Robert Zemeckis

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Robert Lee Zemeckis (born May 14, 1952) is an American filmmaker, film designer, and screenwriter who is often credited as an innovator in visual effects.

He first came to public attention in the 1980s as the director of Romancing the Stone (1984) and the science-fiction film Back to the Future trilogy, as well as the live-action/animated comedy Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988).

He directed Death Becomes Her in the 1990s and then morphed into more dramatic fare, including 1994's Forrest Gump, which received an Academy Award for Best Director; the film itself received Best Picture.

He has produced films for both adults and families. Zemeckis' films are characterized by an early interest in state-of-the-art special effects, including the inclusion of computer graphics in a live-action video in Back to the Future Part II (1989) and Forrest Gump (2005), A Christmas Carol (2009), and Welcome to Marwen (2018).

Despite the fact that Zemeckis has often been dismissed as a director interested only in special effects, several commentators, including David Thomson, have praised his work, including David Thomson, who said that "No other contemporary filmmaker has used special effects to make life more exciting and narrative function."

Early life

Robert Lee Zemeckis was born in Chicago on May 14, 1952, the son of Rosa (née Nespeca) and Alphonse Zemeckis. Although his mother was Italian-American, his father was Lithuanian-American while his mother was Italian-American. Zemeckis grew up on the city's south side. He attended a Catholic grade school and Fenger Academy High School. "The truth was that there was no art in my family," Zemeckis said. I'm referring to the fact that there was no music, no books, and there was no theater... TV was the only thing that made me happy, and it was actually true.

He loved television as a child and was fascinated by his parents' 8-mm film home movie camera. He began making family films with his friends that contained stop-motion animation and other special effects, starting with family events like birthdays and holidays. Zemeckis stayed an avid TV watcher, as well as enjoying films. "You hear so much about television's pitfalls, but I think it saved my life," he said. Zemeckis' first glimpse of a world outside of his blue-collar upbringing, particularly when he learned of film schools on an episode of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Zemeckis wanted to attend film school after seeing Bonnie and Clyde with his father and being heavily influenced by it. Zemeckis later expressed dissatisfaction with the theory, "but only in the sense that they were worried about my family and my relatives, as well as the world in which I grew up," he said. "Don't you see where you came from?" my parents would sit and say. You can't be a movie producer.' I suspect some of it was forced to do despite of them."

Personal life

Zemeckis has said that he sacrificed his personal life in favour of a career for a long time. "I received an Academy Award when I was 44 years old," he explained, "but I paid for it with my 20s." Nothing but hard work in the decade of my life from film school to 30 was anything but passion. I had no money to spend. "I had no life" before I died. Zemeckis married actress Mary Ellen Trainor, with whom he had a son, Alexander Francis, in the early 1980s. He described his marriage as being difficult to strike with filmmaking, and his friendship with Trainor eventually ended in divorce. He married Leslie Harter, an actor with three children, on December 4, 2001.

Zemeckis, a private pilot who has flown 1,600 hours as of October 2012, is a private pilot with a total of 1,600 hours. He flies a Cirrus SR20, which is known for its parachute system that can lower the plane to the ground in the event of an emergency.

Zemeckis has regularly contributed to political candidates associated with the Democratic Party, as well as PACs that promote aircraft owners and pilots, family planning groups, and a organization that advocates for Hollywood women, according to campaign donations.

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Career

Zemeckis started attending 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. In his native state, he also edited shops. Zemeckis applied to transfer from NIU to University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts in Los Angeles, California, and then moved to the Film School, where he gained a reputation for an essay and a music video based on a Beatles song. Zemeckis called and was told he had been turned down due to his average grades, rather than learning from the university itself. He gave the official on the other line a "impassioned plea," promising to go back to summer school and expand his knowledge, and eventually persuaded the school to accept him. Zemeckis' arrival to USC this fall was part of a program that was, "a slew of hippies [and] was deemed an embarrassment by the university." The classes were struggish, with professors constantly harrassed how difficult the film business was. Zemeckis expressed surprise at not being bothered by this, citing the "healthy cynicism" that had been ingrained in him from his Chicago upbringing.

Bob Gale, a fellow student and writer at USC, met Zemeckis at USC. "The graduate students at USC had this veneer of intellectualism," Gale said later. "Bob and I moved toward one another because we wanted to make Hollywood movies." We weren't involved in the French New Wave. We were interested in Clint Eastwood and James Bond and Walt Disney because this is how we grew up." Zemeckis graduated from USC in 1973 and he and Gale co-wrote the unproduced screenplays Tank and Bordello of Blood, which were later turned into a film that was released in 1996.

