Julia Phillips | |
|---|---|
 Phillips in 1991 | |
| Born | Julia Miller (1944-04-07)April 7, 1944 New York City, U.S. |
| Died | January 1, 2002(2002-01-01) (aged 57) |
| Occupation(s) | Film producer, author |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 1 |
Julia Phillips (néeMiller; April 7, 1944 – January 1, 2002) was an Americanfilm producer and author. She co-produced with her husbandMichael (and others) three prominent films of the 1970s—The Sting,Taxi Driver, andClose Encounters of the Third Kind—and was the first female producer to win anAcademy Award for Best Picture, received forThe Sting.
In 1991, Phillips published an infamoustell-all memoir of her years as a Hollywood producer, titledYou'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again, which became a bestseller.
Julia Miller was born on April 7, 1944 to a Polish-Jewish family[1][2] in New York City, the daughter of Tanya and Adolph Miller.[1] Her father was a chemical engineer[1] who worked on theManhattan Project;[1] her mother was a writer who became addicted to prescription drugs.[1] She grew up in Brooklyn; Great Neck, New York; and Milwaukee.[2] In 1965, she received a bachelor's degree in political science fromMount Holyoke College, and in 1966, she marriedMichael Phillips. After school, she worked as book section editor at theLadies' Home Journal and then as a story editor forParamount Pictures.[2] In 1971, she and her husband, who had been a securities analyst for two years, moved to California to produceSteelyard Blues withJane Fonda andDonald Sutherland, released in 1973.[3]
In 1972, Phillips along with her husbandMichael Phillips and producerTony Bill commissionedDavid S. Ward to write the screenplay forThe Sting, for $3,500.[4][2][3] In 1973,The Sting won theAcademy Award for Best Picture and made Phillips the first woman to win an Oscar as a producer (an award shared byTony Bill and Michael Phillips). In 1977,Taxi Driver, produced by the Phillipses, was nominated for Best Picture after winning the Palme d'Or at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival.Close Encounters of the Third Kind, her third major film, was produced with Michael Phillips.François Truffaut, one of the film's stars, publicly criticized Phillips as incompetent, a charge she rejected, writing that she essentially nursed Truffaut through his self-created nightmare of implied hearing loss, sickness and chaos during the production.[5] Phillips was also a notorious drug user (cocaine especially), which she chronicled in detail in her memoirs. The side-effects of cocaine addiction caused her to be fired fromClose Encounters of the Third Kind during post-production.[6] Periods of drug abuse, gratuitous spending and damaging boyfriends took their toll over the next few years.
Phillips's early work in a producing team with her husband continues to receive acclaim within the industry. Twenty-five years after itsOscar success,The Sting was inducted into theProducers Guild of America's Hall of Fame, granting each of its producers a Golden Laurel Award.[7] In June 2007,Taxi Driver was ranked as the 52nd-best American feature film of all time by theAmerican Film Institute.[8] In December 2007,Close Encounters was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in theNational Film Registry.[9]
In 1991, Phillips publishedYou'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again about her experiences in Hollywood. The book topped theNew York Times bestseller list, but its revelations about high-profile film personalities, Hollywood's drug culture, andcasting couch sensibilities drew ire from many former colleagues. Her follow-up book,Driving Under the Affluence, was released in 1995. It was mostly an account of how the success of her first book changed her life. In 2000, she helpedMatt Drudge write hisDrudge Manifesto.[10]
Phillips died from cancer at her home inWest Hollywood, California, on January 1, 2002, at the age of 57,[11][1] and was interred in theHillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California.[12] She had one daughter, Kate Phillips-Wiczyk, who is married to Modi Wiczyk, co-founder of independent film and television studioMedia Rights Capital.[13]
She was a producer in all films unless otherwise noted.
| Year | Film | Credit | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1973 | Steelyard Blues | ||
| The Sting | |||
| 1976 | Taxi Driver | ||
| The Big Bus | Executive producer | ||
| 1977 | Close Encounters of the Third Kind | ||
| 1987 | The Beat | ||
| 1988 | The Boost | Executive producer | Uncredited |
| 1991 | Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead | Final film as a producer |
| Year | Film | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1977 | New York, New York | Woman Flirting with Jimmy | Uncredited |
| Close Encounters of the Third Kind | UFO Watcher at Crescendo Summit |
You can't imagine what a trip it is for a nice Jewish girl from Great Neck to win an Academy Award and meet Elizabeth Taylor in the same night.
