Jack Hill | |
|---|---|
 Hill in the editing room during production of Pit Stop in 1968 | |
| Born | January 28, 1933 Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | UCLA |
| Occupation | Film director |
| Years active | 1960–82 |
| Notable work | The Big Bird Cage (1972) Coffy (1973) Foxy Brown (1974) |
Jack Hill (born January 28, 1933) is an American film director in the exploitation film genre. Several of Hill's later films have been characterized as feminist works. [1] [2]
Hill was born January 28, 1933, in Los Angeles, California. [3] [4] His mother, Mildred (née Pannill, b. February 1, 1907; death date n.a.), [5] was a music teacher. [6] His father, Roland Everett Hill (February 5, 1895 – November 10, 1986), [7] worked as a set designer and art director for First National Pictures and Warner Bros. [6] on films including The Jazz Singer , Captain Blood , Action in the North Atlantic , and Captain Horatio Hornblower , and as well was an architect who designed the centerpiece Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland in California. [8]
Hill attended UCLA, which he attended, he said, for "a couple of years" before leaving to get married and then returning to earn a degree in music. [9] While a student, he played in a symphony orchestra that performed for the soundtracks of Doctor Zhivago and The Brothers Karamazov , and he arranged music for burlesque performers; through this he met comedian Lenny Bruce, whose daughter Kitty Bruce would act in Hill's 1975 film Switchblade Sisters . [9] He went on to postgraduate studies at UCLA Film School, where instructor and former movie director Dorothy Arzner encouraged Hill and his classmate and friend Francis Ford Coppola. Hill worked as a cameraman, a sound recorder (including on Coppola's student short Ayamonn the Terrible), and an editor on student films. [9] His short The Host starred Sid Haig, an acting student at the Pasadena Playhouse under teacher Arzner, who introduced them; [9] this marked the first of several films together.
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Hill went on to work with Coppola on several of Coppola's early movies, including producer Roger Corman's 1963 movie The Terror . [10] He added 20 minutes to 1960's Wasp Woman for its eventual television syndication release, shooting without access to any original cast-member. [10]
Quentin Tarantino's company Rolling Thunder Pictures re-released Switchblade Sisters theatrically in 1996. [10] In the introduction to the film's DVD release, Tarantino calls Hill " “the Howard Hawks of exploitation filmmaking”. [11]
Hill's discoveries include Pam Grier, who starred in four of his films from The Big Doll House through Foxy Brown ; Sid Haig, who acts in most of Hill's films, beginning with Spider Baby ; and Ellen Burstyn, who starred in Pit Stop .
His student film The Host was a partial influence on former classmate Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now . [3] [10] Hill recalled in a 2000s interview that when he made The Host,
I had been reading James Frazer ... and I had enjoyed his best-known book, The Golden Bough ; in fact, my writing teacher said of 'The Host', “This is the story that Frazer forgot to tell.” It was influenced by his writing and if you see Apocalypse Now and look at the very last act of the movie, the camera explores Kurtz’s hideaway and you see a stack of books on his shelf. Very prominently featured there is The Golden Bough. When I saw the movie, my jaw dropped because Francis knew very well that my story was adapted from that. ... The third act [of Apocalypse Now] didn’t work but that was mine—that was my story [laughs]. ... John Milius wrote the script and Francis thought it was great but he did not like the ending. In fact, he didn’t come up with the right ending until he was over in the Philippines shooting it. So he knew my student film very well and I got this straight from Steve Burum, who ... was my cameraman on The Host and he was the second unit cameraman on Apocalypse Now and he said, 'We were all laughing and saying that we were doing Jack Hill’s student film.' [12]
Film scholar Wheeler Winston Dixon believed that for Hill and fellow low-budget auteur Monte Hellman, film was primarily a means of personal expression while remaining a "deeply financially dependent medium". Dixon wrote that Hill and Hellman's movies often were sufficiently successful while remaining true to their personal vision. [13]
The moving image collection of Jack Hill is held at the Academy Film Archive. [14] The Academy Film Archive preserved Spider Baby in 2013. [15]
Film crew
As director
Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is considered one of the leading figures of the New Hollywood film movement of the 1960s and 1970s and is widely considered one of the great directors of all time. Coppola is the recipient of five Academy Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, two Palmes d'Or and a British Academy Film Award (BAFTA).
