John Boorman

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This article is about the filmmaker. For the cricketer, see John Boorman (cricketer).

CBE
Boorman at the San Sebastián International Film Festival in September 2006
Born (1933-01-18) 18 January 1933 (age 91)
Shepperton, Middlesex
, England
OccupationFilmmaker
Years active1962–present
Spouses
Christel Kruse
​
(m. 1956⁠–⁠1990)​
Isabella Weibrecht
​
​
(m. 1995, divorced)​
Children7 (1 deceased), including Charley Boorman and Katrine Boorman

Sir John Boorman

CBE (/ˈbʊərmən/; born 18 January 1933) is a British filmmaker. He is best known for directing feature films such as Point Blank (1967), Hell in the Pacific (1968), Deliverance (1972), Zardoz (1974), Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), Excalibur (1981), The Emerald Forest (1985), Hope and Glory (1987), The General (1998), The Tailor of Panama (2001) and Queen and Country
(2014).

Boorman has directed 20 films and received five Academy Award nominations, twice for Best Director (for Deliverance, and Hope and Glory). He is also credited with creating the first Academy Award screeners to promote The Emerald Forest.[1] In 2004, Boorman received the BAFTA Fellowship for lifetime achievement from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. In January 2022, Boorman received a knighthood.

Early life

Boorman was born in

Salesian School in Chertsey, Surrey.[citation needed
]

Career

Boorman was

drycleaner and journalist in the late 1950s. He ran the newsrooms at Southern Television in Southampton and Dover before moving into television documentary filmmaking, eventually becoming head of the BBC's Bristol-based documentary unit.[6] In 1963 he wrote and directed a documentary about professional football, Six Days to Saturday, which focused on a week in the life of Swindon Town, who were in England's second division.[7]

Having caught the attention of a producer, David Deutsch, Boorman was offered the chance to direct a film aimed at repeating the success of A Hard Day's Night (directed by Richard Lester in 1964): Catch Us If You Can (1965) is about another pop group, the Dave Clark Five. While it was not as successful commercially as Lester's film was, it drew good reviews from distinguished critics such as Pauline Kael and Dilys Powell, and smoothed Boorman's way into the film industry.

Boorman was drawn to

hippy world of the West Coast of the United States. Lee Marvin gave the unknown director his full support, telling MGM
that he deferred all his approvals on the project to Boorman.

After Point Blank, Boorman worked with Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune on the robinsonade Hell in the Pacific (1968), which tells a fable of two representative soldiers stranded on an island.

After returning to the United Kingdom, Boorman made Leo the Last (US–UK, 1970). This film exhibited the influence of Federico Fellini and even starred a Fellini regular, Marcello Mastroianni. It won Boorman a Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival.

Boorman achieved much greater resonance with Deliverance (US, 1972, adapted from a novel by James Dickey), depicting the ordeal of four urban men, played by Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ronny Cox and Ned Beatty, who encounter danger from an unexpected quarter while whitewater-rafting through the Appalachian backwoods. The film became Boorman's first true box office success and earned him several award nominations.

Boorman in 1974

At the beginning of the 1970s, Boorman planned to film

post-apocalyptic science fiction
piece, set in the 23rd century where sex is divided into two worlds. According to the director's film commentary, the "Zardoz world" is on a collision course with an "effete" eternal society.

Boorman was selected as director for

The Exorcist series but one of the worst films of all time
.

Excalibur, a long-held dream project of Boorman's, is a retelling of the

Le Morte D'Arthur. Boorman cast Nicol Williamson and Helen Mirren over their protests, as the two disliked each other intensely but Boorman felt that their mutual antagonism would enhance their presentations of the characters they were playing. The production was based in the Republic of Ireland
, where Boorman had settled. For the film he employed all of his children as actors and crew (several of Boorman's later films have also been "family business" productions). The film, one of the first to be produced by Orion Films, was a moderate success.

