Joseph Strick

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Joseph Strick (born July 6, 1923 in Braddock , Pennsylvania , † June 1, 2010 in Paris , France ) was an American film director , film producer and screenwriter .

Life

Strick briefly studied at UCLA before joining the United States Army Air Forces , the air force of the US Army , during World War II . There he worked as a cameraman and learned his later trade. In 1948 he shot and produced, together with director and producer Irving Lerner , his first film Muscle Beach , a documentary about bodybuilders in Southern California .

From the mid-1950s onwards, Strick initially worked as a businessman for a few years . He founded several research and technology companies , which he then sold for a profit. This gave him the financial basis to later produce his own independent films. He founded the companies Electrosolids Corp (1956), Computron Corp. (1958), Physical Sciences Corp (1958) and Holosonics Corp. (1960). In 1977 he developed a six-axis motion simulator for the entertainment industry , but couldn't get beyond building a prototype . Later, however, he used the basic principle of construction while working as a technical consultant for the "Star Tours" attractions of the Walt Disney theme parks .

From the mid-1950s he worked together with Irving Lerner, the documentary filmmaker Ben Maddow and the director Sidney Meyers for over four years on the documentary The Savage Eye (1959/1960). The film contained much documentary footage from Los Angeles and portrayed a young, divorced woman on her way to starting a new life. The film won the Robert J. Flaherty Award at the British Film Academy Awards for best documentary. In 1963 he shot the film The Balcony with Shelley Winters in the leading role, based on the play of the same name by Jean Genet . 1966 was followed by the TV documentary The hecklers over hecklers at campaign events before the English parliamentary elections in 1966 in the UK .

In the 1960s, Strick also worked as a theater director. For the Royal Shakespeare Company he directed An Evening with Aristophanes in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire in 1964 . In 1965 he directed Gallow's Humor at the Gaiety Theater in Dublin . In 2003 he returned to the theater again, staging Renaissance Farces at the National Theater .

Strick achieved particular fame in 1967 with his low-budget film Ulysses , shot on the original locations , a partial filming of the novel Ulysses by James Joyce, which was previously considered unfilmed . Strick worked as a director, producer and, together with Fred Haines , also as a screenwriter . The film was shown at the Cannes International Film Festival in 1967 , but in a partially censored version. In particular, parts of the French subtitles had been removed, whereupon Strick withdrew the film from the festival. As a screenwriter, he and Haines also received an Oscar nomination for Ulysses in 1968 in the Best Adapted Screenplay category . In 1969 he co-directed the moral drama Justine with George Cukor with Anouk Aimée and Dirk Bogarde , but was not mentioned in the credits . In 1970 he directed Tropic of Cancer , a literary adaptation of Henry Miller's novel Tropic of Cancer . In 1971 he directed and produced the documentary Interviews with My Lai Veterans , which presented US soldiers who were involved in the My Lai massacre in Vietnam . For this, Strick received the Academy Award in the Best Documentary (Short Film) category at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles in 1971. In 1977 another film adaptation followed: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man based on the novel of the same name by James Joyce. In 1983 he co-produced the film When the Wolves Howl .

Private life

Strick was married twice. The marriage with his first wife Anne failed in the 1960s. His second marriage was to Maxine Strick. Strick was the father of five children (three sons, two daughters). Since the early 1970s he lived permanently in Paris. He died of heart failure on June 1, 2010 in a Paris hospital .

Filmography (selection)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Strick, Joseph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American film director, producer and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH July 6, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Braddock , Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH June 1, 2010
Place of death Paris , France