Bennett Miller

Bennett Miller (2013)

Bennett Miller (born December 30, 1966 in New York City , New York ) is an American director and cameraman .

Life

childhood and education

Bennett Miller, who grew up in a Jewish family in a suburb of New York City, discovered his enthusiasm for the film at the age of twelve while handling a Super 8 camera . At the same time he made the acquaintance of the future actor and screenwriter Dan Futterman , whom he met in the library of the Hommocks Middle School in Larchmont (New York). While the two boys of the same age attended Mamroneck High School together, Miller and Futterman were intensely involved in their school's theater group. In 1984 Bennett Miller and Dan Futterman met Philip Seymour Hoffman of the same age in the tent camp of a summer theater in Saratoga Springs, New York . The trio cultivated a mutual friendship for years, although at the end of the summer both Miller and Futterman and Hoffman went their separate ways.

First success as a documentary filmmaker

After graduating from high school in 1985, Bennett Miller was able to secure a place in the theater seminar at New York University , but switched to the film seminar a short time later. He studied for several years, but later gave up because, according to his own admission, he spent more time playing chess with homeless people in the Washington Square park instead of attending classes. Over the next several years, Bennett Miller gained professional experience in the film industry and took odd jobs on several productions. In the mid-1990s, the former film student met Timothy "Speed" Levitch, a former childhood friend of Miller's younger brother, in New York. The eccentric Levitch worked as a tour guide for the New York company Gray Line, which offers trips on double-decker buses through Manhattan . Miller spent some time with the cocky friend and concluded that Levitch would make an ideal subject for a documentary . In 1996 Miller began to accompany Levitch with the film camera, but destroyed the material after it had failed the perfectionism-prone young director. He tried again a year later on a documentary about Timothy Levitch and recorded over seventy hours of footage. The 76-minute documentary called The Cruise , in which Levitch indulges himself in historical and philosophical views on New York and reports on his unusual lifestyle, was awarded prizes at the Newport International Film Festival and was soon to be released in Los Angeles and New York . The film, which cost almost 139,000 US dollars, was even able to make a profit with grossing over 238,000 US dollars, and one year later it was awarded at the Berlinale and nominated for a Satellite Award (then still the Golden Satellite Award ).

Breakthrough with Capote

The success of The Cruise brought Bennett Miller some lucrative contracts for the creation of commercials, among other things for ready meals. This was followed by an increasing number of orders with major US advertising agencies across the country. During this time, the now well-respected commercial filmmaker was on the lookout for a script that he could use as the basis for his first feature film. His childhood friend Dan Futterman, who had worked as an actor and now tried his hand at screenwriting, offered him his script called Capote , which is based on the biography Capote: A Biography by Gerald Clarke . The script, which describes the research work of Truman Capote on his sensational factual novel in cold blood (1966), convinced Miller, and the two childhood friends managed to win Philip Seymour Hoffman for the lead role of Truman Capote, who was their first choice for the lead role was. The shooting of the independent film Capote began in late October 2004 in Winnipeg ( Canada ) and were completed within 36 days of shooting.

Capote , which celebrated its US premiere on September 30, 2005, the birthday of Truman Capote, who died in 1984, has received critical acclaim, especially Hoffman's acting performance. Debut director Bennett Miller received positive reviews for his first feature film, and the drama won a number of awards from the National Society of Film Critics in 2005, five nominations for the UK's most important film award, BAFTA, and the same number of Academy Awards nominations in 2006 . Among the nominees was Bennett Miller, who had to admit defeat to Ang Lee ( Brokeback Mountain ) in the category of Best Director , while leading actor Philip Seymour Hoffman received the award. Miller had already lost out to the Taiwanese at the Directors Guild of America awards ceremony .

After the great success of Capote , Bennett Miller is currently working on the completion of his second documentary and continues to do the lucrative work in the advertising industry.