Robert Zemeckis

Robert Zemeckis
Robert Zemeckis
	Zemeckis in 2015
Born	Robert Lee Zemeckis ; May 14, 1952 (age 72); Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Other names	Bob Zemeckis
Alma mater	University of Southern California (BFA)
Occupations	Film director; producer; screenwriter;
Years active	1972–present
Political party	Democratic
Spouses	Mary Ellen Trainor (m. 1980; div. 2000) ; Leslie Harter (m. 2001) ;
Children	4
Awards	Accolades

Robert Lee Zemeckis (born May 14, 1952)^[3] is an American filmmaker. He first came to public attention as the director of the action-adventure romantic comedy Romancing the Stone (1984), the science-fiction comedy Back to the Future trilogy (1985–1990), and the live-action/animated comedy Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). He subsequently directed the satirical black comedy Death Becomes Her (1992) and then diversified into more dramatic fare, including the Best Picture winning film, Forrest Gump (1994),^[4] for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director.

Zemeckis is regarded as an innovator in visual effects.^[5]^[6] His exploration of state-of-the-art special effects includes the early use of computer graphics inserted into live-action footage in Back to the Future Part II (1989) and Forrest Gump, the insertion of hand-drawn animation into live-action footage in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and the performance capture techniques seen in The Polar Express (2004), Beowulf (2007), A Christmas Carol (2009), and Welcome to Marwen (2018). He is known for his collaboration with composer Alan Silvestri, with whom he has worked since Romancing the Stone. David Thomson, a prominent film critic, wrote that "no other contemporary director has used special effects to more dramatic and narrative purpose."^[7]

Early life

Robert Lee Zemeckis was born on May 14, 1952, in Chicago,^[7] the son of Rosa (née Nespeca)^[8] and Alphonse Zemeckis.^[9] His father was Lithuanian-American while his mother was Italian-American.^[8]

Zemeckis grew up on the South Side of the city.^[10] He attended a Catholic grade school and Fenger Academy High School.^[11] Zemeckis has said "the truth was that in my family there was no art. I mean, there was no music, there were no books, there was no theater ... The only thing I had that was inspirational, was television—and it actually was."^[11]

As a child, he loved television and was fascinated by his parents' 8 mm film home movie camera. Starting off by filming family events like birthdays and holidays, he gradually began producing narrative films with his friends that incorporated stop-motion work and other special effects. Along with enjoying movies, Zemeckis remained an avid TV viewer. "You hear so much about the problems with television," he said, "but I think that it saved my life." Television gave Zemeckis his first glimpse of a world outside of his blue-collar upbringing;^[11] specifically, he learned of the existence of film schools on an episode of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.

After seeing Bonnie and Clyde with his father,^[12] Zemeckis decided that he wanted to go to film school. His parents disapproved of the idea, Zemeckis later said, "But only in the sense that they were concerned ... for my family and my friends and the world that I grew up in, this was the kind of dream that really was impossible. My parents would sit there and say, 'Don't you see where you come from? You can't be a movie director.' I guess maybe some of it I felt I had to do in spite of them, too."^[11]

Career

Education and early films (1969–1979)

Zemeckis first attended Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois, and gained early experience in film as a film cutter for NBC News in Chicago during a summer break.^[13] He also edited commercials in his home state.^[14] Zemeckis applied to transfer from NIU to the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts in Los Angeles, California, and went into the Film School on the strength of an essay and a music video based on a Beatles song. Not having heard from the university itself, Zemeckis called and was told he had been rejected because of his average grades. He gave an "impassioned plea" to the official on the other line, promising to go to summer school and improve his studies, and eventually convinced the school to accept him.

