Robert Zemeckis
Encyclopedia
Robert Lee Zemeckis is an American film director
, producer
and screenwriter
. Zemeckis first came to public attention in the 1980s as the director of the comedic time-travel Back to the Future
film series, as well as the Academy Award-winning live-action/animation
epic Who Framed Roger Rabbit
(1988), though in the 1990s he diversified into more dramatic fare, including 1994's Forrest Gump
, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Director.
His films are characterized by an interest in state-of-the-art special effects, including the early use of match moving
in Back to the Future Part II
(1989) and the pioneering performance capture techniques seen in The Polar Express
(2004), Beowulf
(2007) and A Christmas Carol
(2009). Though Zemeckis has often been pigeonholed as a director interested only in effects, his work has been defended by several critics, including David Thomson
, who wrote that "No other contemporary director has used special effects to more dramatic and narrative purpose."
, Illinois
, to a Lithuanian American father and an Italian American
mother, and grew up on the south side. He was raised in a working-class Roman Catholic family, and attended Fenger High School. Zemeckis has said that "the truth was that in my family there was no art. I mean, there was no music, there were no books, there was no theater....The only thing I had that was inspirational, was television
—and it actually was." As a child, Zemeckis loved television and was fascinated by his parents' 8 mm film
home movie camera. Starting off by filming family events like birthdays and holidays, Zemeckis gradually began producing narrative films with his friends that incorporated stop-motion work and other special effects.
Along with enjoying movies, Zemeckis remained an avid TV watcher. "You hear so much about the problems with television," he said, "but I think that it saved my life." Television gave Zemeckis his first glimpse of a world outside of his blue-collar upbringing; specifically, he learned of the existence of film school
s on an episode of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
. After seeing Bonnie and Clyde
with his father and being heavily influenced by it, Zemeckis decided that he wanted to go to film school.
His parents disapproved of the idea, Zemeckis later said, "But only in the sense that they were concerned....for my family and my friends and the world that I grew up in, this was the kind of dream that really was impossible. My parents would sit there and say, 'Don't you see where you come from? You can't be a movie director.' I guess maybe some of it I felt I had to do in spite of them, too."
's School of Cinematic Arts
, and got into the Film School on the strength of an essay and a music video based on a Beatles
song. Not having heard from the university itself, Zemeckis called and was told he had been rejected because of his average grades. The director gave an "impassioned plea" to the official on the other line, promising to go to summer school and improve his studies, and eventually convinced the school to accept him. Arriving at USC that Fall, Zemeckis encountered a program that was, in his words, made up of "a bunch of hippies [and] considered an embarrassment by the university." The classes were difficult, with professors constantly stressing how hard the movie business was. Zemeckis remembered not being much fazed by this, citing the "healthy cynicism" that had been bred into him from his Chicago upbringing.
While at USC, Zemeckis developed a close friendship with the writer Bob Gale
, who was also a student there. Gale later recalled, "The graduate students at USC had this veneer of intellectualism ... So Bob and I gravitated toward one another because we wanted to make Hollywood movies. We weren't interested in the French New Wave
. We were interested in Clint Eastwood
and James Bond
and Walt Disney
, because that's how we grew up." He graduated from USC in 1973.
As a result of winning a Student Academy Award
at USC for his film, A Field of Honor, Zemeckis came to the attention of Steven Spielberg
. Spielberg said, "He barged right past my secretary, and sat me down and showed me this student film ... and I thought it was spectacular, with police cars and a riot, all dubbed to Elmer Bernstein
's score for The Great Escape
." Spielberg became Zemeckis's mentor and executive produced his first two films, both of which Zemeckis co-wrote with Bob Gale. He later executive produced other Zemeckis films, including the Back to the Future trilogy
and Who Framed Roger Rabbit
.
1978's I Wanna Hold Your Hand
(starring Nancy Allen
) and 1980's Used Cars
(starring Kurt Russell
) were well-received critically, with Pauline Kael
going into particular rhapsody over the latter film, but both were commercially inert. (I Wanna Hold Your Hand was the first of several Zemeckis films to incorporate historical figures and celebrities into his movies; in the film, he used archival footage and doubles to simulate the presence of The Beatles.) After the failure of his first two films, and the Spielberg-directed 1941
in 1979 (for which Zemeckis and Gale had written the screenplay), the pair gained a reputation for writing "scripts that everyone thought were great [but] somehow didn't translate into movies people wanted to see."
and Growing Up for Spielberg; neither ended up getting made. Another Zemeckis-Gale project, about a teenager who accidentally travels back in time to the 1950s, was turned down by every major studio. The director was jobless until Michael Douglas
hired him in 1984 to film Romancing the Stone
. A romantic adventure starring Douglas and Kathleen Turner
, Romancing was expected to flop (to the point that, after viewing a rough cut of the film, the producers of the then-in-the-works Cocoon
fired Zemeckis as director), but the film became a sleeper hit. While working on Romancing the Stone, Zemeckis met composer Alan Silvestri
, who has scored all of his subsequent pictures.
After Romancing, the director suddenly had the clout to direct his time-traveling screenplay, which was titled Back to the Future
. Starring Michael J. Fox
, Lea Thompson
, and Christopher Lloyd
, the 1985 film was wildly successful upon its release, and was followed by two sequels, released as Back to the Future Part II
in 1989 and Back to the Future Part III
in 1990. Before the Back to the Future sequels were released, Zemeckis collaborated with Disney and directed another film, the madcap 1940s-set mystery Who Framed Roger Rabbit
, which painstakingly combined traditional animation
and live action
; its US$70 million budget made it one of the most expensive films made up to that point. The film was both a financial and critical success, and won four Academy Awards. In 1990, Zemeckis commented, when asked if he would want to make non-comedies, "I would like to be able to do everything. Just now, though, I’m too restless to do anything that’s not really zany."
In 1992, Zemeckis directed the black comedy Death Becomes Her
, starring Meryl Streep
, Goldie Hawn
, and Bruce Willis
. Although his next film would have some comedic elements, it was Zemeckis's first with dramatic elements, and was also his biggest commercial and critical success to date, 1994's Forrest Gump
. Starring Tom Hanks
in the title role, and borrowing to some extent from Woody Allen
's earlier Zelig
, Forrest Gump tells the story of a man with a low I.Q., who unwittingly participates in some of the major events of the twentieth century, falls in love, and interacts with several major historical figures in the process. The film grossed $677 million worldwide and became the top grossing U.S. film of 1994; it won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture
, Hanks as Best Actor
, and Zemeckis as Best Director
. In 1997, Zemeckis directed Contact
, a long-gestating project based on Carl Sagan
's 1985 novel of the same name
. The film centers around Eleanor Arroway, a scientist played by Jodie Foster
, who believes she has made contact with extraterrestrial beings.
and George Lucas
. Of those (including Spielberg) who clung to celluloid and disparaged the idea of shooting digitally, Zemeckis said, "These guys are the same ones who have been saying that LPs
sound better than CDs
. You can argue that until you're blue in the face, but I don't know anyone who's still buying vinyl. Film, as we have traditionally thought of it, is going to be different. But the continuum is man's desire to tell stories around the campfire. The only thing that keeps changing is the campfire." The Robert Zemeckis Center currently hosts many film school classes, much of the Interactive Media Division
, and Trojan Vision
, USC's student television station, which has been voted the number one college television station in the country.