Zemeckis was spotted by Steven Spielberg after winning a Student Academy Award in the United StatesC for his film A Field of Honor. "He barged right past my secretary and sat me down and showed me this student film," Spielberg said, "with police cars and a riot," all dubbed to Elmer Bernstein's score for The Great Escape." Spielberg's mentor and executive produced his first two films, both of which Gale and Zemeckis co-wrote.

I Want Your Hand (1978), starring Nancy Allen, and Used Cars (1980), starring Kurt Russell, were well-received, but commercial failures were not welcome. I Want a Hold Your Hand was the first of many Zemeckis films to incorporate historical figures and celebrities into his films. He used archival footage and doubles to simulate The Beatles' presence in the film. Following the failure of his first two films and the production of a Spielberg-directed bomb 1941 in 1979, the pair earned a reputation for writing "scripts" that "never translated into movies that people wanted to see."

Zemeckis had a difficult time seeking jobs in the early 1980s due to his reputation in the industry, although Gale and Zemeckis kept busy. They wrote scripts for other writers, including Car Pool for Brian De Palma and Growing Up for Spielberg; neither of which came to be realized. Every major studio rejected Another Zemeckis-Gale project, Back to the Future, about a teenager who mistakenly travels back in time to the 1950s. Before Michael Douglas was hired in 1984 to direct Romancing the Stones, he was jobless. Romancing, a romantic drama starring Douglas and Kathleen Turner, was supposed to fail (to the extent that the film's designers, who had a rough cut of it, fired Zemeckis as director), but the film became a sleeper hit. Zemeckis met composer Alan Silvestri, who has scored all of his subsequent photos, while filming Romancing the Stone.

Zemeckis had the opportunity to direct his time-traveling filmplay after Romancing. Michael J. is the star of Michael J.'s film. On its debut, Fox, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover, and Christopher Lloyd was hugely popular, and two sequels, Back to the Future Part II in 1989 and Back to the Future Part III in 1990, followed. Zemeckis collaborated with Disney and produced another film, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," which combined traditional animation and live-action; the $70 million budget made it one of the most expensive films made up to that point. The film was both a financial and artistic success, and it was also recognized with three Academy Awards. "I would like to do everything" if he wanted to make non-comedies, Zemeckis said in 1990. However, I'm still too drained to do anything that isn't particularly zany."

Zemeckis produced Death Becomes Her, starring Meryl Steffie, Goldie Hawn, and Bruce Willis in 1992. Despite the fact that his next film will feature comedic elements, Zemeckis' first with dramatic elements and his first commercial success to date, Forrest Gump. Forrest Gump, starring Tom Hanks, shares the story of a man with a low I.Q., who unintentionally participates in some of the twentieth century's biggest events, falls in love, and consults with a number of key historical figures. The film earned six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor (for Hanks), and Best Director (for Zemeckis). Hanks would continue to appear in Zemeckis films from this point, and they've since been recognized as frequent collaborators. Zemeckis, a long-serving project based on Carl Sagan's 1985 novel of the same name, directed Contact, a long-running project. Eleanor Arroway, a scientist played by Jodie Foster, claims she has come into contact with extraterrestrial beings. He founded South Side Amusement Company, which later became ImageMovers in the early 1990s.

Zemeckis, an executive producer of HBO's "Tales from the Crypt" (1989-1996), produced three episodes of the film during the same time period.

Zemeckis' Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts in Washington, a 35,000-square-foot (3,300 m2) center, in 1999. Zemeckis appeared in a panel discussion about film's future, as the center opened in March 2001, alongside colleagues Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. "These guys are the same ones who've been saying that LPs sound better than CDs, including Spielberg) who stuck to celluloid and ridiculed the prospect of shooting digitally," Zemeckis said. You should argue that until you're blue in the face, but I don't know anyone who's still buys vinyl. The film, as we've all seen it, is going to be different. However, a man's desire to tell tales around the campfire is the continuum. The campfire is the only thing that keeps changing. The Robert Zemeckis Center for Performing Arts & Humanities, a component of the Interactive Media Division, and Trojan Vision, the nation's top college television station, are among the center's top college television station.

Zemeckis had begun constructing The Castaway with Tom Hanks and writer William Broyles Jr. in 1996. The tale, which was inspired by Robinson Crusoe, is about a man who becomes trapped on a desert island and undergoes a dramatic physical and spiritual transformation. Zemeckis was also attached to a Hitchcockian thriller titled What Lies Beneath, the story of a married couple's encountering an unusual case of empty nest syndrome based on an idea developed by Steven Spielberg. Because Hanks' character was to suffer such weight loss over the course of The Castaway (renamed Cast Away for release), Zemeckis decided that the only way to keep the crew while Hanks lost the weight was to shoot What Lies Beneath in between. He shot What Lies Beneath in fall 1999, finishing work on Cast Away in early 2000. When asked about shooting two films back-to-back, Zemeckis replied, "I wouldn't recommend it to anyone." What Lies Beneath, starring Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer, was released in July 2000 to mixed reviews, but it did well at the box office, grossing over $155 million domestically. Cast Away was released in December and earned $233 million in the United States; Hanks was nominated for Best Actor for his portrayal of Chuck Noland.