Arriving at USC that fall, Zemeckis encountered a program that was, in his words, made up of "a bunch of hippies [and] considered an embarrassment by the university". The classes were difficult, with professors constantly stressing how hard the movie business was. Zemeckis remembered not being much fazed by this, citing the "healthy cynicism" that had been bred into him from his Chicago upbringing.^[11]

At USC Zemeckis met a fellow student, writer Bob Gale. Gale later recalled, "The graduate students at USC had this veneer of intellectualism ... So Bob and I gravitated toward one another because we wanted to make Hollywood movies. We weren't interested in the French New Wave. We were interested in Clint Eastwood and James Bond and Walt Disney, because that's how we grew up."^[15] Zemeckis graduated from USC in 1973,^[16] and he and Gale cowrote the unproduced screenplays Tank and Bordello of Blood, which they pitched to John Milius, the latter of which was later developed into a film which was released in 1996.^[17]^[18]^[19]

As a result of winning a Student Academy Award at USC for his film A Field of Honor,^[20] Zemeckis came to the attention of Steven Spielberg. Spielberg said, "He barged right past my secretary and sat me down and showed me this student film ... and I thought it was spectacular, with police cars and a riot, all dubbed to Elmer Bernstein's score for The Great Escape."^[15] Spielberg became Zemeckis's mentor and executive produced his first two films, both of which Gale and Zemeckis co-wrote.

Spielberg produced I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978, starring Nancy Allen) and Used Cars (1980, starring Kurt Russell); both were critical, but not commercial, successes. I Wanna Hold Your Hand was the first of several Zemeckis films to incorporate historic figures and celebrities into his movies; he used archival footage and doubles to simulate the presence of the Beatles. After the failure of his first two films, and the Spielberg-directed 1941 (1979) (written by Gale and Zemeckis), the pair gained a reputation for writing "scripts that everyone thought were great [but] somehow didn't translate into movies people wanted to see."^[15]

Breakthrough and Forrest Gump (1980–1997)

As a result of his reputation within the industry, Zemeckis had trouble finding work in the early 1980s, though he and Gale kept busy. They wrote scripts for other directors, including Car Pool for Brian De Palma and Growing Up for Spielberg; neither ended up getting made. Another Zemeckis-Gale project, Back to the Future, about a teenager who accidentally travels back in time to the 1950s, was turned down by every major studio.^[21] The director was jobless until Michael Douglas hired him in 1984 to direct Romancing the Stone. A romantic adventure starring Douglas and Kathleen Turner, Stone was expected to flop (to the point that, after viewing a rough cut of the film, the producers of the then-in-the-works Cocoon fired Zemeckis as director),^[21] but the film became a sleeper hit. While working on Romancing the Stone, Zemeckis met composer Alan Silvestri, who has scored all his subsequent pictures.

Overseeing the filming of Contact (1997)

After Romancing the Stone, Zemeckis had the clout to direct his time-traveling screenplay. Starring Michael J. Fox, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover, and Christopher Lloyd, the 1985 film was wildly successful upon its release and was followed by two sequels, released as Back to the Future Part II in 1989 and Back to the Future Part III in 1990. Before the Back to the Future sequels were released, Zemeckis collaborated with Disney and directed another film, the madcap 1940s-set mystery Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which combined traditional animation and live-action; its $70 million budget made it one of the most expensive films made up to that point. The film was both a financial and critical success and won three Academy Awards. In 1990, Zemeckis commented, when asked if he would want to make non-comedies, "I would like to be able to do everything. Just now, though, I'm too restless to do anything that's not really zany."^[21]

In 1992, Zemeckis directed the black comedy Death Becomes Her, starring Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, and Bruce Willis. Although his next film would have some comedic elements, it was Zemeckis's first with dramatic elements and was also his biggest commercial success to date, Forrest Gump. Starring Tom Hanks in the title role, Forrest Gump tells the story of a man with a low I.Q., who unwittingly participates in some of the major events of the twentieth century, falls in love, and interacts with several major historical figures in the process. The film grossed $677 million worldwide and became the top-grossing US film of 1994; it won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor (for Hanks) and Best Director (for Zemeckis). From this point, Hanks and Zemeckis became frequent collaborators.^[22]^[23] In 1997, Zemeckis directed Contact, a long-gestating project based on Carl Sagan's 1985 novel of the same name. The film centers on Eleanor Arroway (Jodie Foster), who believes she has made contact with extraterrestrials. In the early 1990s, he founded South Side Amusement Company, which later became ImageMovers.^[24]