The Dirty Dozen is the nickname for a group of filmmaking students at the USC School of Cinematic Arts within the University of Southern California during the mid-late 1960s. The main group consisted of budding directors, screenwriters, producers, editors, and cinematographers. Through innovative techniques and effects, they ended up achieving great success in the Hollywood film industry.
Also known as the "USC Mafia", the group's name was a reference to the 1967 Robert Aldrich-directed war film The Dirty Dozen . [1]
George Walton Lucas Jr. is an American filmmaker and philanthropist. He created the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises and founded Lucasfilm, LucasArts, Industrial Light & Magic and THX. He served as chairman of Lucasfilm before selling it to The Walt Disney Company in 2012. Nominated for four Academy Awards, he is considered to be one of the most significant figures of the 20th-century New Hollywood movement, and a pioneer of the modern blockbuster. Despite this, he has remained an independent filmmaker away from Hollywood for most of his career.
THX 1138 is a 1971 American social science fiction film co-written and directed by George Lucas in his directorial debut. Produced by Francis Ford Coppola and co-written by Walter Murch, the film stars Robert Duvall and Donald Pleasence, with Don Pedro Colley, Maggie McOmie, and Ian Wolfe in supporting roles. The film is set in a dystopian future in which the citizens are controlled by android police and mandatory use of drugs that suppress emotions.
American Graffiti is a 1973 American coming-of-age comedy-drama film directed by George Lucas, produced by Francis Ford Coppola, written by Willard Huyck, Gloria Katz and Lucas, and starring Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Paul Le Mat, Charles Martin Smith, Candy Clark, Mackenzie Phillips, Cindy Williams and Wolfman Jack. Harrison Ford and Bo Hopkins also appear. Set in Modesto, California, in 1962, the film is a study of the cruising and early rock 'n' roll cultures popular among Lucas's age group at that time. Through a series of vignettes, it tells the story of a group of teenagers and their adventures throughout a single night.
John Frederick Milius is an American screenwriter and film director. He was a writer for the first two Dirty Harry films, received an Academy Award nomination as screenwriter of Apocalypse Now (1979), and wrote and directed The Wind and the Lion (1975), Conan the Barbarian (1982), and Red Dawn (1984). He later served as the co-creator of the Primetime Emmy Award-winning television series Rome (2005–2007).
The University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts (SCA) houses seven academic divisions: Film & Television Production; Cinema & Media Studies; John C. Hench Division of Animation + Digital Arts; John Wells Division of Writing for Screen & Television; Interactive Media & Games; Media Arts + Practice; Peter Stark Producing Program.
Walter Scott Murch is an American film editor, director, writer and sound designer. His work includes THX 1138, Apocalypse Now, The Godfather I, II, and III, American Graffiti, The Conversation, Ghost and The English Patient, with three Academy Award wins.
21-87 is a 1963 Canadian abstract montage-collage film created by Arthur Lipsett that lasts 9 minutes and 33 seconds. The short, produced by the National Film Board of Canada, is a collage of snippets from discarded footage found by Lipsett in the editing room of the National Film Board, combined with his own black and white 16 mm footage which he shot on the streets of Montreal and New York City, among other locations.
Daniel Thomas O'Bannon was an American film screenwriter, director and visual effects supervisor, most closely associated in the science fiction and horror genres.
Gary Douglas Kurtz was an American film producer whose list of credits includes American Graffiti (1973), Star Wars (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), The Dark Crystal (1982) and Return to Oz (1985). Kurtz also co-produced the 1989 science fiction adventure film Slipstream, which reunited him with Star Wars star Mark Hamill.
Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB is a 1967 social science-fiction short film written and directed by George Lucas while he attended the University of Southern California's film school. Lucas reworked the short into the 1971 theatrical feature THX 1138.
Verna Fields was an American film editor, film and television sound editor, educator, and entertainment industry executive. In the first phase of her career, from 1954 through to about 1970, Fields mostly worked on smaller projects that gained little recognition. She was the sound editor for several television shows in the 1950s. She worked on independent films including The Savage Eye (1959), on government-supported documentaries of the 1960s, and on some minor studio films such as Peter Bogdanovich's first film, Targets (1968). For several years in the late 1960s, she was a film instructor at the University of Southern California. Her one major studio film, El Cid (1961), led to her only industry recognition in this phase of her career, which was the 1962 Golden Reel award for sound editing.
Marcia Lou Lucas is an American film editor. She is best known for her work editing the Star Wars trilogy (1977–1983) as well as other films by her then-husband George Lucas: THX-1138 (1971) and American Graffiti (1973). She also edited Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), Taxi Driver (1976), and New York, New York (1977).
Look at Life is a 1965 one-minute short student film by George Lucas, produced for a course in animation while Lucas was a film student at USC Film School. The film's running time of exactly one minute was required by the course. This was the first film made by George Lucas, and was heavily influenced by Canadian filmmaker Arthur Lipsett.
Willard Miller Huyck, Jr. is an American retired screenwriter, director and producer, best known for his association with George Lucas.
Gloria Katz was an American screenwriter and film producer, best known for her association with George Lucas. Along with her husband Willard Huyck, Katz's credited screenplays include American Graffiti, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Howard the Duck. Katz was Jewish.
Apocalypse Now is a 1979 American epic war film produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The screenplay, co-written by Coppola, John Milius, and Michael Herr, is loosely inspired by the 1899 novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, with the setting changed from late 19th-century Congo to the Vietnam War. The film follows a river journey from South Vietnam into Cambodia undertaken by Captain Willard, who is on a secret mission to assassinate Colonel Kurtz, a renegade Special Forces officer who is accused of murder and presumed insane. The ensemble cast also features Robert Duvall, Frederic Forrest, Albert Hall, Sam Bottoms, Laurence Fishburne, Dennis Hopper, and Harrison Ford.
Matthew Robbins is an American screenwriter and film director best known for his writing work within the American New Wave movement.
David Randall Thom is an American sound designer and the current director of sound design at Skywalker Sound.
The Devil's 8 is a 1969 film directed by Burt Topper and starring Christopher George, Fabian, Tom Nardini and Leslie Parrish. It was produced and distributed by American International Pictures.
Milius is a 2013 documentary film about the writer, producer, director John Milius, directed by Joey Figueroa and Zak Knutson.