Everything about Irvin Kershner totally explained
Irvin Kershner (born
April 29,
1923 in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), is an
American film director and occasional actor, best known for directing .
Background
Irvin Kershner's background is a mixture of music and art. The study of music (
violin,
viola, and composition) was the most important activity of his early years. He attended the
Temple University -
Tyler School of Fine Arts in
Philadelphia. Later, he went to New York and Provincetown to study with the famous painting teacher
Hans Hofmann. He then moved to Los Angeles where he studied photography at the
Art Center College of Design.
He began his film career at the
University of Southern California's School of Cinema, teaching photography and taking cinema courses under
Slavko Vorkapić, a montage artist and then dean of the School. Kershner then accepted a job as still photographer on a State Department film project in
Iran under the
Point Four Program, which ultimately led to an assignment as a director and cinematographer of documentaries in Iran,
Greece and
Turkey with the
United States Information Service.
When he returned to the States, he and the late Paul Coates developed
Confidential File, a documentary television series. Kershner worked as writer, director, cinematographer and editor. He later developed and directed the television series
The Rebel, as well as the pilots for
Peyton Place,
Cain's One Hundred,
Philip Marlowe, and others.
He then moved on to feature films, some of the best known of which are:
Hoodlum Priest which starred
Don Murray;
The Luck of Ginger Coffey with
Robert Shaw and Mare Ure;
A Fine Madness (with
Sean Connery,
Joanne Woodward and
Jean Seberg);
The Flim-Flam Man starring
George C. Scott;
Up the Sandbox with
Barbra Streisand;
The Return of a Man Called Horse starring
Richard Harris; the critically acclaimed TV movie
Raid on Entebbe which was nominated for nine
Emmys, including Best Direction;
The Eyes of Laura Mars starring
Faye Dunaway and
Tommy Lee Jones.
The Empire Strikes Back
Kershner is best known as the director of the hit 1980 film, the first sequel to the wildly successful . Kershner was a surprising choice for a blockbuster movie; according to him, when he asked producer
George Lucas "Of all the younger guys around, all the hot-shots, why me?", Lucas replied, "Well, because you know everything a
Hollywood director is supposed to know, but you're not Hollywood." Of his cinematic style, Kershner has said, "I like to fill up the frame with [thecharacters'] faces. There's nothing more interesting than the landscape of the human face."
Kershner considers himself an internationalist. He has said "I've been a student of Christianity. I've been interested in the historical basis of the Muslim religion. I studied Buddhism. I don't think of myself as a Jew except by birth, as I don't follow the customs. I'm a Jew because other people consider me so. My pride is in being international." He has also said
» "I'm afraid of patriotism. The world has gotten very small and cosmic awareness makes patriotism seem an adolescent notion, which is why immature minds are easily manipulated by it. I really believe that patriotism in its generally accepted sense means accepting social prejudices, and the fewer we've of them the freer we'll be."
Later work
Post-
Empire, Kershner has directed
Never Say Never Again (
Sean Connery's return to the role of
James Bond); the
HBO film
Travelling Man starring
John Lithgow and
Jonathan Silverman; for which Kershner was nominated for an
ACE Award; and
RoboCop 2. He has also directed several episodes of the television series
seaQuest DSV, and he made his debut as an actor in the controversial
1988 Martin Scorsese film,
The Last Temptation of Christ, playing
Zebedee, the father of the
apostles James and
John. He played a film director in
Steven Seagal's
On Deadly Ground.
Kershner is currently working on a variety of new projects, both in photography and film. These include a variety of photo series, as well as two films. He continues to lecture at universities and festivals throughout the U.S. He is a faculty member at the
Master of Professional Writing Program at the
University of Southern California.
Filmography
Further Information
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