The Emerald Forest (1985) saw Boorman cast his son Charley Boorman as an eco-warrior in a rainforest adventure that included commercially required elements – action and near-nudity – with authentic[citation needed] anthropological detail. Rospo Pallenberg's original screenplay was adapted into a book of the same name by award-winning author Robert Holdstock. Because the film's distributor faced business troubles that year, the film did not receive a traditional "For Your Consideration" advertising campaign for the 1985 Academy Awards, despite positive critical reviews. Boorman took the initiative to promote the film himself by making VHS copies available for no charge to Academy members at several Los Angeles-area video rental stores. Boorman's idea later became ubiquitous during Hollywood's award season, and by the 2010s, more than a million Oscar screeners were mailed to Academy members each year. Emerald Forest received no nominations.[1]

Golden Globe nominations. His 1990 US-produced comedy about a dysfunctional family, Where the Heart Is
, was a major flop.

When his friend David Lean died in 1991, Boorman was to take over direction of Lean's long-planned adaptation of Nostromo, though the production collapsed. Beyond Rangoon (US, 1995) and The Tailor of Panama (US/Ireland, 2000) both explore unique worlds with alien characters stranded and desperate.

Boorman won the

Best Director Award at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival for The General, his biopic of Martin Cahill.[10] The film is about a glamorous, yet mysterious, criminal in Dublin who was killed, apparently by the Provisional Irish Republican Army
. Boorman had been one of Cahill's burglary victims, having the gold record awarded for the score to Deliverance stolen from his home.

Released in 2006, his

The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz with Boorman at the helm was announced in August 2009.[11]

In 2007 and 2009 he took part in a series of events and discussions as part of the

International Film Festival of Marrakech
.

In Autumn 2013 Boorman began shooting Queen and Country, the sequel to his 1987 Oscar-nominated Hope and Glory, using locations in Shepperton and Romania. The film was selected to be screened as part of the Directors' Fortnight section of the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.[12]

John Boorman's debut novel, Crime of Passion, was published in 2016 (by Liberties Press, Dublin), with a French-language edition published by Marest in 2017.[13]

Personal life

Boorman was a longtime resident of Ireland and lived in Annamoe, County Wicklow, close to the Glendalough twin lakes.[14] In 2022, he put his property up for sale, intending to move to Surrey, England, where his son Charley lives.[15] According to a 2012 interview, he was recently divorced.[16] By 2020, he was married to his third wife.[17]

He has seven children: Katrine (b. 1958), Telsche (1959–1996), Charles (b. 1966), and Daisy (b. 1966) with his first wife, Christel Kruse, to whom he was married until 1990; and Lola, Lee, and Lily Mae with his second wife, Isabella Weibrecht, whom he married in 1995.[16][18]

His son,

Igrayne
in Excalibur) works as an actress in France. Another daughter, Telsche, co-wrote the screenplay for Where the Heart Is with Boorman.[19] She died of ovarian cancer in 1996 at the age of 36.[20][18][16] She had been married to the journalist Lionel Rotcage, the son of French singer Régine, and they had a daughter together.[21][18]

Boorman was appointed

BAFTA. Boorman was knighted in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to film.[23][24][25]

Awards and nominations

Academy Awards

British Academy Film Awards

Cinema for Peace

  • The Cinema for Peace Award for the Most Valuable Film of the Year (2004) (In My Country) – Won

Golden Globe Awards

  • Best Director (1973) (Deliverance) – Nominated
  • Best Director (1988) (Hope and Glory) – Nominated
  • Best Screenplay (1988) (Hope and Glory) – Nominated

Partial filmography

Film

Year Title Director Producer Writer
1965 Catch Us If You Can Yes
1967 Point Blank Yes
1968 Hell in the Pacific Yes
1970 Leo the Last Yes Yes
1972 Deliverance Yes Yes
1974 Zardoz Yes Yes Yes
1977 Exorcist II: The Heretic Yes Yes
1981 Excalibur Yes Yes Yes
1985 The Emerald Forest Yes Yes
1987 Hope and Glory Yes Yes Yes
1990 Where the Heart Is Yes Yes Yes
1995 Beyond Rangoon Yes Yes
1998 Lee Marvin: A Personal Portrait by John Boorman Yes
The General Yes Yes Yes
2001 The Tailor of Panama Yes Yes Yes
2004 In My Country[26] Yes Yes
2006 The Tiger's Tail Yes Yes Yes
2014 Queen and Country Yes Yes Yes

