His so-called Hollywood life: Director Ed Zwick brings new memoir to Tempe

On Friday, prolific filmmaker Edward Zwick will be at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe to discuss and sign his new memoir, "Hits, Flops and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood." The 71-year-old writer, producer and director looks back on over 40 years in the business filling close to 300 pages with anecdotes, behind-the-scenes surprises, photos, and personal stories about his time served in Tinseltown.

In those four decades, Zwick has directed and produced some of the most recognized movies and television shows in entertainment history. His most notable titles include “My So-Called Life,” “About Last Night,” “Glory,” “Legends of the Fall,” “Blood Diamond,” and “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back.” He has worked with Demi Moore, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and Leonardo DiCaprio. His interactions with some of these celebrities are included in his memoir, a book he wasn’t expecting to write until the pandemic halted production of “Thirtysomethingelse,” a reboot of his popular late-80s TV drama “Thirtysomething.”
The unexpected downtime was filled with remembering his life in Hollywood and gathering the gumption to write about it. The hardest part wasn’t the details, it was developing the protagonist who, in this case, just happened to be himself.

“In some sense, you are trying to be as personal as you can be," Zwick says, "and yet you are also creating a character, which is to say, how do I wanna present myself to the world? How do I see myself? Am I trying to be more flattering? Am I trying to be more self-deprecating? Those are choices that I'd like to think we're just intuitive rather than calculating. Nonetheless, they are confrontational because a lot of things you're talking about are painful, some are personal, some are very joyous.”

Zwick was determined to be authentic in the book. He figured doing so would give him the license to tell stories about his relationships, both those that have ended and those that remain. It was a self-discipline he usually asked of his actors.

“Directing oneself is an interesting notion because I've always written for other people and put my words in their mouths and they were over there and I was safely behind a kind of firewall," he says. "And now I was in the first person and there's a vulnerability to that, that's akin to being an actor. And so I had to take a deep breath and at times finish a paragraph and say, ‘OK, that's just not totally true or maybe that's not totally entertaining. ... On the other hand, I just as often said, ‘You know, that's not enough. I haven't gone far enough.’"

Putting words down on paper is one thing. Whether readers will connect with them is another. Zwick’s wife, Liberty, would read chapters as he finished them. Even though her feedback was appreciated (after all, they've been together since 1982), Zwick needed objectivity.

“I've got some very, very serious, talented writer friends who I count on to tell me when I'm full of shit,” he says.

The book shouldn’t be a tough sell. Hollywood memoirs are very popular right now. Last year, three high-profile celebrities laid out their lives on paper. There were books by Barbra Streisand, John Stamos and a particularly juicy tell-all by Britney Spears. Her book read like an anthology of hit pieces against those who negatively affected her life.

When asked if Zwick’s book contains some of the same vitriol, he was quick to dryly respond, “I suspect that Britney Spears and I are interested in different things.”

That’s a fair statement, but then what exactly does he write about Hollywood in his book? Is it all good? “I would say that it's a more gimlet-eyed view of it,” Zwick says, adding that he loves L.A. because it's a place full of stories just waiting to be told.

He’s also aware of Hollywood's paradox of value. Stars and executives are disproportionately compensated relative to police officers, firemen, nurses, and even librarians.

“And yet somehow society has chosen to value us — to overvalue us,” he adds. “So there's a privilege in that, and even some responsibility that I feel. But I also say that the joy of it is just being surrounded by creative people. It's creative, fun camp. The writers that I'm working with, the actors, the cinematographers, the designers, I mean, what a privilege to be able to be considered a peer to these hugely talented people.”

Some of those talented people just got over a four-month-long hiatus. The strike was another event that left Hollywood at a standstill, but the outcome was undeniably historic. Along with asking for a fair living wage, the actors’ and writer’s strike drew a line in the sand for streaming services who wanted to exploit their archaic contracts. It also gave talent better control of their likeness regarding A.I., something Zwick is not a fan of.

“Listen, I'm a big admirer of Harrison Ford, but I don't think that we should make a movie where he is now 30. Because what's gonna happen is they're gonna have the rights to certain people and then those people will be eternal, where they'll never die and they no longer become actors. They become these kinds of avatars and that's the danger. The danger is the rights to people's likenesses and the rights to their voices.”

One technology that he doesn’t seem opposed to is digital remastering. With a lot of his films shot on film, converting some of them into this modern format isn’t off the table. “It's funny there was some conversation very recently about wanting to do a 4K version of ‘Glory.’ I don't know if that's happening or not happening.” He does have his preferences though. “Seventy-millimeter is the most beautiful presentation of a film that you could possibly have. And I have seen a 70-millimeter print of (Glory)and a couple others. And that's really, that's the gold standard, at least now.”

The Academy Award winner may have written a book about his life, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have more to do. Zwick is well aware of how Hollywood has changed since he stepped behind a camera in 1976. So when asked if he will ever make another sweeping, epic Hollywood film, his answer is promising.

“Don't know, hope so,” he says. “The world is different. I may be different but not I'm not ready to give it up.”

The "Ed Zwick: Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions" book event moderated by Cheryl Boone Isaacs, director of the Sidney Poitier New American Film School at Arizona State University, will be held at 7 p.m. Friday at Changing Hands Bookstore, 6428 S. McClintock Drive, Tempe. Tickets are $31.34 and include the book.