In 1996, Zemeckis had begun developing a project titled The Castaway with Tom Hanks
and writer William Broyles, Jr.. The story, which was inspired by Robinson Crusoe
, is about a man (Hanks) who becomes stranded on a desert island and undergoes a profound physical and spiritual change. While working on The Castaway, Zemeckis also became attached to a Hitchcockian
thriller titled What Lies Beneath
, the story of a married couple experiencing an extreme case of empty nest syndrome
that was based on an idea by Steven Spielberg. Because Hanks's character needed to undergo a dramatic weight loss over the course of The Castaway (which was eventually retitled Cast Away
), Zemeckis decided that the only way to retain the same crew while Hanks lost the weight was to shoot What Lies Beneath in between. He shot the first part of Cast Away in early 1999, and shot What Lies Beneath in fall 1999, completing work on Cast Away in early 2000. Zemeckis later quipped, when asked about shooting two films back-to-back, "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 did well at the box office, grossing over $155 million domestically. Cast Away was released that December and grossed $233 million domestically; Hanks received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor
for his portrayal of Chuck Noland.
In 2004, Zemeckis reteamed with Hanks and directed The Polar Express
, based on the children's book of the same name
by Chris Van Allsburg
. The Polar Express utilized the computer animation
technique known as performance capture, whereby the movements of the actors are captured digitally and used as the basis for the animated characters. As the first major film to use performance capture, The Polar Express caused The New York Times
to write that, "Whatever critics and audiences make of this movie, from a technical perspective it could mark a turning point in the gradual transition from an analog to a digital cinema."
In February 2007, Zemeckis and Walt Disney Studios chairman Dick Cook
announced plans for a new performance capture film company devoted to CG-created, 3-D movies. The company, ImageMovers Digital
, created films using the performance capture technology, with Zemeckis directing most of the projects and Disney distributed and marketed the motion pictures worldwide. Zemeckis used the performance capture technology again in his film, Beowulf
, which retells the Anglo-Saxon epic poem of the same name
and stars Ray Winstone
, Angelina Jolie
, and Anthony Hopkins
. Hugo Award
-winning science fiction
writer Neil Gaiman
, who co-wrote the adaptation with Roger Avary
, described the film as a "cheerfully violent and strange take on the Beowulf legend." The film was released on November 16, 2007, to mixed reviews.
In July 2007, Variety
announced that 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 the aegis of ImageMovers Digital. Zemeckis wrote the script with Jim Carrey
in mind, and Carrey agreed to play a multitude of roles in the film, including Ebenezer Scrooge
as a young, middle-aged, and old man, and the three ghosts who haunt Scrooge. The film began production in February 2008, and was released on November 6, 2009, again to mixed reviews. Actor Gary Oldman
also appeared in the film.
In August 2008, Movies IGN
revealed in an interview with Philippe Petit
that Zemeckis is working with Petit to turn Petit's memoir To Reach the Clouds into a feature film. Robert Zemeckis was either seriously considered to, or attached to direct the 2005 version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
. Zemeckis is an avid supporter of 3-D Digital Cinema, and has stated that, starting with the 3-D presentations of Beowulf
, all of his future films will be done in 3-D using digital motion capture
. He has reportedly backed away from that statement and has said that the decision to use 3-D will be on a film-by-film basis.
On August 19, 2009, it was reported that Zemeckis and his company were in talks with Apple Corps ltd
to remake the animated film Yellow Submarine in 3-D once again utilizing performance capture. However, on March 15, 2011, Disney canceled its involvement due to the box office failure of Mars Needs Moms, and permanently closed down ImageMovers Digital.
Despite this, Zemeckis has expressed wishes to return to direct the long-awaited sequel to Disney's 1988 Who Framed Roger Rabbit
, which will now remain a combination of 2-D animation and live-action. Peter S. Seaman and Jeffrey Price, the writers of the first film are now working on a new script.
On April 20, 2011, it was reported that Zemeckis would make his return to filmmaking with Flight, a drama for Paramount with Denzel Washington
.
, with whom he had a son, Alexander. He described the marriage as difficult to balance with filmmaking, and his relationship with Trainor eventually ended in divorce. In 2001, he married actress Leslie Harter. According to cfidarren.com, Zemeckis is rated an Instrument Flight Rules
(IFR) Private Pilot
.
, as well as PACs that support the interests of aircraft owners and pilots, family planning
interests, and a group that advocates for Hollywood women.
, Bob Gale
, Frank Marshall, Kathleen Kennedy, Steve Starkey
, Jack Rapke
, Arthur Schmidt, Dean Cundey
and Neil Canton
. Also, music composer Alan Silvestri
has been responsible for every film score for Zemeckis' films since Romancing the Stone.
|- style="vertical-align:bottom;"
! Actor
! class="collapsible" |I Wanna Hold Your Hand
(1978)
! Used Cars
(1980)
! Romancing the Stone
(1984)
! Back to the Future
(1985)
! Who Framed Roger Rabbit
(1988)
! Back to the Future Part II
(1989)
! Back to the Future Part III
(1990)
! Death Becomes Her
(1992)
! Forrest Gump
(1994)
! Contact
(1997)
! What Lies Beneath
(2000)
! Cast Away
(2000)
! The Polar Express
(2004)
! Beowulf
(2007)
! A Christmas Carol
(2009)>
Tom Hanks
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Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
, producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
and screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
. Zemeckis first came to public attention in the 1980s as the director of the comedic time-travel Back to the Future
Back to the Future trilogy
The Back to the Future trilogy is a comedic science fiction adventure film series written by Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis, directed by Zemeckis, produced by Amblin Entertainment and distributed by Universal Pictures. The main plot follows the adventures of a high school student Marty McFly and...
film series, as well as the Academy Award-winning live-action/animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
epic Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a 1988 American fantasy-comedy-noir film directed by Robert Zemeckis and released by Touchstone Pictures. The film combines live action and animation, and is based on Gary K. Wolf's novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, which depicts a world in which cartoon characters...
(1988), though in the 1990s he diversified into more dramatic fare, including 1994's Forrest Gump
Forrest Gump
Forrest Gump is a 1994 American epic comedy-drama romance film based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Winston Groom. The film was directed by Robert Zemeckis, starring Tom Hanks, Robin Wright and Gary Sinise...
, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Director.
His films are characterized by an interest in state-of-the-art special effects, including the early use of match moving
Match moving
In cinematography, match moving is a visual-effects, cinematic techniques that allows the insertion of computer graphics into live-action footage with correct position, scale, orientation, and motion relative to the photographed objects in the shot...
in Back to the Future Part II
Back to the Future Part II
Back to the Future Part II is a 1989 American science fiction comedy film and the second installment of the Back to the Future trilogy. It was directed by Robert Zemeckis, written by Zemeckis and Bob Gale, and starred Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Thomas F. Wilson and Lea Thompson...
(1989) and the pioneering performance capture techniques seen in The Polar Express
The Polar Express (film)
The Polar Express is a 2004 motion capture computer-animated film based on the children's book of the same title by Chris Van Allsburg. Written, produced, and directed by Robert Zemeckis, the human characters in the film were animated using live action performance capture technique, with the...
(2004), Beowulf
Beowulf (2007 film)
Beowulf is a 2007 American animated fantasy film written by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary inspired by the Old English epic poem of the same name. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, the film was created through a motion capture process similar to the technique he used in The Polar Express...
(2007) and A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol (2009 film)
A Christmas Carol is a 2009 film written and directed by Robert Zemeckis...
(2009). Though Zemeckis has often been pigeonholed as a director interested only in effects, his work has been defended by several critics, including David Thomson
David Thomson (film critic)
David Thomson is a film critic and historian based in the United States and the author of more than 20 books, including The New Biographical Dictionary of Film.-Career:...
, who wrote that "No other contemporary director has used special effects to more dramatic and narrative purpose."
