Howard Kazanjian , livre ebook

A letter from the Producer-DGA Joint Trainee Committee informed student Howard Kazanjian that they d notify him when their assistant director trainee program was open for applications.

Circa 1964, film student Howard Kazanjian directs his 480 project at the University of Southern California, on the Cinema Department s small soundstage. The numerical 400s referred to senior year classes (300 denoted sophomore year, etc). The number 480 referred to a Senior Production Workshop, for which Kazanjian had to make two short films.
This book, my memoirs, was written not for the ego of it, but as a statement to young potential filmmakers and others about the challenges of our industry, both good and bad.
- Howard Kazanjian
Table of Contents
Foreword by Marcia Lucas
Prologue
C HAPTER 1: The Filmmaker s Apprentice
U NIVERSITY OF S OUTHERN C ALIFORNIA
TV SHOWS AT F OUR S TAR T ELEVISION
T HE C OOL O NES
C HAPTER 2: Movie Reality
C OOL H AND L UKE
C HAPTER 3: Kingdoms Gone
C AMELOT
C HAPTER 4: Once Upon a Lullaby
F INIAN S R AINBOW
I L OVE Y OU , A LICE B. T OKLAS!
E ASY R IDER
C HAPTER 5: Ode to a Western
T HE W ILD B UNCH
C HAPTER 6: Vagabond Celluloid
T HE G REAT B ANK R OBBERY
T HE A RRANGEMENT
TV MOVIES AT D ISNEY
T HE C HRISTINE J ORGENSEN S TORY
T HE F IFTH OF J ULY ( UNPRODUCED )
D ECISIONS ! D ECISIONS !
N OW Y OU S EE H IM , N OW Y OU D ON T
TV MOVIES AT U NIVERSAL
T HE S UGARLAND E XPRESS
T HE G IRL F ROM P ETROVKA
C HAPTER 7: Man Friday
T HE H INDENBURG
T HE F RONT P AGE
C HAPTER 8: Heart of the Master
F AMILY P LOT
C HAPTER 9: Joining the Rebels
R OLLERCOASTER
M ORE A MERICAN G RAFFITI (I)
C HAPTER 10: American Split
R AIDERS OF THE L OST A RK (I)
T HE E MPIRE S TRIKES B ACK (I)
M ORE A MERICAN G RAFFITI (II)
C HAPTER 11: Out of Indiana
T HE E MPIRE S TRIKES B ACK (II)
R AIDERS OF THE L OST A RK (II)
C HAPTER 12: A Laconic Hero
R AIDERS OF THE L OST A RK (III)
R ETURN OF THE J EDI (I)
C HAPTER 13: Soul of the Jedi
R ETURN OF THE J EDI (II)
C HAPTER 14: Alias: Dirty Harry
R ETURN OF THE J EDI (III)
T HE R OOKIE
C HAPTER 15: Development Hell Heaven
D EMOLITION M AN
JAG, TV PILOT AND SERIES
C HAPTER 16: Reunions
T HE A MATI G IRLS
T HE B RIDGE OF S AN L UIS R EY
D ANGER R ANGERS
M ARK H AMILL S
P OP C ULTURE Q UEST
C HAPTER 17: Saga s End
Who s Who
Howard Kazanjian: Complete Credits
Bibliography
Index of Searchable Terms
Acknowledgments
Foreword
My family didn t come from the music industry, the radio industry, the movie industry, or the TV industry. My uncle was a butcher. Another uncle was a chemist. A third uncle was a machinist. We were blue-collar families, and nobody knew anybody who had anything to do with the entertainment business. I m sure my mother never earned what the other agents in her insurance office earned. She grew up under the glass ceiling.
My relatively short yet interesting career in the film industry was an accident-but, as Obi-Wan Kenobi says, In my experience there s no such thing as luck. I grew up on the movies I saw on TV: Busby Berkeley musicals, World War II adventures, Errol Flynn swashbucklers, and the like. As an adult I worked as an assistant editor for years, on many commercials and later for directors Francis Ford Coppola, Haskell Wexler, and Michael Ritchie; I finally moved up to editor on movies directed by Martin Scorsese . . . and by my ex-husband, George Lucas.
I ve added my voice to my good friend Howard s for his book because Howard is one of the most wonderful people I ve ever met. He and his wife, Carol, are such amazingly pure, decent human beings. No affectations, no pretensions. Just wonderful, heartwarming, family-oriented people, and I love them both a lot. I m also adding my voice to his book because, for more than forty years, I ve stayed in the background, letting George do his thing and tell his stories. I never wanted to come out. I never wanted to do an interview. I never wanted to write a book. I never wanted to do a documentary-because I thought, what will the world think? George Lucas is in the stratosphere, one of the greatest American filmmakers who ever lived, and his ex-wife is going to say she helped, she participated. She s going to sound like sour grapes. What could I say that people wouldn t interpret as the words of some bitter ex-wife?
So I stayed out of it. I was happy raising my daughters. Even when George and I were married, I never really went on the set that much. George used to like me to come to the set and I d go sometimes. But being on a film set, it never really pushed my buttons.
See, I m an editor, and I loved what I did. I was a post gal.
And in a way, this is a post book. So I m happy to contribute to the story of my good friend, whose own career-from assistant director trainee, working with the likes of Hitchcock and Peckinpah, to his career that coincided with my own at Lucasfilm-is so interesting. It parallels the history of the movie industry that we both love so much.
I hope you enjoy it.
Prologue
No one really wanted Harrison Ford to play Indiana Jones. Not Steven Spielberg, who had signed on to direct Raiders of the Lost Ark , and not necessarily George Lucas, the film s creator and executive producer, who had mixed feelings. Spielberg and Lucas had decided on Tom Selleck.
Only the film s producer, Howard Kazanjian, was lobbying for Ford.
And Kazanjian kept it up-Harrison Ford would be better. Even when Selleck proved unavailable, Kazanjian s suggestions, then his urgings went unheeded. Spielberg was getting tired of it. He told Lucas that if Kazanjian didn t lay off, he d find another producer.
Spielberg finally consented to see Ford s latest films, Hanover Street , a period romance, and The Frisco Kid , a comedy Western. After watching those, he said, in effect, you ve gotta be kidding me.
Spielberg couldn t see Ford in the role.
Day One of principal photography was only a few weeks away, but production didn t have their Indy.
Howard asked his wife, Carol, if she had any ideas on how to sway Spielberg, because he knew that she also felt that Harrison Ford was the real Indiana Jones.
She did have an idea-one last gambit . . .

