, Bobby and Peter Farrelly);
Chicago
(02, Rob Marshall);
White Oleander
(02, Peter Kosminsky);
Down with Love
(03, Peyton Reed); so funny and rustic she was nearly black in
Cold Mountain
(03, Anthony Minghella), winning the supporting actress Oscar; a voice in
Shark Tale
(04, Bibo Bergeron and Victoria Jensen);
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
(04, Beeban Kidron);
Cinderella Man
(04, Ron Howard);
Miss Potter
(06, Chris Noonan);
Bee Movie
(07, Steve Hickner and Simon J. Smith);
Leatherheads
(08, George Clooney);
Appaloosa
(08, Ed Harris);
New in Town
(09, Jonas Elmer);
My One and Only
(09, Richard Loncraine).

Robert Zemeckis
, b. Chicago, 1952
1978:
I Wanna Hold Your Hand
. 1980:
Used Cars
. 1984:
Romancing the Stone
. 1985:
Back to the Future
. 1988:
Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
. 1989:
Back to the Future II
. 1990:
Back to the Future III
. 1992:
Death Becomes Her
. 1994:
Forrest Gump
. 1997:
Contact
. 2000:
What Lies Beneath; Cast Away
. 2004:
The Polar Express
. 2007:
Beowulf
.

No other contemporary director has used special effects to more dramatic and narrative purpose. Grant the lapse of
Back to the Future II
(a mere marking time) and the miscalculation of
Death Becomes Her
, and Zemeckis has done nothing that is not fresh, startling, difficult, and intriguing. In partnership with his cowriter, Robert Gale, he has taken movies into fascinating realms of what might be—the fusion of live action and cartoon, the overlay of past and future, and most recently the dynamic engineering of cosmetics. To know that a future project is the life and work of Houdini is to recapture a child’s impatience for coming attractions.

Zemeckis met Gale at USC film school and together they made two inventive and human pictures that found no real audience.
I Wanna Hold Your Hand
is about American teenagers trying to get into the Beatles’ appearance on the
Ed Sullivan Show
—a simple, lovely idea for a crazy group comedy.
Used Cars
had a similar sense of mounting riot. The team had a more serious failure with the script for
1941
(79, Steven Spielberg, who was their early patron).

It was Michael Douglas who backed Zemeckis for
Romancing the Stone
, and helped build it into a hit. The concept of
Back to the Future
may not be original (it does echo the previous year’s
Terminator
), but Zemeckis turned it into an exuberant comedy that never forgot the real bonds of family and genetics. As writer and director, he has rarely allowed the show to lose sight of such human realities.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
is a triumph of organization, a film that manages to make its laborious tricks seem airy and magical,
and
the true sequel to
Chinatown
with its portrait of Los Angeles mugged by the automobile.

Back to the Future III
has no equal in the category of IIIs—this is not saying much, but that film’s recovery of the Western genre showed how smart and enterprising Zemeckis is.

Death Becomes Her
never found the right tone, so its tricks were startling and unpleasant. Moreover, Streep and Goldie Hawn hardly needed help in playing natural enemies. At forty, Zemeckis seemed too busy, too restless, and too natural a story magician to fail the promise. He was cowriter and co–executive producer on
Trespass
(92, Walter Hill).
Forrest Gump
was a very big hit, best picture, and one of those travesties that set back the American movie at a stroke.

In 1994, I wondered if Zemeckis might be a great director in the making. It was a lesson in curbing one’s optimism. For in the years since, he has delivered three clunkers in a row
—Contact
, which was nearly literally sweet potato pie in the sky;
What Lies Beneath
, a Hitchcock rip-off without any real point; and
Cast Away
, which took product placement (for Federal Express) to new, insane heights. These were big, splashy films that consistently dodged their most promising points. The magic had slipped away, and there was little talk of Houdini.

At that point, Zemeckis fell in love with a process (called “Performance Capture”) that explores hi-def digital animation. One can see why—some of the results are stunning. But neither
Polar Express
nor
Beowulf
works as a whole, or makes us care. Whereas,
Roger Rabbit
is a contained enchantment to rival Chris Von Allsburg’s great children’s book and the very intense fable we call “Beowulf.” Either the process gets richer, or Zemeckis needs rescuing—send Roger?

Catherine Zeta-Jones
, b. Swansea, Wales, 1969
Catherine Zeta-Jones has every reason to believe in the Church of Show Business, high or low. When she was only seventeen, she was in the chorus of a London revival of
42nd Street
. The star fell sick, and Jones was promoted to the lead—and never gave it up. Suppose we accept that this had no trace of publicity ploy; still we have to believe that she then met, fell in love with, and married that rather tarnished prince of Hollywood Michael Douglas, and made him aglow (and a father) again. What next?

