Jack Hill Explained

Jack Hill
Birth Date:28 January 1933
Birth Place:Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Yearsactive:1960–82
Occupation:Film director
Education:UCLA
Notable Works:The Big Bird Cage (1972)
Coffy (1973)
Foxy Brown (1974)

Jack Hill (born January 28, 1933) is an American film director in the exploitation film genre. Several of Hill's later films have been characterized as feminist works.[1] [2]

Early life

Hill was born January 28, 1933, in Los Angeles, California.[3] [4] His mother, Mildred (née Pannill, b. February 1, 1907; death date n.a.),[5] was a music teacher. His father, Roland Everett Hill (February 5, 1895 – November 10, 1986),[6] worked as a set designer and art director for First National Pictures and Warner Bros.[7] on films including The Jazz Singer, Captain Blood, Action in the North Atlantic, and Captain Horatio Hornblower, and as well was an architect who designed the centerpiece Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland in California.[8]

Hill attended UCLA, which he attended, he said, for "a couple of years" before leaving to get married and then returning to earn a degree in music.[9] While a student, he played in a symphony orchestra that performed for the soundtracks of Doctor Zhivago and The Brothers Karamazov, and he arranged music for burlesque performers; through this he met comedian Lenny Bruce, whose daughter Kitty Bruce would act in Hill's 1975 film Switchblade Sisters. He went on to postgraduate studies at UCLA Film School, where instructor and former movie director Dorothy Arzner encouraged Hill and his classmate and friend Francis Ford Coppola. Hill worked as a cameraman, a sound recorder (including on Coppola's student short Ayamonn the Terrible), and an editor on student films. His short The Host starred Sid Haig, an acting student at the Pasadena Playhouse under teacher Arzner, who introduced them; this marked the first of several films together.

Career

Hill went on to work with Coppola on several of Coppola's early movies, including producer Roger Corman's 1963 movie The Terror. He added 20 minutes to 1960's Wasp Woman for its eventual television syndication release, shooting without access to any original cast-member.

Legacy

Quentin Tarantino's company Rolling Thunder Pictures re-released Switchblade Sisters theatrically in 1996.[10] In the introduction to the film's DVD release, Tarantino calls Hill " “the Howard Hawks of exploitation filmmaking”.[11]

Hill's discoveries include Pam Grier, who starred in four of his films from The Big Doll House through Foxy Brown; Sid Haig, who acts in most of Hill's films, beginning with Spider Baby; and Ellen Burstyn, who starred in Pit Stop.

His student film The Host was a partial influence on former classmate Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. Hill recalled in a 2000s interview that when he made The Host,

Film scholar Wheeler Winston Dixon believed that for Hill and fellow low-budget auteur Monte Hellman, film was primarily a means of personal expression while remaining a "deeply financially dependent medium". Dixon wrote that Hill and Hellman's movies often were sufficiently successful while remaining true to their personal vision.[12]

Archive

The moving image collection of Jack Hill is held at the Academy Film Archive.[13] The Academy Film Archive preserved Spider Baby in 2013.[14]

Filmography

Film crew

As director

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: A Top Ten of Feminist-Minded Films . Sadie Magazine. Sara. Freeman. 12 . Spring 2013. 2012-05-18. https://web.archive.org/web/20130714011238/http://sadiemagazine.com/past-issues/issue-no-7/top-that/a-top-ten-of-feminist-minded-films . July 14, 2013.
  2. Web site: Jerry. Renshaw . Foxy Brown: Directed by Jack Hill . (review) Filmvault.com (The Austin Chronicle) . December 29, 1997 . 2012-05-18 . March 25, 2012. https://web.archive.org/web/20120325191913/http://www.filmvault.com/filmvault/austin/f/foxybrown1.html.
  3. Web site: Jack Hill . . n.d.. November 1, 2014. https://web.archive.org/web/20141101152800/http://www.filmlinc.com/films/directors/jack-hill . November 1, 2014. dead.
  4. Book: Knight, Gladys L.. Female Action Heroes: A Guide to Women in Comics, Video Games, Film, and Television. Santa Barbara, Calif.. Greenwood Press. 2010. 9780313376122. 129.
  5. Book: Stone, Frank Bush, compiler . The Family History of James Ball, Senior. Mildred Pannill . (Manuscript; Summit, NJ: Frank Bush Stone, June 2, 1995) via New England Ball Project . November 1, 2014 . November 1, 2014 . https://web.archive.org/web/20141101144234/http://www.newenglandballproject.com/g0/p760.htm . live.
  6. Stone (1995), "Roland Everett Hill". Retrieved November 1, 2014. Archived from the original on November 1, 2014.
  7. Jack Hill interview, Web site: ,Confessions of a B-Movie King. LowCut Magazine . 7. n.d. . 2012-05-18. https://web.archive.org/web/20040904033711/http://www.lowcut.dk/007_lc/movies/01.htm . September 4, 2004. My father Roland Hill went to work as a set designer for First National Studios [sic] around 1925 and stayed on when it became Warner Bros. He later became an art director there, specializing in period architecture and ships. ...My mother is now 94 years old and has about 50 students on violin and piano..
  8. Web site: Historic-Cultural Monument Application for the Roland E. Hill House . Los Angeles Department of City Planning . January 24, 2008 . The proposed Roland E. Hill House historic monument was designed by its original owner, architect Roland E. Hill ... [who] worked as a set designer and art director for the film industry.... Hill also designed attractions for Disneyland in Anaheim, CA, designing the iconic Sleeping Beauty Castle, the centerpiece of the theme park.. 2 . November 1, 2014 . October 7, 2012 . https://web.archive.org/web/20121007082858/http://cityplanning.lacity.org/staffrpt/CHC/1-24-08/CHC-2007-5437.pdf . live.
  9. Book: Waddell, Calum . Jack Hill: The Exploitation and Blaxploitation Master, Film by Film. limited. . 2009 . 978-0786436095 . 8.
  10. News: Not Yet Over The Hill -- Director of Campy 'Sisters' in Comeback. John . Hartl . . June 20, 1996 . November 1, 2014 . November 1, 2014. live . https://web.archive.org/web/20141101154926/http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19960620&slug=2335436.
  11. Waddell, p. 2
  12. Book: Dixon, Wheeler Winston . Wheeler Winston Dixon. . 2007. Film Talk: Directors at Work. xi, Introduction . 978-0-8135-4077-1.
  13. Web site: Jack Hill Collection. Academy Film Archive.
  14. Web site: Preserved Projects. Academy Film Archive.
  15. Waddell, p.11
  16. Waddell, p. 9, which notes "The Host" received a public release in 2000 as an extra on the Switchblade Sisters DVD, with new titles, sound recording and music. Waddell calls "The Host" a 1961 film on page 9, but then asks, "Why was 'The Host' not finished back in 1960?" on page 10.