Born in 1936, writer-director PHILIP KAUFMAN (Director) grew Lip on the north side of Chicago and graduated from the University of Chicago. After a year at Harvard Law School, he returned to the University of Chicago to begin a master’s degree program in history.
In 1960, he relocated his family to the San Francisco Bay area. Kaufman found himself enthralled by the new wave of filmmaking and filmmakers breaking over the continent, and soon after, the family headed for Europe.
Returning to Chicago in 1962, Kaufman met Anais Nm at the University of Chicago. He spent the day with her, telling her the scenario of a film he was contemplating, and Nm encouraged him to become a filmmaker. He took her advice. In 1963, he turned an unfinished novel he was working on into his first film, the mystical comedy “Goldstein.” Starring members of the Second City comedy troupe and shot on a shoestring budget, the picture won the Prix de la Nouvelle Critique at the 1964 Cannes Film Festival. In 1965, Kaufman wrote and directed “Fearless Frank,” a comic book satire starring Jon Voight in his film debut. Two years later, Kaufman was in Hollywood, under contract to Universal.
There he wrote and directed “The Great Northfield. Minnesota Raid,” starring Robert Duvall and Cliff Robertson, in 1971. He then directed “The White Dawn” (Paramount) in 1973. Moving back to San Francisco with his family, Kaufman developed the original story for “Raiders of the Lost Ark” with George Lucas and wrote the screenplay for Clint Eastwood’s “The Outlaw Josey Wales.”
In 1977, Kaufman directed “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” an update of the Don Siegel classic, winning various science fiction awards. In 1979, after his son Peter found Richard Price’s comic gang novel The Wanderers, Kaufman and his wife Rose wrote a screenplay based on the book, which Kaufman directed.
In 1983, Kaufman directed “The Right Stuff,” with his adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s bestseller. For this epic, Kaufman earned Writers Guild and Directors Guild Award nominations and won the British Academy Award and the Critics Circle Award for Best Screenplay, 1984. The film was nominated for a total of eight Academy Awards® including Best Picture, and won four Oscars®.
His next film. “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” starred Daniel Day-Lewis, Lena Olin and Juliette Binoche. His adaptation of Czech writer Milan Kundera’s novel earned Kaufman another Writers Guild nomination, an Academy Award® nomination and a British Academy Award in 1988. The film also won two National Society of Film Critics Awards for Best Picture and Best Director. Kaufman also received the international Orson Welles Award for Best Filmmaker in 1989.
In 1990, Kaufman made “Henry & June,” an adaptation of Anais Nin’s memoir of Henry Miller and his wife June. The film, which starred Fred Ward, Uma Thurman and Maria de Medeiros, was written by Philip and Rose Kaufman, produced by Peter Kaufman and received an Academy Award® nomination.
Kaufman next directed “Rising Sun” in 1993, starring Sean Connery, Wesley Snipes, Harvey Keitel and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa. Kaufman co-wrote the screenplay based on the bestseller by Michael Crichton.
In 2000, Kaufman shot “Quills,” based on Doug Wright’s Obie Award-winning play about the Marquis de Sade during his imprisonment in the Charenton Asylum for the Insane. Shot in London, “Quills” starred Geoffrey Rush, Kate Winslet, Michael Caine and Joaquin Phoenix. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards® and the National Board of Review declared it the Best Picture of 2000. The London Film Critics Circle nominated Kaufman for Best Director.
Kaufman has been honored with retrospectives at the Sundance Film Festival, the Cambridge, England Film Festival, the Mill Valley Film Festival, the Wine Country Film Festival and the Taos Talking Picture Festival, where he received the Howard Hawks Storyteller Award. In 2000, Kaufman was honored with a major tribute and retrospective at the American Film Institute, as well as at the Institut Lumiere in France, the Philadelphia Weekend Film Festival and the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University. In the spring of 2002, Columbia University offered a new course taught by Professor Annette Insdorf, “Auteur Study: Philip Kaufman.” Kaufman was recently made ‘Honorary Scholar’ at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York and the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles will have a retrospective tribute in April 2004.
Movie Database
In Theaters
(51 votes)
(153 votes)
(71 votes)
(26 votes)
(143 votes)