Bruce Joel Rubin | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1943-03-10)March 10, 1943 (age 82) |
| Other names | Bruce Rubin Derek Saunders |
| Education | Wayne State University Tisch School of the Arts (1962) |
| Occupation | Screenwriter |
| Notable work | Jacob's Ladder My Life Ghost |
| Spouse | Blanche |
| Children | Ari, Joshua |
| Awards | Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay (1990) |
| Website | brucejoelrubin |
Bruce Joel Rubin (born March 10, 1943) is an American screenwriter, meditation teacher, and photographer. His films often explore themes of life and death with metaphysical and science fiction elements. Prominent among them areJacob's Ladder,My Life andGhost, for which he received theOscar forBest Original Screenplay.Ghost was also nominated forBest Picture, and was thehighest-grossing film of 1990. He is sometimes credited as "Derek Saunders" or simply "Bruce Rubin".
Born to aJewish family[1] and raised inDetroit, Michigan, Rubin is a 1960 graduate of Detroit'sMumford High School.
His love of theater began at the age of five when he saw his mother acting inMary Poppins at a local high school. He later became an actor and director in high school plays.[2]
Rubin traces his interest in filmmaking to viewing the Ingmar Bergman filmWild Strawberries at the Krim Theater in Detroit when he was a teenager. He attended Detroit'sWayne State University for two years, then transferred toNYU film school in 1962.[2]
Rubin only took one screenwriting course at NYU and almost failed it, due in part to what he considered the confusing, non-intuitive theories on plotting and structure.[3][4] His classmates at NYU includedMartin Scorsese andBrian De Palma, who became the director ofJennifer,[5] Rubin's first student script.
While still at NYU, Rubin got a job selling hot dogs and beer at the1964 New York World's Fair. Every day he spent his lunch break at the Johnson's Wax Pavilion watching a 20-minute movie,To Be Alive! by Francis Thompson, about the commonalities of growing up in cultures across the U.S., Europe, Africa and Asia. It was viewed on three separate 18-foot screens, and a single-screen version won the Oscar for documentary (short subject). At the end, the narrator states, "Simply to be alive is a great joy." This inspired Rubin, who said he "wanted to bring that feeling into the world somehow — that it's wonderful to be alive."[2]
In 1966, Rubin became an assistant film editor atNBC's evening news show,The Huntley-Brinkley Report,[6] but anLSD experience inspired his departure on a spiritual quest a year later. He meditated inGreece and then headed forTibet, hitchhiking throughTurkey,Iran,Afghanistan andPakistan, where he "felt embraced and expanded by each culture." He lived in ashrams inIndia, a Tibetan monastery inKathmandu, aBuddhist temple inBangkok and a Sikh temple inSingapore. He spent a month inJapan, and a week sleeping amidst excavations in the temples atAngkor Wat. But it wasn't until Rubin returned toNew York City that he met his spiritual teacher,Rudi, only a few blocks away from where he began his journey. And once again, he tried to establish a film career.[2]
David Bienstock, an independent filmmaker who was Curator of Film at theWhitney Museum inNew York, was a friend of Rubin's and hired him as an assistant. Rubin later became Assistant Curator of Film and helped establishThe New American Filmmakers Series, a launching pad for independent filmmakers and a precursor toSundance. Rubin and Bienstock also began writing a science fiction screenplay,Quasar. Rubin recalled, "We came up with a story about an astronomer who discovers what he thinks is a giant quasar, but it turns out to be something that spiritually changes his life. That was the breakthrough. My spiritual life and my creative life merged. It all became one journey, one unfolding." The script was later optioned byIngo Preminger, producer of the Oscar-winning movieMASH, but whenRichard Zanuck, President ofWarner Brothers, said he didn't understand the ending, the option expired. Zanuck would later produce Rubin's filmDeep Impact.[2][4][6]
The passing of David Bienstock and Rudi in the same year was a catalyst for Rubin and his family's move toIndiana in 1974, to be near another student of Rudi's. Over the next six years, Bruce's wife Blanche would earn her Doctorate atIndiana University while Rubin earned his master's degree, taught meditation, and took a string of odd jobs while trying to write. They moved toDeKalb, Illinois, in 1980 when Blanche was hired as a professor atNorthern Illinois University. While there, Rubin began writingJacob's Ladder and the treatment forGhost, and waited to hear about a script he'd started in New York and sold in 1979,The George Dunlap Tape.[2][3][4][6]
The director of Rubin'sGeorge Dunlap Tape script, Doug Trumbull (2001: A Space Odyssey,Close Encounters,Blade Runner) brought in other writers and the film opened in 1983 asBrainstorm, starringChristopher Walken andNatalie Wood, in her last film. Rubin borrowed money from a producer to travel to the Los Angeles premiere ofBrainstorm. While there, Rubin and his wife talked with his former NYU classmateBrian De Palma, who Rubin credits with his move to L.A. "[Brian] said, 'Bruce, if you want a career in Hollywood you have to move here.' I had heard that a thousand times and never wanted to believe it because of the terror of moving to Hollywood and not having anybody answer your phone calls. But my wife took it to heart, and when we arrived back in Illinois she quit her job, put our house on the market, and said we're doing it. It was the most courageous act I've ever experienced."[3][4]
