Robert Lee Zemeckis (born May 14, 1952)[3] is an American filmmaker known for directing and producing a range of successful and influential movies, often blending cutting-edgevisual effects with storytelling. He has received several accolades including anAcademy Award and aGolden Globe Award, as well as nominations for fiveBritish Academy Film Awards and aDaytime Emmy Award.
Robert Lee Zemeckis was born on May 14, 1952, inChicago,[5] the son of Rosa (née Nespeca)[6] and Alphonse Zemeckis.[7] His father wasLithuanian-American while his mother wasItalian-American.[6] His father's parents, Kazimieras Žemeckas (1877–1960) and Marijona Dantaitė-Žemeckienė (1887–1945), were born inLithuania and later emigrated to theUnited States.[8]
Zemeckis grew up on theSouth Side of the city in aworking class family.[9][8] He attended aCatholic grade school andFenger Academy High School.[10] Zemeckis has said "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."[10]
As a child, he loved television and was fascinated by his parents'8 mm film home movie camera. Starting off by filming family events like birthdays and holidays, he gradually began producing narrative films with his friends that incorporatedstop-motion work and other visual effects. Along with enjoying movies, Zemeckis remained an avid TV viewer. "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;[10] specifically, he learned of the existence offilm schools on an episode ofThe Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
After seeingBonnie and Clyde with his father,[11] 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."[10]
Zemeckis first attendedNorthern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois, and gained early experience in film as a film cutter for NBC News in Chicago during a summer break.[12] He also edited commercials in his home state.[13] Zemeckis applied to transfer from NIU to theUniversity of Southern California'sSchool of Cinematic Arts in Los Angeles, California, and went into the Film School on the strength of an essay and a music video based onThe Beatles song. Not having heard from the university itself, Zemeckis called and was told he had been rejected because of his average grades. He 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.[10] At USC Zemeckis met a fellow student, writerBob Gale. 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 theFrench New Wave. We were interested inClint Eastwood andJames Bond andWalt Disney, because that's how we grew up."[14] Zemeckis graduated from USC in 1973,[15] and he and Gale cowrote the unproduced screenplaysTank andBordello of Blood, which they pitched toJohn Milius, the latter of which was later developed into a film which was released in 1996.[16][17][18]
As a result of winning aStudent Academy Award at USC for his filmA Field of Honor,[19] Zemeckis came to the attention ofSteven 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 toElmer Bernstein's score forThe Great Escape."[14] Spielberg became Zemeckis's mentor and executive produced his first two films, both of which Gale and Zemeckis co-wrote.
Spielberg producedI Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978, starringNancy Allen) andUsed Cars (1980, starringKurt Russell); both were critical, but not commercial, successes.I Wanna Hold Your Hand was the first of several Zemeckis films to incorporate historic figures and celebrities into his movies; he used archival footage and doubles to simulate the presence of the Beatles. After the failure of his first two films, and the Spielberg-directed1941 (1979) (written by Gale and Zemeckis), the pair gained a reputation for writing "scripts that everyone thought were great [but] somehow didn't translate into movies people wanted to see."[14]
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, includingCar Pool forBrian De Palma andGrowing Up for Spielberg; neither ended up getting made. Another Zemeckis-Gale project,Back to the Future, about a teenager who travels back in time to the 1950s, was turned down by every major studio.[20] The director was jobless untilMichael Douglas hired him in 1984 to directRomancing the Stone. A romantic adventure starring Douglas andKathleen Turner,Stone was expected to flop (to the point that, after viewing a rough cut of the film, the producers of the then-in-the-worksCocoon fired Zemeckis as director),[20] but the film became a sleeper hit. While working onRomancing the Stone, Zemeckis met composerAlan Silvestri, who has scored all his subsequent pictures.