The “Zeta” in her name (a shrewd move) does suggest some Latin blood that would match her extreme, ripe, dark good looks. But in truth, it was her grandmother’s name—and if one knows Wales at all, there is a very Welsh look to Jones, a kind of Polly Garter flash, full of flirt, anger, and sauce. In the real valleys, it must be said, it is a prettiness that tends to fade early.

She made her movie debut as Scheherazade in
Les Mille et Une Nuits
(90, Philippe de Broca), and she did a run of shows for British TV that established her popularity: as Mariette in H. E. Bates’s
The Darling Buds of May
(91, Rodney Bennett and David Giles); as Eustacia Vye in Hardy’s
The Return of the Native
(94, Jack Gold); and the lead in
Catherine the Great
(95, Marvin J. Chomsky and John Goldsmith).

On the big screen, she was in
Christopher Columbus: The Discovery
(92, John Glen);
Splitting Heirs
(93, Robert Young);
The Phantom
(96, Simon Wincer); her breakthrough, having her clothes removed by rapier, in
The Mark of Zorro
(98, Martin Campbell); photographed like a pinup in
Entrapment
(99, Jon Amiel);
The Haunting
(99, Jan De Bont);
High Fidelity
(00, Stephen Frears);
Traffic
(00, Steven Soderbergh);
America’s Sweethearts
(01, Joe Roth). In hindsight, there is a third trace of magic—her having survived so many poor pictures.

She handled
Chicago
(02, Rob Marshall) moderately well, accepted her supporting actress Oscar in good humor and then took on motherhood with full court press. But she was well matched with George Clooney in
Intolerable Cruelty
(03, Joel and Ethan Coen), and she maintained a pert presence (on TV and radio) in what seemed like a blizzard of mobile phone ads. “Get more!” she kept saying. One suspects she will.

She was very good in
The Terminal
(04, Steven Spielberg);
Ocean’s Twelve
(04, Steven Soderbergh);
The Legend of Zorro
(05, Campbell);
No Reservations
(07, Scott Hicks);
Death Defying Acts
(08, Gillian Armstong);
The Rebound
(09, Bart Freundlich).

Mai Zetterling
(1925–94), b. Vasteras, Sweden
1963:
The War Game
(d). 1964:
Alskande Par/Loving Couples
. 1966:
Nattlek/Night Games
. 1967:
Doktor Glas
. 1968:
Flickorna/The Girls
. 1972:
Vincent the Dutchman
(d). 1973: “The Strongest,” episode from
Visions of Eight
(d). 1981:
Love
. 1982:
Scrubbers
. 1986:
Amarosa
.

She was a teenage actress in Sweden, with the Royal Dramatic Theatre, and in films:
Lasse-Maja
(41, Gunnar Olsson);
Jag Drapte
(43, Olof Molander);
Frenzy
(44, Alf Sjöberg);
Prins Gustaf
(44, Schamyl Bauman); and
Iris och Lojtnantshjarta
(46, Sjöberg). In 1946, she went to Britain and the Rank empire, as it proved, never to be more than an exotic decoration:
Frieda
(47, Basil Dearden);
The Bad Lord Byron
(48, David MacDonald); and
Quartet
(48, Ralph Smart).

She worked over the next years in Britain, Sweden, and America, clearly with growing indifference to poor parts and with rising eagerness to direct herself:
Night Is My Future
(47, Ingmar Bergman);
Nu Borjar Livet
(48, Gustaf Molander);
The Lost People
(49, Bernard Knowles);
The Romantic Age
(49, Edmond Greville);
Blackmailed
(51, Marc Allégret);
Desperate Moment
(53, Compton Bennett);
Knock on Wood
(54, Melvin Frank/Norman Panama);
A Prize of Gold
(55, Mark Robson);
Seven Waves Away
(56, coproduced with Tyrone Power, directed by Richard Sale);
Giftas
(57, Anders Henrikson);
The Truth About Women
(58, Muriel Box), an especially trite work that may have preyed on her conscience;
Lek Pa Regnbagen
(58, Lars-Erik Kjellgren);
Jet Storm
(59, Cy Endfield);
Faces in the Dark
(59, David Eady);
Piccadilly Third Stop
(60, Wolf Rilla);
Offbeat
(60, Cliff Owen);
Only Two Can Play
(61, Sidney Gilliat);
The Main Attraction
(62, Daniel Petrie);
The Man Who Finally Died
(62, Quentin Laurence);
The Bay of St. Michel
(63, John Ainsworth); and
Lianbron
(65, Sven Nykvist).