Arthur Hiller Penn (September 27, 1922 – September 28, 2010) was an American director and producer of film, television and theater. Penn directed critically acclaimed films throughout the 1960s such as The Chase and Bonnie and Clyde.By the mid-1970s his films were received with much less enthusiasm. In the 1990s he returned to stage and television direction and production, including an executive producer role for the crime series Law & Order.
[on Jean-Luc Godard, 1970] That kind of passion I can't deny, and, as I say, it is brilliantly and artfully done, but I want far more, somehow, in a film, although I can view a film like "Weekend" with awe at the skills, the downright boldness of the man, the outrageous boldness which is a quality I would give a good deal to have more of. But, oh, I do long for a moment when that man comes out from behind his dark glasses!
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A society would be wise to pay attention to the people who do not belong if it wants to find out ... where it's failing.
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[on Bonnie and Clyde (1967)] I thought that if were going to show this (violence), we should SHOW it. We should show what it looks like when somebody gets shot. TV coverage of Vietnam was every bit, perhaps even more, bloody than what we were showing on film.
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[on acting] A look, a simple look, will do it.
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[1982 comment on Steven Spielberg] The movies have changed: there's now this wonderful storyteller Spielberg making benign movies that are enormously successful, while I'm known mainly for making movies about people shooting and cutting each other up. I love his work, but I could never make stuff like that.
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[on Hurd Hatfield] America's least known great actor.
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There hasn't been much of a market for what I can do. I'm not into outer space epics or youth pictures.
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Lee Strasberg ruined an entire generation of actors with that sense memory crap.
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Fact
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Served in the U.S. Army, 1943-46.
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Son of a nurse and a watchmaker.
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Studied under Michael Chekhov and at the Actor's Studio in Los Angeles.
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First worked in television studios as a floor manager. Began to write and direct plays for the theatre in 1953. Directed his first Broadway play in 1956 and his first motion picture in 1958. Made only ten films during the first 25 years of his career. His most productive period was 1965-70, when he averaged one movie per year.
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The protagonists in his films often tend to be outsiders, either as outlaws (Billy the Kid, Bonnie & Clyde), or cut off from society through circumstance (Little Big Man), disability (Helen Keller) or paranoia (Mickey One).
[July 14, 2009] Hospitalized with pneumonia in a New York hospital.
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Interviewed in "The Director's Event: Interviews with Five American Filmmakers," by Eric Sherman and Martin Rubin.
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Older brother is renowned photographer Irving Penn.
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Won Broadway's 1960 Tony Award as Best Director (Dramatic) for "The Miracle Worker." He was also Tony-nominated two other times: in 1958 as Best Director for "Two for the Seesaw." and in 1961 as Best Director (Dramatic) for "All the Way Home."
Was an early contender to direct The Stunt Man (1980) and used elements from that film's source, the Paul Brodeur novel of the same name, in the story of Night Moves (1975).
$1.2 Million
