Andrew Davis (director)
Andrew Davis | |
---|---|
Chicago, Illinois, U.S. | |
Occupation(s) | Film director, producer, screenwriter |
Years active | 1969–present |
Website | andrewdavisfilms |
Andrew Davis (born November 21, 1946) is an American film director, producer, writer, and
.Early life
Davis was born on the
After attending the
Wexler and Davis reunited in 2014 to discuss the film before a screening at the Pollock Theater on the campus of the University of California at Santa Barbara.[4]
In October 2006, he told a London press conference that he intends to make a film fusing the novels Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes and Tom Jones by Henry Fielding.[5]
Career
Davis is best known as a big-budget Hollywood filmmaker. His 1993 film The Fugitive starring Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones received seven Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, while Jones won for Best Supporting Actor, which is his only Oscar win to date. The Academy ultimately gave the 1993 Best Picture award to Schindler's List. That year Davis was also honored with a Golden Globe nomination for Best Director by the Hollywood Foreign Press. The Directors Guild of America nominated him for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Theatrical Direction.
Roger Ebert reviewed The Fugitive in 1993, he begins his review with, "Andrew Davis' The Fugitive is one of the best entertainments of the year, a tense, taut and expert thriller that becomes something more than that, an allegory about an innocent man in a world prepared to crush him." Ebert observed that "Davis paints with bold visual strokes" and that he "transcends genre and shows an ability to marry action and artistry that deserves comparison with Hitchcock, yes, and also with David Lean and Carol Reed."[6]
Early films
His first feature film as a director was the 1978 semi-biographical picture Stony Island. The film had a theatrical release in 1978 and was eventually released on DVD on April 24, 2012.[7] Stony Island centered on young musicians forming a band in their impoverished south side neighborhood. The film stars veteran musicians like saxophone player Gene Barge and soul singer Ronnie Barron as well as relative newcomers like Dennis Franz and Edward "Stony" Robinson. Roger Ebert describes the movie in a 2012 article, "The energy, I gather, came in large part from the performers themselves. The movie is more or less based on fact; the director and co-writer, Andy Davis, has a brother who was the last white kid on the block down on Stony Island, and actually was involved in a band something like the one in the movie."[8]
In 1981 Davis directed a slasher film titled The Final Terror, which was released in 1983. The film was produced by Joe Roth and features several early performances from stars like Rachel Ward, Daryl Hannah, and Joe Pantoliano, among others. Davis co-wrote a screenplay for a Harry Belafonte project Beat Street which was a rap musical featuring breakdancing and the street music culture of early eighties New York City. Mike Medavoy and Orion Pictures tapped Davis to direct the Chuck Norris vehicle, Code of Silence.
In 1986 Davis was hired as the director of The Running Man, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, but eventually got replaced by Paul Michael Glaser one week into filming.
Davis co-wrote, produced and directed a film titled Above the Law for Warner Brothers in 1988. This film is most notable for being the feature film debut of Steven Seagal. Davis then went back to Orion with his project The Package, working with Gene Hackman and Tommy Lee Jones.
1990s
Davis brought Jones with him to his next project, which was originally titled Dreadnaught but eventually carried the title Under Siege. In the picture Davis re-teamed with Seagal to create the top grossing fall film of 1992.
Davis continued directing big budget adventures throughout the 1990s including
2000s to present
In the fall of 2001, Davis was set to release Warner Brother's Collateral Damage starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. However, the initial release date was pushed in an effort to be sensitive to the tragedies of 9/11, as the film's plot and content too closely echoed the tragedy. The film was finally released theatrically in 2002.[9]
In 2003 Davis developed
Davis filmed the Disney/Touchstone feature film,
Davis is developing several projects through his Santa Barbara based production company, Chicago Pacific Entertainment, including: Silvers Gold - A Return to Treasure Island, a modern retelling of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic, adapting the Gene Wilder novella My French Whore, Mentors – a series for worldwide television with a pilot episode examining the lives of two legendary photographers.
Davis completed his first novel, alongside writer Jeff Biggers, Disturbing the Bones, a geopolitical thriller , set for release in summer 2024.
Filmography
Film
Year | Title | Director | Producer | Writer |
---|---|---|---|---|
1975 | Paco | No | Associate | Yes |
1978 | Stony Island | Yes | Yes | Yes |
1983 | The Final Terror | Yes | No | No |
1985 | Code of Silence | Yes | No | No |
1988 | Above the Law | Yes | Yes | Yes |
1989 | The Package | Yes | Co-producer | No |
1992 | Under Siege | Yes | No | No |
1993 | The Fugitive | Yes | No | No |
1995 | Steal Big Steal Little | Yes | Yes | Yes |
1996 | Chain Reaction | Yes | Yes | No |
1998 | A Perfect Murder | Yes | No | No |
2002 | Collateral Damage | Yes | No | No |
2003 | Holes | Yes | Yes | No |
2006 | The Guardian | Yes | No | No |
TBA | Mentors - Tony & Santi[11] | Yes | Yes | No |
Television
Year | Title | Notes |
---|---|---|
1978 | At Home with Shields and Yarnell | TV short |
2000-2001 | OnStar: Batman | 4 episodes |
2005 | Just Legal | Episode "Pilot" |
References
- ^ Weinraub, Bernard (October 26, 1992). "The Talk of Hollywood; Director Who Blends Action With a Bit of Art". The New York Times. Retrieved December 14, 2010.
- ISBN 0240804066– via Internet Archive.
- ^ Spence, D. (April 17, 2003). "An Interview with Andrew Davis" (Interview). IGN. Archived from the original on October 29, 2005. Retrieved March 24, 2007.
- ^ Flores, Gilberto (November 27, 2013). "'Medium Cool' Revisited". The Bottom Line. Associated Students of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Retrieved February 25, 2014.
- ^ Franklin, Garth (October 12, 2006). ""Don Quixote" Meets "Tom Jones"". Dark Horizons. Archived from the original on October 19, 2006.
- ^ Ebert, Roger (August 6, 1993). "The Fugitive" (Review). RogerEbert.com. Retrieved March 14, 2018.
- ^ Bey, Lee (April 4, 2012). "Revisiting 'Stony Island': Soulful 1970s Chicago cult film hits the streets again". WBEZ91.5. Archived from the original on June 5, 2013. Retrieved May 3, 2013.
- ^ Ebert, Roger (November 24, 1978). "Stony Island". RogerEbert.com (Review). Retrieved February 25, 2014.
- ^ Ebert, Roger (February 8, 2002). "Collateral Damage". RogerEbert.com (Review). Retrieved February 26, 2014.
- ^ Scott, A. O. (April 18, 2003). "Holes (2003) Holes (2003) FILM REVIEW; Not Just for Children, a Suspenseful Allegory of Greed, Fate and Racism". The New York Times. Retrieved June 23, 2022.
- ^ Mentors Poster squarespace-cdn.com
External links
- Andrew Davis at IMDb
- Andrew Davis website www.andrewdavisfilms.com