Jack Wagner was an American Academy Award nominee screenwriter and cinematographer mostly during the silent era of motion pictures.
John Frederick Milius is an American screenwriter, film director, and producer. 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).
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Theodore Scott Glenn is an American actor. His roles have included Pfc Glenn Kelly in Nashville (1975), Wes Hightower in Urban Cowboy (1980), astronaut Alan Shepard in The Right Stuff (1983), Emmett in Silverado (1985), Captain Bart Mancuso in The Hunt for Red October (1990), Jack Crawford in The Silence of the Lambs (1991), John Adcox in Backdraft (1991), Bill Burton in Absolute Power (1997), Roger in Training Day (2001), Ezra Kramer in The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), Kevin Garvey Sr. in The Leftovers (2014–2017), and as Stick in both Daredevil (2015–2016) and The Defenders (2017).
Foxy Brown is a 1974 American blaxploitation film written and directed by Jack Hill. It stars Pam Grier as the title character who takes on a gang of drug dealers who murdered her boyfriend. The film was released by American International Pictures as a double feature with Truck Turner. The film uses Afrocentric references in clothing and hair. Grier starred in six blaxploitation films for American International Pictures.
Dorothy Emma Arzner was an American film director whose career in Hollywood spanned from the silent era of the 1920s into the early 1940s. With the exception of longtime silent film director Lois Weber, from 1927 until her retirement from feature directing in 1943, Arzner was the only female director working in Hollywood. She was one of a very few women able to establish a successful and long career in Hollywood as a film director until the 1970s. Arzner made a total of twenty films between 1927 and 1943 and launched the careers of a number of Hollywood actresses, including Katharine Hepburn, Rosalind Russell, and Lucille Ball. Arzner was the first woman to join the Directors Guild of America and the first woman to direct a sound film.
Coffy is a 1973 American blaxploitation film written and directed by Jack Hill. The story is about a black female vigilante played by Pam Grier who seeks violent revenge against a heroin dealer responsible for her sister's addiction.
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The Terror is a 1963 American independent horror film produced and directed by Roger Corman. The film stars Boris Karloff and Jack Nicholson, the latter of whom portrays a French officer who is seduced by a woman who is also a shapeshifting devil.
Chris LaMont is a screenwriter, independent filmmaker, and film professor, who co-founded the Phoenix Film Festival in 2000. He has written and co-written several feature films, including The Inheritance ', The Locksmith, The Au Pair Nightmare, and Hard Kill. He has also produced and directed several independent films, including Film Club, My Apocalypse, Netherbeast Incorporated, The Graves, Justice Served and Postmarked.
The Great Gatsby is a 1974 American romantic drama film based on the 1925 novel of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The film was directed by Jack Clayton, produced by David Merrick, and written by Francis Ford Coppola. It stars Robert Redford, Mia Farrow, Sam Waterston, Bruce Dern, and Karen Black. The plot concerns the interactions of writer Nick Carraway with enigmatic millionaire Jay Gatsby (Redford) and Gatsby's obsession to reunite with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan (Farrow), amid the riotous parties of the Jazz Age on Long Island near New York City.
Switchblade Sisters is a 1975 American exploitation action film detailing the lives of high school-aged female gang members. It was directed by Jack Hill and stars Joanne Nail, Robbie Lee and Monica Gayle. The film is also known as The Jezebels, Maggie's Stiletto Sisters and The Warriors II: Las Navajeras.
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 based on 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 and Dennis Hopper.
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{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)My father Roland Hill went to work as a set designer for First National Studios [sic] around 1925 and stayed on when it became Warner Bros. He later became an art director there, specializing in period architecture and ships. ...My mother is now 94 years old and has about 50 students on violin and piano.
The proposed Roland E. Hill House historic monument was designed by its original owner, architect Roland E. Hill ... [who] worked as a set designer and art director for the film industry.... Hill also designed attractions for Disneyland in Anaheim, CA, designing the iconic Sleeping Beauty Castle, the centerpiece of the theme park.
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