Early life
Zemeckis was born in ChicagoChicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
, to a Lithuanian American father and an Italian American
Italian American
An Italian American , is an American of Italian ancestry. The designation may also refer to someone possessing Italian and American dual citizenship...
mother, and grew up on the south side. He was raised in a working-class Roman Catholic family, and attended Fenger High School. Zemeckis has said that "the truth was that in my family there was no art. I mean, there was no music, there were no books, there was no theater....The only thing I had that was inspirational, was television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
—and it actually was." As a child, Zemeckis loved television and was fascinated by his parents' 8 mm film
8 mm film
8 mm film is a motion picture film format in which the filmstrip is eight millimeters wide. It exists in two main versions: the original standard 8mm film, also known as regular 8 mm or Double 8 mm, and Super 8...
home movie camera. Starting off by filming family events like birthdays and holidays, Zemeckis gradually began producing narrative films with his friends that incorporated stop-motion work and other special effects.
Along with enjoying movies, Zemeckis remained an avid TV watcher. "You hear so much about the problems with television," he said, "but I think that it saved my life." Television gave Zemeckis his first glimpse of a world outside of his blue-collar upbringing; specifically, he learned of the existence of film school
Film school
The term film school is used to describe any educational institution dedicated to teaching aspects of filmmaking, including such subjects as film production, film theory, digital media production, and screenwriting. Film history courses and hands-on technical training are usually incorporated into...
s on an episode of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson is a talk show hosted by Johnny Carson under the Tonight Show franchise from 1962 to 1992. It originally aired during late-night....
. After seeing Bonnie and Clyde
Bonnie and Clyde (film)
The film was originally offered to François Truffaut, the best-known director of the New Wave movement, who made contributions to the script. He passed on the project to make Fahrenheit 451. The producers approached Jean-Luc Godard next...
with his father and being heavily influenced by it, Zemeckis decided that he wanted to go to film school.
His parents disapproved of the idea, Zemeckis later said, "But only in the sense that they were concerned....for my family and my friends and the world that I grew up in, this was the kind of dream that really was impossible. My parents would sit there and say, 'Don't you see where you come from? You can't be a movie director.' I guess maybe some of it I felt I had to do in spite of them, too."
USC education and early films
Zemeckis applied only to University of Southern CaliforniaUniversity of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
's School of Cinematic Arts
USC School of Cinematic Arts
The USC School of Cinematic Arts, until 2006 named the School of Cinema-Television , is a film school within the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California. It is the oldest and largest such school in the United States, established in 1929 as a joint venture with the Academy of...
, and got into the Film School on the strength of an essay and a music video based on a Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
song. Not having heard from the university itself, Zemeckis called and was told he had been rejected because of his average grades. The director gave an "impassioned plea" to the official on the other line, promising to go to summer school and improve his studies, and eventually convinced the school to accept him. Arriving at USC that Fall, Zemeckis encountered a program that was, in his words, made up of "a bunch of hippies [and] considered an embarrassment by the university." The classes were difficult, with professors constantly stressing how hard the movie business was. Zemeckis remembered not being much fazed by this, citing the "healthy cynicism" that had been bred into him from his Chicago upbringing.
While at USC, Zemeckis developed a close friendship with the writer Bob Gale
Bob Gale
Michael Robert "Bob" Gale is an American screenwriter who co-wrote the science fiction film Back to the Future with writing partner Robert Zemeckis, and the screenplays for the film's two sequels. Gale also co-produced all three films....
, who was also a student there. Gale later recalled, "The graduate students at USC had this veneer of intellectualism ... So Bob and I gravitated toward one another because we wanted to make Hollywood movies. We weren't interested in the French New Wave
French New Wave
The New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
. We were interested in Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood
Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide...
and James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...
and Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
, because that's how we grew up." He graduated from USC in 1973.
As a result of winning a Student Academy Award
Student Academy Awards
The Student Academy Awards is the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' annual competition for college and university filmmakers. The awards were originally named the Student Film Awards and were first presented in 1973. Since 1975, the awards have been given annually, usually in June...
at USC for his film, A Field of Honor, Zemeckis came to the attention of Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
. Spielberg said, "He barged right past my secretary, and sat me down and showed me this student film ... and I thought it was spectacular, with police cars and a riot, all dubbed to Elmer Bernstein
Elmer Bernstein
Elmer Bernstein was an American composer and conductor best known for his many film scores. In a career which spanned fifty years, he composed music for hundreds of film and television productions...
's score for The Great Escape
The Great Escape (film)
The Great Escape is a 1963 American film about an escape by Allied prisoners of war from a German POW camp during World War II, starring Steve McQueen, James Garner, and Richard Attenborough...
." Spielberg became Zemeckis's mentor and executive produced his first two films, both of which Zemeckis co-wrote with Bob Gale. He later executive produced other Zemeckis films, including the Back to the Future trilogy
Back to the Future trilogy
The Back to the Future trilogy is a comedic science fiction adventure film series written by Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis, directed by Zemeckis, produced by Amblin Entertainment and distributed by Universal Pictures. The main plot follows the adventures of a high school student Marty McFly and...
and Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a 1988 American fantasy-comedy-noir film directed by Robert Zemeckis and released by Touchstone Pictures. The film combines live action and animation, and is based on Gary K. Wolf's novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, which depicts a world in which cartoon characters...
.
1978's I Wanna Hold Your Hand
I Wanna Hold Your Hand (film)
I Wanna Hold Your Hand is a comedy film directed and co-written by Robert Zemeckis, which takes its name from the 1963 song "I Want to Hold Your Hand" by The Beatles. It was produced and co-written by Bob Gale. The film is about "Beatlemania" and is a fictionalized account of the day of the...
(starring Nancy Allen
Nancy Allen (actress)
Nancy Anne Allen is a Golden Globe nominated American actress and cancer activist.Allen began an acting and modelling career as a child, and from the mid-1970s appeared in small film roles, most notably the anchor of Robert Zemeckis's ensemble comedy I Wanna Hold Your Hand...
) and 1980's Used Cars
Used Cars
Used Cars is a 1980 comedy satire film. It stars Kurt Russell, Jack Warden , Deborah Harmon, and Gerrit Graham.Kurt Russell portrays a devious car salesman working for affable but monumentally unsuccessful used car dealer Luke Fuchs . Luke's principal rival, located directly across the street, is...
(starring Kurt Russell
Kurt Russell
Kurt Vogel Russell is an American television and film actor. His first acting roles were as a child in television series, including a lead role in the Western series The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters...
) were well-received critically, with Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....
going into particular rhapsody over the latter film, but both were commercially inert. (I Wanna Hold Your Hand was the first of several Zemeckis films to incorporate historical figures and celebrities into his movies; in the film, he used archival footage and doubles to simulate the presence of The Beatles.) After the failure of his first two films, and the Spielberg-directed 1941
1941 (film)
1941 is a 1979 period comedy film directed by Steven Spielberg, written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, and featuring an ensemble cast including John Belushi, Ned Beatty, John Candy, Toshiro Mifune, Christopher Lee and Dan Aykroyd...
in 1979 (for which Zemeckis and Gale had written the screenplay), the pair gained a reputation for writing "scripts that everyone thought were great [but] somehow didn't translate into movies people wanted to see."
Breakthrough films and Forrest Gump
As a result of his reputation within the industry, Zemeckis had trouble finding work in the early 1980s, though he and Gale kept busy. They wrote scripts for other directors, including Car Pool for Brian De PalmaBrian De Palma
Brian Russell De Palma is an American film director and writer. In a career spanning over 40 years, he is probably best known for his suspense and crime thriller films, including such box office successes as the horror film Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Scarface, The Untouchables, and Mission:...
and Growing Up for Spielberg; neither ended up getting made. Another Zemeckis-Gale project, about a teenager who accidentally travels back in time to the 1950s, was turned down by every major studio. The director was jobless until Michael Douglas
Michael Douglas
Michael Kirk Douglas is an American actor and producer, primarily in movies and television. He has won three Golden Globes and two Academy Awards; first as producer of 1975's Best Picture, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and as Best Actor in 1987 for his role in Wall Street. Douglas received the...
hired him in 1984 to film Romancing the Stone
Romancing the Stone
Romancing the Stone is a 1984 American action-adventure romantic comedy. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, it stars Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito. The film was followed by a 1985 sequel, The Jewel of the Nile....
