Joseph Strick

Joseph Ezekiel Strick (July 6, 1923 – June 1, 2010) was an American director, producer and screenwriter.

Life and career

Born in the Greater Pittsburgh town of Braddock, Pennsylvania,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Strick briefly attended UCLA, then enrolled in the U.S. Army during World War II. In the Army, he served as a cameraman in the Army Air Forces.<ref name="strick-obit">Dennis McLellan "Joseph Strick dies at 86; independent filmmaker brought 'Ulysses' to big screen", Los Angeles Times, 4 June 2010</ref>

In 1948, he and Irving Lerner produced Muscle Beach. For several years in the 1950s, Lerner, Strick, Ben Maddow, and Sidney Meyers worked part-time on the experimental documentary The Savage Eye (1959).<ref name="Jackson">Benjamin T Jackson "The Savage Eye", Film Quarterly, 13:4, Summer 1960, pp. 53-57</ref>

Strick was also a successful businessman, founding Electrosolids Corp (1956), Computron Corp. (1958), Physical Sciences Corp (1958), and Holosonics Corp. (1960). In 1977 he invented the usage of six-axis motion simulators as entertainment systems and applied it to new machines used now in Disney theme parks as "Star Tours."<ref>Obituary:Joseph Strick, Daily Telegraph, 8 June 2010</ref>

In the 1960s, during his first marriage, Strick commissioned what was the only house designed by Oscar Niemeyer in North America. The marriage ended in divorce before construction was completed, and Strick never occupied the house, located on the edge of Santa Monica Canyon.<ref name="strick-obit" />

The Savage Eye won the BAFTA Flaherty Documentary Award and was hailed as part of an "American New Wave" alongside the work of Shirley Clarke and John Cassavetes.<ref>Sight & Sound, URL accessed 25 November 2009 </ref> In 1970, he won an Academy Award for Best Documentary for his movie Interviews with My Lai Veterans. His better known ventures include a film adaptation of James Joyce's Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as well as Never Cry Wolf (1983). He also directed Tropic of Cancer, based on the novel by Henry Miller.

In Britain, he directed at the Royal Shakespeare Company (1964) and the National Theatre (2003).

Joseph Strick's career led him to share his time in Los Angeles, New York, London and Paris. He died in a Paris hospital of congestive heart failure.<ref name="strick-obit" />

The moving image collection of Joseph Strick is held at the Academy Film Archive. The collection consists of over one hundred items, including negative and print materials.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The Academy Film Archive has preserved several of Strick's films, including The Savage Eye and Muscle Beach.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

References

• Margot Norris, Ulysses (University of Cork Press, 2004)
• Bosley Crowther, The Great Films (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1967), pages 247-250
• William Wulf, Landmark Films (Paddington Press, 1979) pages 278-290
• Michael Webb, A Modernist Paradise (Rizzoli, 2004)

External links

• Template:IMDb name
• 'Portrait of Joe as a Young Director'-documentary of Joe talking about 'Ulysses' and 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'
• The Hecklers 1966, BBC Documentary on British elections and 'heckling' with introduction by Strick.