AfterRomancing the Stone, Zemeckis had the clout to direct his time-traveling screenplay. StarringMichael J. Fox,Lea Thompson,Crispin Glover, andChristopher Lloyd, the 1985 film was wildly successful upon its release and was followed by two sequels, released asBack to the Future Part II in 1989 andBack to the Future Part III in 1990. Before theBack to the Future sequels were released, Zemeckis collaborated with Disney and directed another film, the madcap 1940s-set mysteryWho Framed Roger Rabbit, which combinedlive-action andtraditional animation; its $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 threeAcademy 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."[20]
In 1992, Zemeckis directed the black comedyDeath Becomes Her, starringMeryl Streep,Goldie Hawn, andBruce Willis. Although his next film would have some comedic elements, it was Zemeckis's first with dramatic elements and was also his biggest commercial success to date,Forrest Gump. StarringTom Hanks in the title role,Forrest Gump tells the story of a man with a lowI.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 US film of 1994; it won six Academy Awards, includingBest Picture,Best Actor (for Hanks) andBest Director (for Zemeckis). From this point, Hanks and Zemeckis became frequent collaborators.[21][22] In 1997, Zemeckis directedContact, a long-gestating project based onCarl Sagan's 1985novel of the same name. The film centers on Eleanor Arroway (Jodie Foster), who believes she has made contact with extraterrestrials. In the early 1990s, he founded South Side Amusement Company, which later becameImageMovers.[23]
During this same time period, Zemeckis was an executive producer ofHBO'sTales from the Crypt (1989–1996) and directed three episodes. In 1999, Zemeckis donated $5 million towards the Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts at USC, a 35,000-square-foot (3,300 m2) center. When the Center opened in March 2001, Zemeckis spoke in a panel about the future of film, alongside friends Steven Spielberg andGeorge 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 thatLPs 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. The 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."[24] The Robert Zemeckis Center currently hosts many film school classes, much of theInteractive Media Division, andTrojan Vision, USC's student television station, which has been voted the number one college television station in the country.
Zemeckis has collaborated withTom Hanks for five films
In 1996, Zemeckis had begun developing a project titledThe Castaway withTom Hanks and writerWilliam Broyles Jr. The story, inspired byRobinson Crusoe, is about a man who becomes stranded on a tropical island and undergoes a profound physical and spiritual change.[25] While working onThe Castaway, Zemeckis also became attached to aHitchcockian thriller titledWhat Lies Beneath, the story of a married couple experiencing an extreme case ofempty nest syndrome that was based on an idea by Steven Spielberg.[26] Because Hanks's character needed to undergo a dramatic weight loss over the course ofThe Castaway (retitledCast Away for release), Zemeckis decided that the only way to retain the same crew while Hanks lost the weight was to shootWhat Lies Beneath in between. He shot the first part ofCast Away in early 1999, and shotWhat Lies Beneath in fall 1999, completing work on the former in early 2000.[26] Zemeckis later quipped, when asked about shooting two films back-to-back, "I wouldn't recommend it to anyone."[25]What Lies Beneath, starringHarrison Ford andMichelle Pfeiffer, was released in July 2000 to mixed reviews, but did well at the box office, grossing over $155 million domestically.Cast Away, starring Hanks andTwister actressHelen Hunt, was released that December and grossed $233 million domestically;[27] Hanks received an Oscar nomination forBest Actor for his portrayal of Chuck Noland.
In 2004, Zemeckis re-collaborated with Hanks forThe Polar Express, based onChris Van Allsburg'schildren's book of the same name.The Polar Express utilized thecomputer animation technique known asmotion capture, where the movements of the actors are captured digitally and used as the basis for the animated characters. As the very first film to use motion capture,The Polar Express causedThe 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."[28] Zemeckis served as an executive producer forMonster House (2006), a family-friendly horror comedy that used motion capture.[29]
Zemeckis's star on Walk of Fame, Hollywood, LA
In February 2007, Zemeckis andWalt Disney Studios chairmanDick Cook announced plans for a new motion capture film company devoted to CGI-created, 3-D movies.[30] The company,ImageMovers Digital, created films using the motion capture technology, with Zemeckis directing most of the projects which Disney distributed and marketed worldwide. Zemeckis used the motion capture technology again in his film,Beowulf, to retell the Anglo-Saxonepic poem of the same name. It featuredRay Winstone,Angelina Jolie, andAnthony Hopkins.Neil Gaiman, who co-wrote the adaptation withRoger Avary, described the film as a "cheerfully violent and strange take on the Beowulf legend."[31] The film was released on November 16, 2007, to mostly positive reviews and grossed $196 million worldwide. In July 2007,Variety announced that Zemeckis had written a screenplay forA Christmas Carol, based onCharles Dickens's 1843short story of the same name, with plans to use motion capture and release it under the aegis of ImageMovers Digital. Zemeckis wrote the script withJim Carrey in mind, and Carrey agreed to play a multitude of roles in the film, includingEbenezer Scrooge as a young, middle-aged, and old man, and the three ghosts who haunt Scrooge.[32] The film began production in February 2008 and was released on November 6, 2009, to mixed reviews[33] and grossed $325 million at the box office. ActorGary Oldman also appeared in the film.[34] Zemeckis is an avid supporter of 3-D Digital Cinema and has stated that since the 3-D presentations ofBeowulf, all of his future films would be done in 3-D using digitalmotion capture. He has reportedly backed away from that statement and said that the decision to use 3-D will be on a film-by-film basis.[citation needed]