. A romantic adventure starring Douglas and Kathleen Turner
Kathleen Turner
Mary Kathleen Turner is an American actress. She came to fame during the 1980s, after roles in the Hollywood films Body Heat, Peggy Sue Got Married, Romancing the Stone, The War of the Roses, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Prizzi's Honor...
, Romancing was expected to flop (to the point that, after viewing a rough cut of the film, the producers of the then-in-the-works Cocoon
Cocoon (film)
The score for Cocoon was composed and conducted by James Horner. The soundtrack was released twice, through Polydor Records in 1985 and a reprint through P.E.G. in 1997 and features eleven tracks of score and a vocal track performed by Michael Sembello...
fired Zemeckis as director), but the film became a sleeper hit. While working on Romancing the Stone, Zemeckis met composer Alan Silvestri
Alan Silvestri
Alan Anthony Silvestri is an American film composer and conductor.-Career:Silvestri is best known for his collaborations with director Robert Zemeckis, having scored Romancing the Stone , the Back to the Future trilogy , Who Framed Roger Rabbit , Death Becomes Her , Forrest Gump , Contact ,...
, who has scored all of his subsequent pictures.
After Romancing, the director suddenly had the clout to direct his time-traveling screenplay, which was titled Back to the Future
Back to the Future
Back to the Future is a 1985 American science-fiction adventure film. It was directed by Robert Zemeckis, written by Zemeckis and Bob Gale, produced by Steven Spielberg, and starred Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover and Thomas F. Wilson. The film tells the story of...
. Starring Michael J. Fox
Michael J. Fox
Michael J. Fox, OC is a Canadian American actor, author, producer, activist and voice-over artist. With a film and television career spanning from the late 1970s, Fox's roles have included Marty McFly from the Back to the Future trilogy ; Alex P...
, Lea Thompson
Lea Thompson
Lea Katherine Thompson is an American actress and director. She is best known for her 1990s NBC situation comedy Caroline in the City and her portrayal of Lorraine Baines McFly, Marty McFly's mother, in the Back to the Future trilogy...
, and Christopher Lloyd
Christopher Lloyd
Christopher Allen Lloyd is an American actor. He is best known for playing Emmett Brown in the Back to the Future trilogy, Uncle Fester in The Addams Family and Addams Family Values, and Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. He played Reverend Jim Ignatowski in the television series Taxi and more...
, the 1985 film was wildly successful upon its release, and was followed by two sequels, released as Back to the Future Part II
Back to the Future Part II
Back to the Future Part II is a 1989 American science fiction comedy film and the second installment of the Back to the Future trilogy. It was directed by Robert Zemeckis, written by Zemeckis and Bob Gale, and starred Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Thomas F. Wilson and Lea Thompson...
in 1989 and Back to the Future Part III
Back to the Future Part III
Back to the Future Part III is a 1990 American science fiction comedy Western film. It is the third installment of the Back to the Future trilogy. The film was directed by Robert Zemeckis and starred Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Mary Steenburgen, Thomas F. Wilson and Lea Thompson. The film...
in 1990. Before the Back to the Future sequels were released, Zemeckis collaborated with Disney and directed another film, the madcap 1940s-set mystery Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a 1988 American fantasy-comedy-noir film directed by Robert Zemeckis and released by Touchstone Pictures. The film combines live action and animation, and is based on Gary K. Wolf's novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, which depicts a world in which cartoon characters...
, which painstakingly combined traditional animation
Traditional animation
Traditional animation, is an animation technique where each frame is drawn by hand...
and live action
Live action
In filmmaking, video production, and other media, the term live action refers to cinematography, videography not produced using animation...
; its US$70 million budget made it one of the most expensive films made up to that point. The film was both a financial and critical success, and won four Academy Awards. In 1990, Zemeckis commented, when asked if he would want to make non-comedies, "I would like to be able to do everything. Just now, though, I’m too restless to do anything that’s not really zany."
In 1992, Zemeckis directed the black comedy Death Becomes Her
Death Becomes Her
Death Becomes Her is a 1992 American dark slapstick screwball comedy fantasy film directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Goldie Hawn, Meryl Streep, and Bruce Willis...
, starring Meryl Streep
Meryl Streep
Mary Louise "Meryl" Streep is an American actress who has worked in theatre, television and film.Streep made her professional stage debut in 1971's The Playboy of Seville, before her screen debut in the television movie The Deadliest Season in 1977. In that same year, she made her film debut with...
, Goldie Hawn
Goldie Hawn
Goldie Jeanne Hawn is an American actress, film director, producer, and occasional singer. Hawn is known for her roles in Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, Private Benjamin, Foul Play, Overboard, Bird on a Wire, Death Becomes Her, The First Wives Club, and Cactus Flower, for which she won the 1969...
, and Bruce Willis
Bruce Willis
Walter Bruce Willis , better known as Bruce Willis, is an American actor, producer, and musician. His career began in television in the 1980s and has continued both in television and film since, including comedic, dramatic, and action roles...
. Although his next film would have some comedic elements, it was Zemeckis's first with dramatic elements, and was also his biggest commercial and critical success to date, 1994's Forrest Gump
Forrest Gump
Forrest Gump is a 1994 American epic comedy-drama romance film based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Winston Groom. The film was directed by Robert Zemeckis, starring Tom Hanks, Robin Wright and Gary Sinise...
. Starring Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks
Thomas Jeffrey "Tom" Hanks is an American actor, producer, writer, and director. Hanks worked in television and family-friendly comedies, gaining wide notice in 1988's Big, before achieving success as a dramatic actor in several notable roles, including Andrew Beckett in Philadelphia, the title...
in the title role, and borrowing to some extent from Woody Allen
Woody Allen
Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
's earlier Zelig
Zelig
Zelig is a 1983 American mockumentary film written and directed by Woody Allen, and starring Allen and Mia Farrow. Allen plays Zelig, a curiously nondescript enigma who is discovered for his remarkable ability to transform himself to resemble anyone he's near.The film was shot almost entirely in...
, Forrest Gump tells the story of a man with a low I.Q., who unwittingly participates in some of the major events of the twentieth century, falls in love, and interacts with several major historical figures in the process. The film grossed $677 million worldwide and became the top grossing U.S. film of 1994; it won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture
Academy Award for Best Picture
The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to artists working in the motion picture industry. The Best Picture category is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible not only...
, Hanks as Best Actor
Academy Award for Best Actor
Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...
, and Zemeckis as Best Director
Academy Award for Directing
The Academy Award for Achievement in Directing , usually known as the Best Director Oscar, is one of the Awards of Merit presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to directors working in the motion picture industry...
. In 1997, Zemeckis directed Contact
Contact (film)
Contact is a 1997 American science fiction drama film adapted from the Carl Sagan novel of the same name and directed by Robert Zemeckis. Both Sagan and wife Ann Druyan wrote the story outline for the film adaptation of Contact....
, a long-gestating project based on Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science popularizer and science communicator in astronomy and natural sciences. He published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books...
's 1985 novel of the same name
Contact (novel)
Contact is a science fiction novel written by Carl Sagan and published in 1985. It deals with the theme of contact between humanity and a more technologically advanced, extraterrestrial life form. It ranked No. 7 on the 1985 U.S. bestseller list....
