Norman Jewison Speaks to Students

Norman Jewison Presents Talk to SBCC Film Students

Apart from the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, Norman Jewison, director and producer of motion pictures for many, many years, presented a talk to Film Studies students of Santa Barbara City College. Famous for his films, The Hurricane, The Statement, In the Heat of the Night, Jesus Christ Superstar, Fiddler on the Roof, The Russians are Coming, etc., he passed down some of what he has learned in his many years of making movies and dealing with business end of the industry.

Jewison began his career in the early days of live black and white TV. He especially loved musicals and directed the Judy Garland Show, The Revlon Review and Your Hit Parade. In the 60’s he got into making motion pictures – The Cincinnati Kid, The Russians are Coming, In the Heat of the Night, the Thomas Crown Affair and others – but by the 70’s he began to be troubled by the excessive control the studio began to have over the content of movies. So he became more involved as a producer as well as director.

When asked what makes a movie good, he answered, “It needs to be believable”. He explained that what is said, what is represented, what is shown and not shown, how it is or is not shown – it all needs to be believable. Secondly the movie needs to draw in the viewer emotionally. And it needs to hold them emotionally and engage them – make them laugh and make them cry. He gave many examples from the movies he has helped create. One example was from In the Heat of the Night. At a time when the south was in crisis after crisis
with the Civil Rights movements happening during that time, it was very believable that the characters would be in the situation they are in. And it was believable how they portrayed the scenes of racial prejudice and how they could get into the conflicts they found themselves engaged in. Jewison’s job was to keep the characters believable because the story was definitely timely.

Jewison talked about the distribution of movies these days, with many of the independently produced movies being nominated for awards. The corporate movie companies need to see that they cannot continue making money by playing it “safe”, creating films by formula or repeating a similar theme as the one that just made it big. He also feels that the corporate media companies should have more respect for the American audiences, meaning that they can handle more complex situations and events and philosophies than they are given credit for.

Jewison, who is 80 years old, isn’t retiring just yet. He’s in the process of making 3 more movies of which he is producer and director of 2. What a guy! And what a treat for the Film Studies students to get such a long perspective on the history of movie making as we know it today.

Feel free to chime in your two cents worth to this report, those of you who were there.

Submitted by Dorothy Littlejohn