Two weeks before Rubin and his family were leaving for L.A., they sold their home. On the same day, Rubin also got a call from his L.A. agent, dropping Rubin as a client because his work was "too metaphysical and nobody wanted to make movies about ghosts." Rubin was discouraged but his wife was not. "So we ended up moving to Hollywood with no money... and within a week I had a house and an agent. I had a writing job. I was very lucky."[2][4]
Rubin's screenwriting career was assisted by a December 1983American Film magazine (AFI) article written byStephen Rebello titled "One in a Million," listing ten of the best unproduced scripts inHollywood, scripts that he said "were just too good to get produced." Rebello had read 125 scripts recommended by respected industry connections. The final ten screenplays includedThe Princess Bride,Total Recall,At Close Range andJacob's Ladder. Rebello wrote in part: "Admirers of Bruce Joel Rubin'sJacob's Ladder flat out refuse to describe this screenplay. Their only entreaty? 'Read it. It's extraordinary.' And it is... page for page, it is one of the very few screenplays I've read with the power to consistently raise hackles in broad daylight."[4][7]
AboutJacob's Ladder, Rubin wrote:
The script idea forJacob's Ladder began as a dream: A subway late at night; I am traveling through the bowels of New York City. There are very few people on the train. A terrible loneliness grips me. The train pulls into the station and I get off. The platform is deserted. I walk to the nearest exit, and discover the gate is locked. A feeling of terrible despair begins to pulse through me as I hike to the other end of the platform. To my horror, that exit is chained, too. I am totally trapped and overwhelmed by a sense of doom. I know with perfect certainty that I will never see daylight again. My only hope is to jump onto the tracks and enter the tunnel, the darkness. The only direction from there is down. I know the next stop on my journey is hell. Partly that came out of my own fear and despair, because nothing in my life seemed to be working. In Illinois, I felt like my story had evaporated completely. My story was, 'You don't have a story.' Here you are, living in a cornfield. No friends. No work. Your wife is supporting the family. Basically, in my mind, the story was over. I could have given up my filmmaking goals and settled into a different kind of lifestyle... My story would have been: 'Okay, you tried.' Instead, I woke up from my subway dream and said, 'That's a great opening for a movie.' I then tried to write my way out of hell...[3][6][2]
The filmMy Life, released in 1993, was Rubin's directorial debut.
In the next 30 years, inLos Angeles and later inNew York, Rubin would write more than 30 scripts and get 11 produced while continuing his meditation practice and teaching weekly meditation classes. Rubin has stated, "Each film was an attempt, successful or not, to witness and explore the unseen world of our lives. I wanted to speak to adults and to children and to touch the inner mystery of our shared being."[2]
Rubin wrote the book and lyrics forGhost the Musical (the musical adaptation ofGhost) which premiered in theUnited Kingdom in March 2011 and opened onBroadway in Spring 2012.
Rubin's creative focus has turned tophotography:
"The result of always carrying aniPhone in his pocket, he describes this new phase in his creative life as the discovery of seeing. As Bruce explains, 'The mystery and magic of the world is not hidden. It is under our feet, on old walls, in rusting garbage cans. The beauty, the wonder, never ends.' Although Bruce's film career has been entwined with the imagery of cinema, his primary focus has always been on narrative storytelling more than the visual. In recent years, he has shifted his focus to the image itself and has discovered that photographs, even in abstraction, have wonderful stories to tell."[2]
Rubin and his wife, Blanche, split their time betweenLos Angeles andSan Francisco, and he teaches weekly meditation classes in Dutchess County, New York. Blanche is an artist with a Doctorate in Art Education. She taught atIndiana University,Northern Illinois University, andCalifornia State University at Northridge, and was the Program Evaluator at theJ. Paul Getty Institute for Education in the Arts, where she helped create a national program.[8] Their younger son Ari, a pilot, screenwriter and former board member of theWGA, was in law school in 2018.[9] Their son Joshua has worked as an award-winning writer of major video games likeAssassin's Creed 2 andDestiny. In 2018 he was involved in the development of virtual reality projects, and worked as an Interactive Narrative Consultant with clients in the U.S. andEurope.[10][11]
Rubin is gay, which his wife has long known about.[12]
"Last Mimzy" is from a sci-fi story that was a childhood favorite of director Robert Shaye. The screenplay is by seasoned Jewish writers Toby Emmerich and Bruce Joel Rubin (who won an Oscar for his script for "Ghost"). Shaye told the Detroit Jewish News that he met Emmerich when they were kids attending a Conservative synagogue in suburban Detroit
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