. The film centers around Eleanor Arroway, a scientist played by Jodie Foster
Jodie Foster
Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster is an American actress, film director, producer as well as a former child actress....
, who believes she has made contact with extraterrestrial beings.
Work in the 2000s and interest in digital filmmaking
In 1999, Zemeckis donated $5 million towards the Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts at USC, a 35000 square feet (3,251.6 m²) center that houses production stages, an immense 60-system digital editing lab, and a 50-seat screening room. When the Center opened in March 2001, Zemeckis spoke in a panel about the future of film, alongside friends Steven SpielbergSteven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
and George Lucas
George Lucas
George Walton Lucas, Jr. is an American film producer, screenwriter, and director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm. He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones...
. Of those (including Spielberg) who clung to celluloid and disparaged the idea of shooting digitally, Zemeckis said, "These guys are the same ones who have been saying that LPs
LP album
The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...
sound better than CDs
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
. You can argue that until you're blue in the face, but I don't know anyone who's still buying vinyl. Film, as we have traditionally thought of it, is going to be different. But the continuum is man's desire to tell stories around the campfire. The only thing that keeps changing is the campfire." The Robert Zemeckis Center currently hosts many film school classes, much of the Interactive Media Division
USC Interactive Media Division
The University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts's Interactive Media Division first accepted students in 2002. In addition to coursework in film production, screenwriting, and animation, students in the division study across three disciplines within interactive media: immersive...
, and Trojan Vision
Trojan Vision
Trojan Vision is a student television station at the University of Southern California through the School of Cinematic Arts. Established in 1997 by the Annenberg School for Communication, Trojan Vision is a member of the Open Student Television Network , which televises student programming...
, USC's student television station, which has been voted the number one college television station in the country.
In 1996, Zemeckis had begun developing a project titled The Castaway with Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks
Thomas Jeffrey "Tom" Hanks is an American actor, producer, writer, and director. Hanks worked in television and family-friendly comedies, gaining wide notice in 1988's Big, before achieving success as a dramatic actor in several notable roles, including Andrew Beckett in Philadelphia, the title...
and writer William Broyles, Jr.. The story, which was inspired by Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe that was first published in 1719. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is a fictional autobiography of the title character—a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and...
, is about a man (Hanks) who becomes stranded on a desert island and undergoes a profound physical and spiritual change. While working on The Castaway, Zemeckis also became attached to a Hitchcockian
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
thriller titled What Lies Beneath
What Lies Beneath
What Lies Beneath is a 2000 American supernatural horror-thriller film directed by Robert Zemeckis. It stars veteran actors Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer as a well-to-do couple who experience a strange haunting that uncovers secrets about their past....
, the story of a married couple experiencing an extreme case of empty nest syndrome
Empty nest syndrome
Empty nest syndrome is a general feeling of loneliness that parents or guardians may feel when one or more of their children leave home; it is more common in women...
that was based on an idea by Steven Spielberg. Because Hanks's character needed to undergo a dramatic weight loss over the course of The Castaway (which was eventually retitled Cast Away
Cast Away
Cast Away is a 2000 drama film directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Tom Hanks as a FedEx employee stranded on an uninhabited island after his plane crashes in the South Pacific. The film depicts his successful attempts to survive on the island using remnants of his plane's cargo, as well as his...
), Zemeckis decided that the only way to retain the same crew while Hanks lost the weight was to shoot What Lies Beneath in between. He shot the first part of Cast Away in early 1999, and shot What Lies Beneath in fall 1999, completing work on Cast Away in early 2000. Zemeckis later quipped, when asked about shooting two films back-to-back, "I wouldn't recommend it to anyone." What Lies Beneath, starring Harrison Ford
Harrison Ford
Harrison Ford is an American film actor and producer. He is famous for his performances as Han Solo in the original Star Wars trilogy and as the title character of the Indiana Jones film series. Ford is also known for his roles as Rick Deckard in Blade Runner, John Book in Witness and Jack Ryan in...
and Michelle Pfeiffer
Michelle Pfeiffer
Michelle Marie Pfeiffer is an American actress. She made her film debut in 1980 in The Hollywood Knights, but first garnered mainstream attention with her performance in Brian De Palma's Scarface . Pfeiffer has won numerous awards for her work...
, was released in July 2000 to mixed reviews, but did well at the box office, grossing over $155 million domestically. Cast Away was released that December and grossed $233 million domestically; Hanks received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor
Academy Award for Best Actor
Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...
for his portrayal of Chuck Noland.
In 2004, Zemeckis reteamed with Hanks and directed The Polar Express
The Polar Express (film)
The Polar Express is a 2004 motion capture computer-animated film based on the children's book of the same title by Chris Van Allsburg. Written, produced, and directed by Robert Zemeckis, the human characters in the film were animated using live action performance capture technique, with the...
, based on the children's book of the same name
The Polar Express
The Polar Express is a 1985 children's book written and illustrated by Chris Van Allsburg, a former professor at the Rhode Island School of Design. It was adapted as an Oscar-nominated motion-capture film in 2004....
by Chris Van Allsburg
Chris Van Allsburg
Chris Van Allsburg is an American author and illustrator of children's books. He twice won the Caldecott Medal, for Jumanji and The Polar Express , both of which he wrote and illustrated, and both of which were later adapted into successful motion pictures...
. The Polar Express utilized the computer animation
Computer animation
Computer animation is the process used for generating animated images by using computer graphics. The more general term computer generated imagery encompasses both static scenes and dynamic images, while computer animation only refers to moving images....
technique known as performance capture, whereby the movements of the actors are captured digitally and used as the basis for the animated characters. As the first major film to use performance capture, The Polar Express caused The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
to write that, "Whatever critics and audiences make of this movie, from a technical perspective it could mark a turning point in the gradual transition from an analog to a digital cinema."
In February 2007, Zemeckis and Walt Disney Studios chairman Dick Cook
Dick Cook
Richard W. "Dick" Cook is the former Chairman of the Walt Disney Studios. At the time of his separation from the company, he was the only remaining top Disney executive who had worked for the company since before Michael Eisner took charge in 1984...
announced plans for a new performance capture film company devoted to CG-created, 3-D movies. The company, ImageMovers Digital
ImageMovers Digital
ImageMovers Digital is a digital film studio run by director Robert Zemeckis and originally owned by The Walt Disney Company, later Universal Studios...
, created films using the performance capture technology, with Zemeckis directing most of the projects and Disney distributed and marketed the motion pictures worldwide. Zemeckis used the performance capture technology again in his film, Beowulf
Beowulf (2007 film)
Beowulf is a 2007 American animated fantasy film written by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary inspired by the Old English epic poem of the same name. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, the film was created through a motion capture process similar to the technique he used in The Polar Express...
, which retells the Anglo-Saxon epic poem of the same name
Beowulf
Beowulf , but modern scholars agree in naming it after the hero whose life is its subject." of an Old English heroic epic poem consisting of 3182 alliterative long lines, set in Scandinavia, commonly cited as one of the most important works of Anglo-Saxon literature.It survives in a single...
and stars Ray Winstone
Ray Winstone
Raymond Andrew "Ray" Winstone is an English film and television actor. He is mostly known for his "tough guy" roles, beginning with that of Carlin in the 1979 film Scum and as Will Scarlet in the cult television adventure series Robin of Sherwood. He has also become well known as a voice over...
, Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie is an American actress. She has received an Academy Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards, and was named Hollywood's highest-paid actress by Forbes in 2009 and 2011. Jolie is noted for promoting humanitarian causes as a Goodwill Ambassador for the...
, and Anthony Hopkins
Anthony Hopkins
Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins, KBE , best known as Anthony Hopkins, is a Welsh actor of film, stage and television...
. Hugo Award
Hugo Award
The Hugo Awards are given annually for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was officially named the Science Fiction Achievement Awards...