George Lucas and Kazanjian on location in Tunisia filming Raiders of the Lost Ark , 1980.
C HAPTER 1: The Filmmaker s Apprentice
Pasadena is only a few miles away from Burbank, California-home to Warner Bros. Studio and the Walt Disney Studios. Another few miles away are the studios and soundstages of Universal, 20 th Century Fox, Paramount, MGM, and Columbia. Howard Kazanjian recalls, Growing up in Pasadena, you were very aware of Hollywood. In the 1940s, you knew about the real movie stars.
For his eleventh birthday, in 1953, Howard asked for a reel-to-reel tape recorder. His parents gave him instead their 8mm movie camera, which their son learned to use. He would wind up the fifty-foot loads (a few seconds of film time) and conduct youthful experiments: frame-by-frame clips of moving clouds or an apple quickly disappearing as if being eaten by an invisible man. He mostly shot hours of family vacations and family events. As a teenager he was a founding member of the Pasadena High School film club, acted in school plays, and recorded the dissection of a frog as an extra-credit project. We even took the heart out-while it was beating, he says. Movies got in my blood. My parents loved movies, too, and they would take me to the theater and, when I was little, I would sit on their laps. Later, I got my own seat.
They went to the local Pasadena movie houses: the Strand Theatre, State Theatre, United Artists Theatre, Crown Theatre, the Rialto Theatre, and the Academy (one of the few old movie houses that still exists). On special occasions the family would venture into Hollywood to see big-budget road-show films, such as The Robe (1953), at Grauman s Chinese Theatre; and South Pacific (1958), at the Egyptian Theatre; and This Is Cinerama (1952) at the old Warner Hollywood Theatre, long closed, once a grand movie palace.
The Kazanjians saw movies of all kinds, but Howard liked the costumed epics, such as The Robe , Quo Vadis (1951), and, above all, Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments (1956). They were spectacles, that s what intrigued me, he says. Also re-creating the past, the sets, and putting a wardrobe on an actor. The Ten Commandments was a very vivid story. It was visual, it was wide-screen, it had visual effects. How often do you see the parting of the Red Sea? How often do you see ancient Egypt, the temples, and Moses and the chariots? It was one of the turning points where I said, I want to be in the movie business. I loved the period pictures, and that s why I liked Westerns, too.
Shane (1953) was his favorite Western. Another was Rio Grande , which he saw in 1950 with his parents. It left a lasting impression. A more obscure Western, The Proud Rebel (1958), starring Alan Ladd, directed by Michael Curtiz, left a mark, too, thanks to its vivid action, story, and music. That spoke to me. A riveting movie. In addition to Ladd and John Wayne, actors such as Gary Cooper, Ken Curtis, Andy Devine, Dick Foran, Glenn Ford, Ken Maynard-and TV personalities Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy, the Cisco Kid, and Clayton Moore as the Lone Ranger-all left an indelible impression on Kazanjian.
After high school, he studied for two years at Pasadena City College. He applied to Yale and New York University. The former accepted him and he was about to go-when his sister, Janet, who was attending the University of Southern California (USC), located in Los Angeles, told him: You re crazy. Go to USC. She reminded him that USC had the finest film program in the country and that it would make more sense to stay in California, study there, and meet people who worked in an industry that fascinated him.
C HARMED C LASSMATES
Howard Kazanjian applied, was accepted, and enrolled in USC