Irvin Kershner

• 1. Introduction

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  Irvin Kershner once asked George Lucas a direct question: "Of all the younger guys around, all the hot-shots, why me?" Kershner told the story himself, and Lucas had an answer ready: "Well, because you know everything a Hollywood director is supposed to know, but you're not Hollywood." The man on the receiving end was born Isadore Kershner on the 29th of April 1923. He was being recruited for a Star Wars film, yet his earlier career was full of quirky independent dramas and television work.

  Lucas's answer raises three questions. Where does a future blockbuster director come from? What did Lucas see in a teacher from a university film program? And what did Kershner do once the biggest film of his career was behind him?

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• 2. Music and Paint

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  Philadelphia was the city where Kershner was born, to Ukrainian-Jewish parents. His artistic and cultural background was a mixture of music and art. Studying the violin, the viola and composition was the most important activity of his early years.

  Temple University's Tyler School of Fine Arts, also in Philadelphia, was his next stop. He then traveled to New York and Provincetown to study with Hans Hofmann, a famous painting teacher.

  Los Angeles came after that, and with it the Art Center College of Design, where Kershner studied photography. By then he had trained in music, painting and photography, and he had not yet directed anything. Photography would bring him into a film school classroom, first as a teacher.

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• 3. Documentaries and Television

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  Three years with the U.S. Eighth Air Force during World War II gave Kershner a job far from any film set. He served as a flight engineer.

  At the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, he taught photography while taking cinema courses under Slavko Vorkapić. Vorkapić was a montage artist and the dean of the school at that time.

  Iran came next, through a State Department film project under the Point Four Program. Kershner took a job there as a still photographer. That work grew into an assignment as director and cinematographer of documentaries in Iran, Greece and Turkey for the United States Information Service.

  Back in the United States, Paul Coates joined Kershner in developing Confidential File, a documentary television series. Kershner worked as its writer, director, cinematographer and editor. A 1955 episode of the series carried the title "Horror Comic Books".

  The Rebel ran from 1959 to 1961, and Kershner developed the series and directed 35 of its episodes. He also directed the pilots for Peyton Place, Cain's Hundred and Philip Marlowe. Naked City gave him two episodes in 1962-63, and Kraft Suspense Theatre and Ben Casey also appear among his credits.

  His film list shows that he moved into features in 1958 with Stakeout on Dope Street, which he also wrote.

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• 4. Actors and Outsiders

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  The Hoodlum Priest, released in 1961, starred Don Murray. It earned Kershner a nomination for the Palme d'Or.

  Robert Shaw and Mary Ure led The Luck of Ginger Coffey in 1964. Two years later, A Fine Madness brought together Sean Connery, Joanne Woodward and Jean Seberg.

  The Flim-Flam Man followed in 1967 with Michael Sarrazin, George C. Scott and Sue Lyon. Loving arrived in 1970 with George Segal and Eva Marie Saint. Barbra Streisand appeared in Up the Sandbox in 1972.

  Richard Harris starred in The Return of a Man Called Horse in 1976. A television movie, Raid on Entebbe, came next in 1977. It was a true-life drama nominated for nine Emmys, including Best Direction. Kershner himself was nominated for the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Directing in a Special Program.

  Faye Dunaway and Tommy Lee Jones starred in the supernatural thriller Eyes of Laura Mars in 1978. The next film on his list, in 1980, would carry far larger expectations.

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• 5. The Reluctant Choice

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  A lunch with George Lucas ended with a refusal. Lucas asked Kershner to work on the project, and Kershner said no.

  Kershner's agent heard about the meeting and encouraged him to take the job. Kershner later explained what changed his mind: "I was grabbed by the fairytale which Lucas invented and wanted to be part of keeping it alive."

  Lucas had his own reasons for wanting Kershner. As writer-producer, he knew Kershner as a teacher in the film program at USC. He also found Kershner's concern for character development appealing, which made him a surprising pick for a huge science fiction sequel.

  The Empire Strikes Back arrived in 1980 as the follow-up to the 1977 hit Star Wars. Kershner described his visual approach this way: "I like to fill up the frame with the characters' faces. There's nothing more interesting than the landscape of the human face".

  The film's entry in his filmography lists a Saturn Award for Best Director and a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. A third film in the series would soon need a director.

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• 6. Roads Not Taken

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  Harlan Ellison wrote the script for an adaptation of I, Robot that Kershner signed on to direct. The film was never made.

  Producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown first hired Kershner to direct The Ninja, based on Eric Van Lustbader's novel. The scripts came from W.D. Richter and Tom Cole. The project was cancelled after months of pre-production.

  Return of the Jedi came out in 1983, and Kershner had turned down the chance to direct it. He had already spent almost three years of work on The Empire Strikes Back. Richard Marquand was eventually chosen to direct the third film in the original trilogy.

  Kershner felt differently about the prequel trilogy. In retrospect, he said he would have accepted an offer to direct one of those films had they been made sooner. Lucas had originally estimated that the first prequel would be ready in 1988, but it did not arrive until 1999.

  The real next job on Kershner's list was a James Bond film.

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• 7. Bond and Beyond

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  Sean Connery's return to the role of James Bond came in Never Say Never Again, which Kershner directed in 1983.

  Traveling Man, an HBO film starring John Lithgow and Jonathan Silverman, followed in 1989. It earned Kershner an ACE Award nomination. RoboCop 2 arrived in 1990, and Kershner also appeared in it, uncredited, as a character named Gerber.

  Amazing Stories gave him a 1986 episode titled "Hell Toupee". He also directed the pilot of the television series seaQuest DSV, and his filmography lists a 1993 episode of that show titled "To Be or Not to Be".

  Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ, released in 1988, marked Kershner's debut as an actor. He played Zebedee, the father of the apostles James and John.

  Steven Seagal's On Deadly Ground cast him as a film director. His acting credits continued until 2005, when he played a statistics professor in Berkeley, listed as his final film role. That part put him in a classroom, a place he knew well.

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• 8. Teacher and Internationalist

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  In 2000, Kershner served on the jury at the 22nd Moscow International Film Festival.

  At the University of Southern California, he joined the faculty of the Master of Professional Writing Program.

  Between 2002 and 2004, the University of Maryland, College Park, hosted him as a Visiting Professor and Research Associate at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, known as MITH. He also provided cinematography training there. Martha Nell Smith, the founding director, remained close to him, and he served as her advisor until the end of his life.

  The son of Jewish immigrants, Kershner described himself as an internationalist. In his words: "I've been a student of Christianity. I've been interested in the historical basis of the Muslim religion. I studied Buddhism. I don't think of myself as a Jew except by birth, as I don't follow the customs. I'm a Jew because other people consider me so. My pride is in being international."

  On the 27th of November 2010, Kershner died at his home in Los Angeles. He had been ill with lung cancer for three and a half years. He kept working on photographic projects until the end, and his two sons, David and Dana, looked after him.

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