-winning science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
writer Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman
Neil Richard Gaiman born 10 November 1960)is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book...
, who co-wrote the adaptation with Roger Avary
Roger Avary
Roger Avary is a Canadian film and television producer, screenwriter, olive farmer and director in the American mass media industry. He was behind the screenplays of the films Silent Hill and Beowulf...
, described the film as a "cheerfully violent and strange take on the Beowulf legend." The film was released on November 16, 2007, to mixed reviews.
In July 2007, Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
announced that Zemeckis had written a screenplay for A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol (2009 film)
A Christmas Carol is a 2009 film written and directed by Robert Zemeckis...
, based on Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
' 1843 short story
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
of the same name, with plans to use performance capture and release it under the aegis of ImageMovers Digital. Zemeckis wrote the script with Jim Carrey
Jim Carrey
James Eugene "Jim" Carrey is a Canadian-American actor and comedian. He has received two Golden Globe Awards and has also been nominated on four occasions. Carrey began comedy in 1979, performing at Yuk Yuk's in Toronto, Ontario...
in mind, and Carrey agreed to play a multitude of roles in the film, including Ebenezer Scrooge
Ebenezer Scrooge
Ebenezer Scrooge is the principal character in Charles Dickens's 1843 novel, A Christmas Carol. At the beginning of the novel, Scrooge is a cold-hearted, tight-fisted and greedy man, who despises Christmas and all things which give people happiness...
as a young, middle-aged, and old man, and the three ghosts who haunt Scrooge. The film began production in February 2008, and was released on November 6, 2009, again to mixed reviews. Actor Gary Oldman
Gary Oldman
Gary Leonard Oldman is an English actor, voice actor, filmmaker and musician.A member of the 1980s Brit Pack, Oldman came to prominence via starring roles in British films Meantime , Sid and Nancy and Prick Up Your Ears , with his performance in the latter bringing him his first BAFTA Award...
also appeared in the film.
In August 2008, Movies IGN
IGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
revealed in an interview with Philippe Petit
Philippe Petit
Philippe Petit is a French high-wire artist who gained fame for his high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, New York, on 7 August 1974...
that Zemeckis is working with Petit to turn Petit's memoir To Reach the Clouds into a feature film. Robert Zemeckis was either seriously considered to, or attached to direct the 2005 version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a 1964 children's book by British author Roald Dahl. The story features the adventures of young Charlie Bucket inside the chocolate factory of the eccentric chocolatier, Willy Wonka....
. Zemeckis is an avid supporter of 3-D Digital Cinema, and has stated that, starting with the 3-D presentations of Beowulf
Beowulf (2007 film)
Beowulf is a 2007 American animated fantasy film written by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary inspired by the Old English epic poem of the same name. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, the film was created through a motion capture process similar to the technique he used in The Polar Express...
, all of his future films will be done in 3-D using digital motion capture
Motion capture
Motion capture, motion tracking, or mocap are terms used to describe the process of recording movement and translating that movement on to a digital model. It is used in military, entertainment, sports, and medical applications, and for validation of computer vision and robotics...
. He has reportedly backed away from that statement and has said that the decision to use 3-D will be on a film-by-film basis.
On August 19, 2009, it was reported that Zemeckis and his company were in talks with Apple Corps ltd
Apple Corps
Apple Corps Ltd. is a multi-armed multimedia corporation founded in January 1968 by the members of The Beatles to replace their earlier company and to form a conglomerate. Its name is a pun. Its chief division is Apple Records, which was launched in the same year...
to remake the animated film Yellow Submarine in 3-D once again utilizing performance capture. However, on March 15, 2011, Disney canceled its involvement due to the box office failure of Mars Needs Moms, and permanently closed down ImageMovers Digital.
Despite this, Zemeckis has expressed wishes to return to direct the long-awaited sequel to Disney's 1988 Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a 1988 American fantasy-comedy-noir film directed by Robert Zemeckis and released by Touchstone Pictures. The film combines live action and animation, and is based on Gary K. Wolf's novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, which depicts a world in which cartoon characters...
, which will now remain a combination of 2-D animation and live-action. Peter S. Seaman and Jeffrey Price, the writers of the first film are now working on a new script.
On April 20, 2011, it was reported that Zemeckis would make his return to filmmaking with Flight, a drama for Paramount with Denzel Washington
Denzel Washington
Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. is an American actor, screenwriter, director, and film producer. He first rose to prominence when he joined the cast of the medical drama, St. Elsewhere, playing Dr...
.
Personal life
Zemeckis has said that, for a long time, he sacrificed his personal life in favor of a career. "I won an Academy Award when I was 44 years old," he explained, "but I paid for it with my 20s. That decade of my life from film school till 30 was nothing but work, nothing but absolute, driving work. I had no money. I had no life." In the early 1980s, Zemeckis married actress Mary Ellen TrainorMary Ellen Trainor
Mary Ellen Trainor is an American actress best remembered as either Dr. Stephanie Woods in Lethal Weapon or as Harriet Walsh in The Goonies.Trainor was born in Chicago, Illinois...
, with whom he had a son, Alexander. He described the marriage as difficult to balance with filmmaking, and his relationship with Trainor eventually ended in divorce. In 2001, he married actress Leslie Harter. According to cfidarren.com, Zemeckis is rated an Instrument Flight Rules
Instrument flight rules
Instrument flight rules are one of two sets of regulations governing all aspects of civil aviation aircraft operations; the other are visual flight rules ....
(IFR) Private Pilot
Private Pilot
A private pilot is the holder of a Private Pilot License. They are able to fly to almost anywhere in the world, but are limited in the type of aircraft that they can fly...
.
Politics
According to campaign donation records, Robert Zemeckis has frequently contributed to the political candidates affiliated with the Democratic PartyDemocratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
, as well as PACs that support the interests of aircraft owners and pilots, family planning
Family planning
Family planning is the planning of when to have children, and the use of birth control and other techniques to implement such plans. Other techniques commonly used include sexuality education, prevention and management of sexually transmitted infections, pre-conception counseling and...
interests, and a group that advocates for Hollywood women.
Recurring collaborators
Among the actors that have collaborated with Zemeckis on his films, other filmmakers, writers, and producers have also collaborated with Zemeckis in multiple instances. This includes Steven SpielbergSteven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
, Bob Gale
Bob Gale
Michael Robert "Bob" Gale is an American screenwriter who co-wrote the science fiction film Back to the Future with writing partner Robert Zemeckis, and the screenplays for the film's two sequels. Gale also co-produced all three films....
, Frank Marshall, Kathleen Kennedy, Steve Starkey
Steve Starkey
Steve Starkey is an American film producer and second unit director who is widely associated with Robert Zemeckis. He served as an assistant film editor for both Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi .-Filmography:*Star Wars Episode V: The Empire...
, Jack Rapke
Jack Rapke
Jack Rapke is an American film producer who has produced such films as the 2000 Robert Zemeckis film Cast Away.- Filmography :* What Lies Beneath * Cast Away * Matchstick Men * The Polar Express...
, Arthur Schmidt, Dean Cundey
Dean Cundey
-Life and career:Cundey was born in Alhambra, California, United States. As a child, he used to build model sets, suggesting an interest in films from an early age...
and Neil Canton
Neil Canton
Neil Canton is an American film producer from New York City. The film Caddyshack II was nominated for the unsolicited Razzie Award for Worst Picture...
. Also, music composer Alan Silvestri
Alan Silvestri
Alan Anthony Silvestri is an American film composer and conductor.-Career:Silvestri is best known for his collaborations with director Robert Zemeckis, having scored Romancing the Stone , the Back to the Future trilogy , Who Framed Roger Rabbit , Death Becomes Her , Forrest Gump , Contact ,...
has been responsible for every film score for Zemeckis' films since Romancing the Stone.
