Born in Appleton, Wisconsin, Zwigoff held several jobs before making his breakthrough feature: the documentary Crumb (1994) in 1994. His previous jobs included musician, shipping clerk, printer and welfare office worker. In fact, Zwigoff traces his film career back to discovering a rare blues recording by an unknown Chicago blues musician he ...
I'm more interested in dialogue; most of the scripts I've gone after to direct, there's generally just something about the dialogue. Like Bad Santa (2003), there was one line in the script that was so good that I was desperately trying to get the job. It was something like, "Sweet Jews for Jesus!" [Laughs]. One of the most inspired lines I'd ever read. Any regional dialect like that in a script really appeals to me, if it's done right. One of the things I'm working on right now is an Elmore Leonard book that I'm adapting, and I love the dialogue. The Coen brothers do a lot of movies with a very strong regional dialect. I love the movie they did with Tom Hanks, The Ladykillers (2004). That woman Irma P. Hall, I could listen to her all day.
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It's certainly a difficult time right now to try to make small, smart films. I'm not trying to be self-serving, but you know, you get to Hollywood, and if you want to make something big and loud and dumb, it's pretty easy. It's very hard to go down there and make a film like Sideways (2004) , which I thought was a great film. They don't want to make films like that anymore, even though that film was very successful. It's more of a financial risk, basically. Most of the corporations that decide which films get made hedge their bets that they can make bigger, louder, dumber films, which the people stumbling around the Cineplex want to see. Nothing subtle about them.
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I rarely see a film made these days that I get excited about, but I find myself watching a lot of films from the 1940s and 50s over and over again. While my favorite music and painting is from the late 1920s and early 30s, it's usually films from the 40s and 50s that do it for me.
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If I see my films described as 'quirky' or, even worse, 'snarky' one more time, I'm going to probably seriously consider an early retirement. All these years I've labored under the conceit that they were "darkly humorous.
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The films I want to make, I really want to be passionate about.
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I've stopped going to see art films because every critic gives them four stars and say things like "masterpiece", "spellbinding" and "mesmerizing". I mean, they're doing that with my film, but I don't want to use those blurbs. Critical reviews aren't worth too much anymore because just about every film can get one or two of them.
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Fact
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Father was a Jewish farmer who moved the family to Chicago when Terry was five years old.
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Avid collector of old 78s records (mostly jazz, country and blues). He also plays (at least) cello, saw and mandolin and continues to play in the Cheap Suit Serenaders, a band formed by Robert Crumb in 1972. The band, with Terry Zwigoff, plays once a year at the Freight and Salvage in Berkeley, CA.
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Was offered the chance to direct Elf (2003), but turned it down.
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Resides in San Francisco, California.
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Was offered $10,000 to appear in a commercial campaign using hip filmmakers to endorse The Gap but turned it down, saying "I would find it a bit disingenuous after having spent 5 years of my life making a film railing against the evils of Corporate America.".
$1.9 Million
