Filmmaker Behind “My So-Called Life” Looks Back on His Real Life in Best Selling Memoir

He has had hit TV series, (“Thirtysomething,” “My So-Called Life”) award-winning TV movies, (“Special Bulletin”) followed by many successful feature films (“Glory,” “Legends of the Fall,” “The Last Samurai”) And now, writer-director Edward Zwick has decided to look back on it all with a memoir of his storied career, while offering helpful hints, and a few scandals for others who aspire to such heights.

The book “Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My Forty Something Years in Hollywood” was only released in mid-February but it has already climbed onto the bestseller lists of New York Times and Los Angeles Times.

Even before its publication by Simon & Schuster on Feb. 13, it had media elites on both coasts anxiously awaiting its release. “I’ll be dropping a few names,” Zwick writes in the introduction. “Over the years I have worked with self-proclaimed masters-of-the-universe, unheralded geniuses, hacks, sociopaths, savants, and saints.” Zwick is enjoying the ride and doing the talk show circuit. His interview on “CBS Sunday Morning” aired on Oscar day. But miraculously, while he writes about some of the biggest names in show business that he has worked with including Tom Cruise, Denzel Washington, Leonardo DiCaprio, Demi Moore, Bruce Willis and Julia Roberts to name a few, he says mostly nice things about them. And the book is still a runaway bestseller.

The good reviews surprised him, he said in an exclusive interview with Straus News. “I’m used to my movies simultaneously getting pans and rhapsodic reviews,” he said. “But I must say this book has been pretty unanimously embraced.”

As for those “helpful hints.” Each chapter in the book deals with a particular project, and begins with very specific warnings for those who aspire to filmmaking. “No schedule ever holds.” “Comedy is anxiety, tragedy without consequences.” “We are all tragic heroes.” “Nothing is more grating than expository dialogue.”

I caught up with Zwick at his office in Los Angeles where, unlike most interviewers, I chose not to focus on his stories about two well-known New York figures, Matthew Broderick and Harvey Weinstein. The former caused problems—well, his mother did—during the filming of “Glory,” and Weinstein literally stole “Shakespeare in Love” from Zwick, he claims. He is compassionate about the former (“Matthew was only 24 at the time”) and less so about the latter. “He was a bully.”

It was Zwick who brought Tom Stoppard into “Shakespeare,” and flew to London with Julia Roberts, who was supposed to play the leading role. Her exit—not so nice—led to Gwyneth Paltrow’s Oscar win. The film’s Oscar win led to one of the most uncomfortable on-stage acceptances in memory. Business Insider last year dubbed it one of “the 13 most cringeworthy Oscar acceptance speeches of all time.”

So far, no one has publicly challenged anything in Zwick’s telling. “You see those journals behind you?” he says, pointing to a shelf full. “I have it all there.”

Zwick has directed virtually every big-name actor: Denzel, DiCaprio, Pitt, Gyllenhaal and Cruise. While casting “Glory,” he was invited to Julliard to watch a young actor who was about to graduate. His name: Andre Braugher. (Who Zwick cast, and who went on to fame, and died tragically right when this book was released) I asked about dealing with Denzel Washington, who some have considered difficult. “I did three movies with him, pretty early in his career,” says Zwick. “Denzel has always been pretty much the same, suffering no fools.”

I chose to focus on his East Coast experiences. Specifically, “The Siege” the film that pre-dated and some say pre-dicted, 9/11. It starred Denzel Washington and Annette Bening, as FBI and CIA operatives merging as the city is struck by a terrorist attack. “When you think of what we did, compared to what could be done now, it’s amazing,” Zwick recalls. “We closed the Brooklyn Bridge, we closed Broadway between 40th and 47th, we blew up a bus in front of the Peter Luger steak restaurant. But those were the days the Police and Fire Department and city could be dealt with. When 9/11 happened three years later, things obviously changed.”

“That movie was underappreciated and prescient,” says Broadway actor Dakin Matthews. ”I loved working on it, and with Ed, who rewrote my scene in the moment.” Zwick says he often does that, “matching an actor’s voice with the right words. When I learned about Dakin and how beloved he is among other actors, I gave him more to do.”

The only other time he shot in the city was for a short-lived TV series called “Dream Street” (influenced by Paul Simon and Bruce Springsteen songs). While he has not written a play, he says “I was that theatre kid in high school, doing parts with bad English accents. And when I was at Harvard, it was mostly about the stage.“ Years later, Joseph Papp asked if Zwick might do something for the Public, but by then, it was the other coast and television was calling.

And it still is. He and Marshall Herskovitz–who met as young AFI students, and created almost all their TV projects together–are currently working on a streaming project that will be political in nature. (“We talk every day,” says Zwick) And they are adapting a Stephen King novel. Other big authors have watched movie magic made from Zwick’s touch. “I loved working with him,” says David Grann, (“Killers of The Flower Moon” and “The Wager”) who watched Zwick take an article he’d written for the New Yorker, and turn it into a fine movie called “Trial By Fire.”

Zwick has also faced some serious health issues along his prestigious journey. But all seems well on that front: as is his long-term marriage to a woman named Liberty, two creative children, and a grandchild.

One final bit of knowledge passed on from the memory of Ed Zwick. “There are only two kinds of directors: those who pretend they know what they’re doing and those who don’t need to pretend.” Zwick never had to pretend, and this is a memoir that is filled with famous names, lessons learned, self-awareness, and gratitude. One of the best of its kind.

Michele Willens reports on theatre and culture for the NPR affiliate Robinhoodradio.