Zemeckis reteamed with Hanks in 2004 and produced The Polar Express, based on the children's book of the same name written by Chris Van Allsburg. The Polar Express used performance capture, whereby the actor's movements were digitally captured and used as the basis for the animated characters. The Polar Express was the first major film to use performance capture, prompting The New York Times to write, "Whatever critics and viewers make of this film, it might be a turning point in the gradual transition from an analog to a digital cinema."

Zemeckis and Walt Disney Studios chairman Dick Cook revealed plans in February 2007 for a new performance capture film company dedicated to CG-created, 3-D movies. ImageMovers Digital produced films using the performance capture software, with Zemeckis directing the majority of the Disney-owned and sold worldwide. Zemeckis retells the Anglo-Saxon epic poem of the same name in his film Beowulf. Ray Winstone, Angelina Jolie, and Anthony Hopkins appeared in the film. The film was directed by Neil Gaiman, who co-wrote it with Roger Avary, and it was described as a "cheerfully violent and strange spin on the Beowulf legend." The film was released on November 16, 2007, to mostly positive feedback and worldwide, grossing $196 million.

Zemeckis had written a screenplay for A Christmas Carol, based on Charles Dickens' 1843 short story of the same name, with plans to use performance capture and release it under ImageMovers Digital's umbrella. Zemeckis wrote the script with Jim Cary as a young, middle-aged, and old man, as well as the three ghosts that haunted Scrooge. The film debuted in February 2008 and was released on November 6, 2009 to mixed reviews and a total of $325 million at the box office. Gary Oldman, an actor, appeared in the film as well. Zemeckis, a lifelong fan of 3-D digital cinema, has said that all of his forthcoming films would be produced in 3-D using digital motion capture since Beowulf's 3-D projections. He has reportedly backed off from his statement and announced that the decision to use 3-D will be made on a film-by-film basis.

Zemeckis and his company were reportedly in talks with Apple Corps Ltd to reimagine the animated film Yellow Submarine in 3-D once more, using performance capture, according to the release on August 19, 2009. Disney also announced that it was ending its relationship with ImageMovers Digital on March 12, 2010, with Zemeckis' top Disney employee, former chairman Dick Cook, and the new management team's dramatic cost cuts, but that it will not be able to comment on the new management team's drastic cost-cutting. Mars Needs Moms, directed by Zemeckis-produced Zemeckis, was the second-worst box office failure in history, with a net loss of about $130 million. Zemeckis made his return to live action filmmaking with Flight, a 2012 film release starring Denzel Washington.

A stage musical version of Zemeckis' first Back to the Future film, which was released on January 31, 2014, was announced. Original writers Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale will co-write the script. The musical will be "true to the spirit of the film" without being a slave remake, according to Gale.

IGN revealed in an interview with Philippe Petit in August 2008 that Zemeckis was working with Petit to turn Petit's memoir To Reach the Clouds into a film. Philippe Petit (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and his desire to tightrope walk among the World Trade Center's towers were inspired by him in 2015.

Zemeckis will direct Brad Pitt in Allied, a romantic drama set during World War II, according to Zemeckis, a pioneering thriller set during World War II, was released by In February 2015, Zemeckis' 20th Century Fox and 20th Century Fox. On November 23, 2016, the film was released. Next, Zemeckis directed Welcome to Marwen, starring Steve Carell, which was released in December 2018 to mixed reviews and flopped at the box office. On HBO Max, Zemeckis' film The Witches, an adaptation of the Roald Dahl book of the same name, premiered on October 22, 2020.

Zemeckis, according to the company, is currently in talks to direct Disney's live-action Pinocchio version. Zemeckis was officially announced as the film's director and co-writer of the script in January 2020. In addition, Tom Hanks was reportedly cast Mister Geppetto in the film, marking the fourth collaboration with Hanks since Forrest Gump, Cast Away, and The Polar Express.

Zemeckis agreed to direct Here, a Richard McGuire adaptation, with Tom Hanks to star and Forrest Gump screenwriter Eric Roth contributing to the screenplay. Robin Wright had been cast and that Sony Pictures had acquired distribution rights for the United States, with Miramax handling international sales and production in 2022.

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