Short film

Year Title Director Writer Producer Notes
1991 I Dreamt I Woke Up Yes Yes Yes Commissioned by the BBC for anthology series "The Director's Place"
1995 Two Nudes Bathing Yes Yes Episode of Picture Windows

Bibliography

  • Boorman, John, with Bill Stair (1974) Zardoz (novel)
  • Boorman, John (1985). Money into Light: The Emerald Forest: A Diary. London: Faber and Faber.
  • Boorman, John (1992). "Bright Dreams, Hard Knocks: A Journal for 1991". Projections: A Forum for Film Makers. London: Faber and Faber.
    ISBN 9780571168286.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
    )
  • Boorman, John (2003). Adventures of a Suburban Boy. London: Faber and Faber.
  • Boorman, John (2016). Crime of Passion. Liberties Press.
  • Boorman, John (2020). Conclusions. London: Faber and Faber.
    ISBN 978-0-5713-5379-8
    .

References

  1. ^ a b Miller, Daniel (1 March 2018). "The Oscar screener was invented by accident, and other secrets of an awards season staple". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 13 March 2018. "The Emerald Forest" didn't get any Oscar nominations – but Boorman's gambit made an impact: He effectively invented the movie screener, now an integral part of Hollywood's awards season apparatus.
  2. ^ World Film Directors, vol. 2, ed. John Wakeman, H. W. Wilson, 1988, p. 141
  3. ^ "John Boorman Biography (1933–)". www.filmreference.com. Retrieved 1 October 2020.
  4. ^ Essman, Scott (2 March 2015). "Director John Boorman Returns to his Youth with Queen And Country". btlnews.com. Retrieved 19 January 2022.
  5. ^ David Lodge, 'John Boorman's Quest' in Lives in Writing (Random House, 2014).
  6. ^ Russell, Patrick. "Citizen 63 (1963)". screenonline.org.uk. Retrieved 19 January 2022.
  7. ^ "Six Days to Saturday". BBC Archive. Retrieved 21 May 2022.
  8. ^
    ISBN 9780446893619
    .
  9. ISBN 9780571216956
    .
  10. ^ "Festival de Cannes: The General". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 2 October 2009.
  11. ^ "John Boorman – A very English visionary is back". Article in The Independent. London. 21 August 2009. Retrieved 28 April 2010.
  12. ^ "Cannes Directors' Fortnight 2014 lineup unveiled". Screendaily. Retrieved 26 April 2014.
  13. ^ "Tapis écarlate". 30 March 2020. Retrieved 1 October 2020.
  14. ISBN 978-1-85607-914-3
    , p. 131.
  15. ^ "John Boorman's Wicklow home, where Sean Connery and Lee Marvin came for dinner, for sale after 50 years for €2.75m". The Irish Times. Retrieved 21 April 2023.
  16. ^ a b c Adams, Mark (22 May 2012). "Me And Me Dad". Screendaily.com. Retrieved 16 June 2015.
  17. ^ Clarke, Donald. "John Boorman: 'I have to take a measure of blame for Harvey Weinstein'". The Irish Times. Retrieved 21 August 2020.
  18. ^
    ISSN 0307-1235
    . Retrieved 21 August 2020.
  19. ^ "AFI|Catalog". catalog.afi.com. Retrieved 21 April 2023.
  20. ^ tombstone Pere Lachaise Cemetery
  21. ^ "Obsèques Mort : Lionel ROTCAGE : avis de décès". www.avis-de-deces.com (in French). Retrieved 21 April 2023.
  22. ^ "No. 53696". The London Gazette (Supplement). 10 June 1994. p. 9.
  23. ^ "No. 63571". The London Gazette (Supplement). 1 January 2022. p. N2.
  24. ^ "New Year Honours 2022: Lumley and Redgrave become dames". BBC News. 31 December 2021. Retrieved 3 January 2022.
  25. TheGuardian.com
    . 31 December 2021.
  26. ^ "GandhiServe Foundation – Mahatma Gandhi Research and Media Service". gandhiserve.org. Retrieved 1 October 2020.

Further reading

External links