On August 19, 2009, it was reported that Zemeckis and his company were in talks withApple Corps Ltd. to remake the animated filmYellow Submarine utilizing motion capture. However, on March 12, 2010, with Zemeckis's biggest Disney ally, former chairman Dick Cook, gone, and amid drastic cost-cutting by the new management team, Disney announced that it was ending its relationship with ImageMovers Digital.[35] The studio's final film, 2011's Zemeckis-producedMars Needs Moms, was the second-worst box office failure in history, with a net loss of roughly $130 million. Zemeckis made his comeback to live-action filmmaking withFlight, a 2012 drama for Paramount, starringDenzel Washington. On January 31, 2014, it was announced that astagemusical adaptation of Zemeckis's firstBack to the Future film was in production.[36] The show would be co-written by original writers Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale.[37] According to Gale, the musical would be "true to the spirit of the film without being a slavish remake".[38]
Zemeckis with wife Leslie Harter, at the French premiere ofFlight, January 2013
In August 2008,IGN revealed in an interview withPhilippe Petit that Zemeckis was working with Petit to turn Petit's memoirTo Reach the Clouds into a feature film.[39] In 2015, he directedThe Walk, about Philippe Petit (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and his ambition to tightrope walk between the towers of New York City's World Trade Center.Paramount Pictures andNew Regency announced in February 2015 that Zemeckis would directBrad Pitt inAllied, a romantic thriller set during World War II.[40] The film was released on November 23, 2016. Next, Zemeckis directed the fantasy dramaWelcome to Marwen, starringSteve Carell, which was released in December 2018 to mixed reviews and flopped at the box office.[41] Zemeckis's filmThe Witches, an adaptation of the Roald Dahlnovel of the same name, premiered on October 22, 2020, onHBO Max, also to mixed reviews.[42]
On October 18, 2019, it was announced that Zemeckis is in talks to direct Disney'slive-action adaptation ofPinocchio.[43] Zemeckis was officially announced as the film's director and co-writer of the script in January 2020.[44] In addition,Tom Hanks was reportedly announced as playingMister Geppetto in the film, marking the fourth collaboration with Hanks sinceForrest Gump,Cast Away, andThe Polar Express.[45] The film was later released, as part ofDisney+ Day onDisney+, on September 8, 2022, to highly negative reviews from critics, nominated for sixRazzies, includingWorst Picture andWorst Director for Zemeckis ("winning"Worst Remake), losing toBlonde. Despite this, it also received aVisual Effects Society Award nomination for Outstanding Animated Character in a Photoreal Feature.
On February 17, 2022, Zemeckis signed on to directHere, an adaptation of thegraphic novel byRichard McGuire, withTom Hanks set to star andForrest Gump screenwriterEric Roth working on the screenplay with Zemeckis.[46] On May 11, it was announced thatRobin Wright had been cast and thatTriStar Pictures had acquired distribution rights for the United States, withMiramax handling international sales and production expected to begin in September 2022 for a theatrical release in 2024.[47] On October 31, 2024, Zemeckis, during an appearance on Josh Horowitz'sHappy Sad Confused podcast to promoteHere, hinted at his plans to produce and direct a film adaptation of the stage musical version ofBack to the Future that would also serve as a remake of the original film. Universal has yet to green-light the project after an initial rejection of Zemeckis' pitch to the studio.[48]
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 [42] 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."[10] In the early 1980s, Zemeckis married actressMary Ellen Trainor, with whom he had a son, Alexander Francis.[citation needed] He described the marriage as difficult to balance with filmmaking,[10] and his relationship with Trainor eventually ended in divorce. On December 4, 2001, he married Leslie Harter, an actress,[51] with whom he has three children.[7][52][53]
According to campaign donation records, Zemeckis has frequently contributed to political candidates affiliated with theDemocratic Party, as well asPACs that support the interests of aircraft owners and pilots,family planning interests, and a group that advocates for Hollywood women.[56][unreliable source?]
Zemeckis owns avilla in theTuscany region of Italy, which is within the ruins of a 10th-century castle and is dedicated for summer vacations.[57]
In 2013, Zemeckis visited his father's parents home countryLithuania and its capital cityVilnius.[58]
^Leicester, John (July 24, 2021)."At Tokyo Olympics, a debt to 'Back to the Future' and 'E.T.'".ABC News. RetrievedDecember 12, 2021.'The skateboard associations and the BMX associations should be giving Bob Zemeckis, myself and Steven Spielberg lifetime achievement awards,' joked 'Back to the Future' screenwriter Bob Gale in an interview with The Associated Press ahead of the competitions.
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