Oscar Profile #184: Alan J. Pakula

Born April 7, 1928 in the Bronx, New York to parents of Polish Jewish ancestry, Alan J. Pakula majored in drama at Yale. He began his Hollywood career as an assistant in the cartoon department at Yale. Having convinced his father, who owned a successful printing business, to give him the money to finance a film, he began a highly successful career as the producing partner of director Robert Mulligan from 1957 to 1968. Together they made seven classic films: 1957’s Fear Strikes Out; 1962’s To Kill a Mockingbird for which Pakula received his first of three Oscar nominations, his only one as producer, and Mulligan his only nomination as director; 1963’s Love With the Proper Stranger; 1965’s Baby, the Rain Must Fall; and Inside Daisy Clover; 1967’s Up the Down Staircase and 1968’s The Stalking Moon. He began his directing career with 1969’s The Sterile Cuckoo.

Liza Minnelli became the first of eight performers directed by Pakula who received an Oscar nomination for The Sterile Cuckoo. His direction of Jane Fonda in his second film, 1971’s Klute, not only earned Jane Fonda a nomination, it earned her the win as well.

Klute was the first of three films in Pakula’s so-called “paranoia rtilogy” which also consisted of 1974’s The Parallex View and 1976’s All the President’s Men. His direction of All the President’s Men earned him numerous awards and his second Oscar nomination, his first and only one for direction. It earned Jason Robards an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and Jane Alexander a nomination for Best Supporting Actress, making them the third and fourth of Pakula’s actors to be nominated and Robards the second to win.

Further Oscar nominations came to Pakula actors Richard Farnsworth in 1978’s Comes a Horseman and Jill Clayburgh and Candice Bergen in 1979’s Starting Over.

Pakula’s personal favorite among his films was 1982’s Sophie’s Choice. His adaptation of William Styron’s 1979 novel earned Pakula his third Oscar nomination, his first and only one for writing. It earned Meryl Streep an Oscar, making her the eighth of his actors to be nominated and the third to win.

Among Pakula’s later works were 1987’s Orphans with Albert Finney, Matthew Modine and Kevin Anderson; 1989’s See You in the Morning with Jeff Bridges; 1990’s Presumed Innocent with Harrison Ford and Bonnie Bedelia; 1993’s The Pelican Brief with Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington and 1997’s The Devil’s Own with Ford and Brad Pitt.

Pakula was married to Hope Lange in 1963, they divorced in 1971. He married second wife Hannah Cohn Borstin in 1973.

On November 19, 1998, Pakula was driving on the Long Island Expressway near Melville when a seven foot long metal pipe smashed through the windshield of his car killing him instantly. Alan Jay Pakula was 70.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

KLUTE (1971)

After serving as producer for Robert Mulligan through more than a decade of sensitively directed films, Pakula broke out on his own as a director with 1969’s The Sterile Cukoo for which Liza Minnelli received her first Best Actress Oscar nomination. Her chief competition was thought to be Jane Fonda, also receiving her first nomination for Sydney Pollack’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? . They both lost to Maggie Smith in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie? .

For his second film, he directed Fonda as a prostitute who is policeman Donald Sutherland’s only link to a missing man. This deliciously served modern noir provided Fonda with a fascinating role in which, if she hadn’t been such a well-known actress, you would swear was the real hard-bitten character she plays. Fonda, under Pakula’s direction, not only won the Oscar but just about every other award in sight.

ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN (1976)

Sidney Lumet practically made a career of scoffing at having lost the Oscar for Network to John G. Avildsen for Rocky, but the one who should have taken home the gold was Pakula who started out awards season with prestigious wins for directing All the President’s Men from both the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics.

Working from William Goldman’s script of the Woodward-Bernstein book, Pakula fashioned one of the most fascinating, complex tales of corruption ever mounted. The events of the Watergate break-in that brought down the Nixon presidency had been in the headlines for several years, yet they unraveled on screen like a newly discovered mystery whose outcome was never quite certain. It was an amazing once in a lifetime piece of work and Pakula gets splendid performances from Robert Redford; Dustin Hoffman; Oscar winner Jason Robards; nominee Jane Alexander; Martin Balsam; Hal Holbrook and a host of others.

SOPHIE’S CHOICE (1982)

Pakula’s own personal favorite is an expertly made adaptation of William Styron’s novel that Pakula took two years to adapt after Styron, who took seven years to write the novel, told Pakula that he wouldn’t know how to write a screenplay and that Pakula should write it himself. Pakula later received an Oscar nomination for what was his first screenplay.

The rough cut of the film ran five hours. The finished product ran a tight two and a half hours. Nestor Almendros’ exquisite lighting made the Brooklyn house where Peter MacNicol’s Stingo (a stand-in for the young Styron) meets Sophie (Meryl Streep) and Nathan (Kevin Kline) seem like a fourth character in the film. The harrowing flashback scenes of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz were equally stunning. Streep speaking English with a Polish accent and even more surprisingly, German with a Polish accent, has never been better than as the anguished heroine, giving the best performance of her record seventeen Oscar nominations and earning a richly deserved second of three Oscars so far.

PRESUMED INNOCENT (1990)

Pakula’s more or less faithful film version of Scott Turow’s best-seller was equally successful as a film.

Harrison Ford had one of his best roles as the assistant prosecutor assigned by his boss to look into the death of a fellow prosecutor with whom he was having an affair. Eventually prime suspect Ford is arrested for the murder and put on trial. He may be “presumed innocent” until proven guilty, but is he? If so, who is behind the elaborate frame? This well plotted whodunit features strong support from a gallery of recognizable actors of the period including Bonnie Bedleia; Brian Dennehy; Raul Julia; Greta Scacchi; Paul Winfield; Jesse Bradford and Joseph Mazzello.

THE PELICAN BRIEF (1993)

The film version of John Grisham’s best-seller was another box-office success for Pakula.

The film starts with a bang – the spectacular murders of two justices of the Supreme Court. At the center of it is a conspiracy uncovered by a young law student played by Julia Roberts at the height of her star power. Denzel Washington co-stars as her friend and fellow amateur sleuth. The top drawer supporting cast includes Sam Shepard; John Heard; Tony Goldwyn; William Atherton; Stanley Tucci; Hume Cronyn and John Lithgow.