! Actor
! class="collapsible" |I Wanna Hold Your Hand
I Wanna Hold Your Hand (film)
I Wanna Hold Your Hand is a comedy film directed and co-written by Robert Zemeckis, which takes its name from the 1963 song "I Want to Hold Your Hand" by The Beatles. It was produced and co-written by Bob Gale. The film is about "Beatlemania" and is a fictionalized account of the day of the...
(1978)
! Used Cars
Used Cars
Used Cars is a 1980 comedy satire film. It stars Kurt Russell, Jack Warden , Deborah Harmon, and Gerrit Graham.Kurt Russell portrays a devious car salesman working for affable but monumentally unsuccessful used car dealer Luke Fuchs . Luke's principal rival, located directly across the street, is...
(1980)
! Romancing the Stone
Romancing the Stone
Romancing the Stone is a 1984 American action-adventure romantic comedy. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, it stars Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito. The film was followed by a 1985 sequel, The Jewel of the Nile....
(1984)
! Back to the Future
Back to the Future
Back to the Future is a 1985 American science-fiction adventure film. It was directed by Robert Zemeckis, written by Zemeckis and Bob Gale, produced by Steven Spielberg, and starred Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover and Thomas F. Wilson. The film tells the story of...
(1985)
! Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a 1988 American fantasy-comedy-noir film directed by Robert Zemeckis and released by Touchstone Pictures. The film combines live action and animation, and is based on Gary K. Wolf's novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, which depicts a world in which cartoon characters...
(1988)
! Back to the Future Part II
Back to the Future Part II
Back to the Future Part II is a 1989 American science fiction comedy film and the second installment of the Back to the Future trilogy. It was directed by Robert Zemeckis, written by Zemeckis and Bob Gale, and starred Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Thomas F. Wilson and Lea Thompson...
(1989)
! Back to the Future Part III
Back to the Future Part III
Back to the Future Part III is a 1990 American science fiction comedy Western film. It is the third installment of the Back to the Future trilogy. The film was directed by Robert Zemeckis and starred Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Mary Steenburgen, Thomas F. Wilson and Lea Thompson. The film...
(1990)
! Death Becomes Her
Death Becomes Her
Death Becomes Her is a 1992 American dark slapstick screwball comedy fantasy film directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Goldie Hawn, Meryl Streep, and Bruce Willis...
(1992)
! Forrest Gump
Forrest Gump
Forrest Gump is a 1994 American epic comedy-drama romance film based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Winston Groom. The film was directed by Robert Zemeckis, starring Tom Hanks, Robin Wright and Gary Sinise...
(1994)
! Contact
Contact (film)
Contact is a 1997 American science fiction drama film adapted from the Carl Sagan novel of the same name and directed by Robert Zemeckis. Both Sagan and wife Ann Druyan wrote the story outline for the film adaptation of Contact....
(1997)
! What Lies Beneath
What Lies Beneath
What Lies Beneath is a 2000 American supernatural horror-thriller film directed by Robert Zemeckis. It stars veteran actors Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer as a well-to-do couple who experience a strange haunting that uncovers secrets about their past....
(2000)
! Cast Away
Cast Away
Cast Away is a 2000 drama film directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Tom Hanks as a FedEx employee stranded on an uninhabited island after his plane crashes in the South Pacific. The film depicts his successful attempts to survive on the island using remnants of his plane's cargo, as well as his...
(2000)
! The Polar Express
The Polar Express (film)
The Polar Express is a 2004 motion capture computer-animated film based on the children's book of the same title by Chris Van Allsburg. Written, produced, and directed by Robert Zemeckis, the human characters in the film were animated using live action performance capture technique, with the...
(2004)
! Beowulf
Beowulf (2007 film)
Beowulf is a 2007 American animated fantasy film written by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary inspired by the Old English epic poem of the same name. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, the film was created through a motion capture process similar to the technique he used in The Polar Express...
(2007)
! A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol (2009 film)
A Christmas Carol is a 2009 film written and directed by Robert Zemeckis...
(2009)>
Tom Hanks
Thomas Jeffrey "Tom" Hanks is an American actor, producer, writer, and director. Hanks worked in television and family-friendly comedies, gaining wide notice in 1988's Big, before achieving success as a dramatic actor in several notable roles, including Andrew Beckett in Philadelphia, the title...
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Bob Hoskins
Robert William "Bob" Hoskins, Jr. is an English actor known for playing Cockney rough diamonds, psychopaths and gangsters, in films such as The Long Good Friday , and Mona Lisa , and lighter roles in family films such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Hook .- Early life :Hoskins was born in Bury St...
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Christopher Lloyd
Christopher Allen Lloyd is an American actor. He is best known for playing Emmett Brown in the Back to the Future trilogy, Uncle Fester in The Addams Family and Addams Family Values, and Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. He played Reverend Jim Ignatowski in the television series Taxi and more...
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Michael J. Fox
Michael J. Fox, OC is a Canadian American actor, author, producer, activist and voice-over artist. With a film and television career spanning from the late 1970s, Fox's roles have included Marty McFly from the Back to the Future trilogy ; Alex P...
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Crispin Glover
Crispin Hellion Glover is an American film actor, director and screenwriter, recording artist, publisher, and author. Glover is known for portraying eccentric people on screen such as George McFly in Back to the Future, Layne in River's Edge, unfriendly recluse Rubin Farr in Rubin and Ed, the...
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Kathleen Turner
Mary Kathleen Turner is an American actress. She came to fame during the 1980s, after roles in the Hollywood films Body Heat, Peggy Sue Got Married, Romancing the Stone, The War of the Roses, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Prizzi's Honor...
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Charles Fleischer
Charles Fleischer is an American actor, stand-up comedian and voice artist.-Life and career:Fleischer was born in Washington, D.C. As a child, he is reported to have spent several summers at Kamp Kewanee in La Plume, Pennsylvania, where he started practicing his stand-up routine at age nine...
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James Tolkan
James S. Tolkan is an American actor, often cast as a strict, overbearing, bald-headed authority figure.-Personal life:He was born in Calumet, Michigan, the son of Ralph M. Tolkan, a cattle dealer, and attended the University of Iowa, Coe College, the Actors Studio and Eastern Arizona College...
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Dub Taylor
Walter Clarence Taylor, Jr. , better known as Dub Taylor, was an American actor who worked extensively in Westerns, but also in comedy from the 1940s into the 1990s.-Early life:...
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Lea Thompson
Lea Katherine Thompson is an American actress and director. She is best known for her 1990s NBC situation comedy Caroline in the City and her portrayal of Lorraine Baines McFly, Marty McFly's mother, in the Back to the Future trilogy...
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Thomas F. Wilson
Thomas F. Wilson is an American actor, writer, musician, painter, voice-over artist and stand-up comedian. He is best known for playing Biff Tannen in the Back to the Future trilogy and Coach Ben Fredricks on NBC's Freaks and Geeks.-Early life:Thomas Francis Wilson, Jr. was...
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Marc McClure
Marc A. McClure is an American actor. McClure was born in San Mateo, California. He is not, despite a popular misconception, related to the late Doug McClure.-Superman film series:...
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Wendie Jo Sperber
Wendie Jo Sperber was an American actress, best known for her performances in the films I Wanna Hold Your Hand , Bachelor Party and Back to the Future as well as the television sitcom Bosom Buddies .-Life:Sperber was born in Hollywood and aimed for a performing-arts career from high school onward...
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Joe Flaherty
Joe Flaherty is an American-Canadian actor and comedian. He is best known for his work on the Canadian sketch comedy SCTV, from 1976 to 1984, and as Harold Weir on Freaks and Geeks...
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Daryl Sabara
Daryl Christopher Sabara is an American film and television actor. He is perhaps best known for playing Juni Cortez in the Spy Kids film series, as well as for a variety of television and film appearances, including Wizards of Waverly Place, Father of the Pride, The Polar Express, Keeping Up with...
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Deborah Harmon
Deborah Harmon is an is an American film actress. She is the daughter of actor Frank Harmon.-Filmography:*Imps* .... Mom *Malcolm in the Middle as Parent Volunteer...
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Mary Ellen Trainor
Mary Ellen Trainor is an American actress best remembered as either Dr. Stephanie Woods in Lethal Weapon or as Harriet Walsh in The Goonies.Trainor was born in Chicago, Illinois...
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Director filmography
| Year | Film | Oscar Nominations | Oscar Wins | BAFTA Nominations | BAFTA Wins | Golden Globe Nominations | Golden Globe Wins | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1978 | I Wanna Hold Your Hand I Wanna Hold Your Hand (film) I Wanna Hold Your Hand is a comedy film directed and co-written by Robert Zemeckis, which takes its name from the 1963 song "I Want to Hold Your Hand" by The Beatles. It was produced and co-written by Bob Gale. The film is about "Beatlemania" and is a fictionalized account of the day of the... |
Also co-writer | ||||||
| 1980 | Used Cars Used Cars Used Cars is a 1980 comedy satire film. It stars Kurt Russell, Jack Warden , Deborah Harmon, and Gerrit Graham.Kurt Russell portrays a devious car salesman working for affable but monumentally unsuccessful used car dealer Luke Fuchs . Luke's principal rival, located directly across the street, is... |
Also co-writer | ||||||
| 1984 | Romancing the Stone Romancing the Stone Romancing the Stone is a 1984 American action-adventure romantic comedy. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, it stars Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito. The film was followed by a 1985 sequel, The Jewel of the Nile.... |
1 | 2 | 1 | ||||
| 1985 | Back to the Future Back to the Future Back to the Future is a 1985 American science-fiction adventure film. It was directed by Robert Zemeckis, written by Zemeckis and Bob Gale, produced by Steven Spielberg, and starred Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover and Thomas F. Wilson. The film tells the story of... |
4 | 1 | 5 | 4 | Also co-writer | ||
| 1988 | Who Framed Roger Rabbit Who Framed Roger Rabbit Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a 1988 American fantasy-comedy-noir film directed by Robert Zemeckis and released by Touchstone Pictures. The film combines live action and animation, and is based on Gary K. Wolf's novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, which depicts a world in which cartoon characters... |
6 | 4 | 5 | 1 | 2 | ||
| 1989 | Back to the Future Part II Back to the Future Part II Back to the Future Part II is a 1989 American science fiction comedy film and the second installment of the Back to the Future trilogy. It was directed by Robert Zemeckis, written by Zemeckis and Bob Gale, and starred Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Thomas F. Wilson and Lea Thompson... |
1 | 1 | 1 | Also story | |||
| 1990 | Back to the Future Part III Back to the Future Part III Back to the Future Part III is a 1990 American science fiction comedy Western film. It is the third installment of the Back to the Future trilogy. The film was directed by Robert Zemeckis and starred Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Mary Steenburgen, Thomas F. Wilson and Lea Thompson. The film... |
Also story | ||||||
| 1992 | Death Becomes Her Death Becomes Her Death Becomes Her is a 1992 American dark slapstick screwball comedy fantasy film directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Goldie Hawn, Meryl Streep, and Bruce Willis... |
1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||
| 1994 | Forrest Gump Forrest Gump Forrest Gump is a 1994 American epic comedy-drama romance film based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Winston Groom. The film was directed by Robert Zemeckis, starring Tom Hanks, Robin Wright and Gary Sinise... |
13 | 6 | 8 | 1 | 7 | 3 | Academy Award for Best Director |
| 1997 | Contact Contact (film) Contact is a 1997 American science fiction drama film adapted from the Carl Sagan novel of the same name and directed by Robert Zemeckis. Both Sagan and wife Ann Druyan wrote the story outline for the film adaptation of Contact.... |
1 | 1 | |||||
| 2000 | What Lies Beneath What Lies Beneath What Lies Beneath is a 2000 American supernatural horror-thriller film directed by Robert Zemeckis. It stars veteran actors Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer as a well-to-do couple who experience a strange haunting that uncovers secrets about their past.... |
|||||||
| Cast Away Cast Away Cast Away is a 2000 drama film directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Tom Hanks as a FedEx employee stranded on an uninhabited island after his plane crashes in the South Pacific. The film depicts his successful attempts to survive on the island using remnants of his plane's cargo, as well as his... |
2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||
| 2004 | The Polar Express The Polar Express (film) The Polar Express is a 2004 motion capture computer-animated film based on the children's book of the same title by Chris Van Allsburg. Written, produced, and directed by Robert Zemeckis, the human characters in the film were animated using live action performance capture technique, with the... |
3 | Also co-writer | |||||
| 2007 | Beowulf Beowulf (2007 film) Beowulf is a 2007 American animated fantasy film written by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary inspired by the Old English epic poem of the same name. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, the film was created through a motion capture process similar to the technique he used in The Polar Express... |
|||||||
| 2009 | A Christmas Carol A Christmas Carol (2009 film) A Christmas Carol is a 2009 film written and directed by Robert Zemeckis... |
Also writer | ||||||
| 2013 | Flight | |||||||
| Total | 32 | 12 | 21 | 4 | 18 | 5 | 71 nominations, 21 wins |
Other
| Year | Film | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1979 | 1941 1941 (film) 1941 is a 1979 period comedy film directed by Steven Spielberg, written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, and featuring an ensemble cast including John Belushi, Ned Beatty, John Candy, Toshiro Mifune, Christopher Lee and Dan Aykroyd... |
Co-writer |
| 1989–1996 | Tales from the Crypt Tales from the Crypt (TV series) Tales from the Crypt, sometimes titled HBO's Tales from the Crypt, is an American horror anthology television series that ran from 1989 to 1996 on the premium cable channel HBO... |
Executive producer |
| 1996 | The Frighteners The Frighteners The Frighteners is a 1996 comedy horror film directed by Peter Jackson and co-written with his wife, Fran Walsh. The film's cast includes Michael J. Fox, Trini Alvarado, John Astin, Jeffrey Combs, Dee Wallace, Jake Busey and Chi McBride... |
Executive producer |
| 1999 | House on Haunted Hill House on Haunted Hill (1999 film) House on Haunted Hill is a 1999 American horror film, directed by William Malone and starring Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, Taye Diggs, Ali Larter and Jeffrey Combs. It also includes a cameo appearance by Peter Graves... |
Co-producer |
| 2003 | Matchstick Men Matchstick Men Matchstick Men is a 2003 American drama film directed by Ridley Scott. Based on Eric Garcia's novel Matchstick Men: A Novel about Grifters with Issues , the motion picture stars Nicolas Cage, Sam Rockwell, and Alison Lohman.-Plot:... |
Executive producer |
| 2006 | Monster House Monster House (film) Monster House is a 2006 computer animated motion capture horror/comedy film produced by ImageMovers and Amblin Entertainment, and distributed by Columbia Pictures. Executive produced by Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg, this is the first time since Back to the Future Part III that they have... |
Executive producer |
| 2011 | Mars Needs Moms | Producer |
| Real Steel Real Steel Real Steel is a 2011 American science fiction film starring Hugh Jackman and directed by Shawn Levy. The film is based in part on the 1956 short story "Steel" by Richard Matheson, though Levy placed the film in U.S. state fairs and other "old-fashioned" Americana settings. Real Steel was in... |
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