Art Linson

Art Linson (born 16 March 1942) is an American film producer, director, screenwriter, and author.^[1]

Life and career[]

Linson was born in Chicago, Illinois. He did his undergraduate work at the University of California-Berkeley and graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles law school. After law school, Linson worked in the music business, managing Spirit and Nils Lofgren and founding Spin Dizzy Records.^[2]

Linson's first film as a producer was Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins (1975). He had a sizable hit the following year with Car Wash. Over the next several years, he produced the critically acclaimed American Hot Wax (1978) and Melvin and Howard (1980).^[3] He made his directorial debut in 1980 with Where the Buffalo Roam, starring Bill Murray as Hunter S. Thompson, which received withering reviews.^[4] However, he rebounded in 1982 with Fast Times at Ridgemont High, a now-classic comedy which launched the careers of actors Sean Penn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judge Reinhold, Phoebe Cates, Nicolas Cage, Forest Whitaker, Eric Stoltz, and Anthony Edwards, as well as director Amy Heckerling and screenwriter Cameron Crowe.^[5]

Linson followed up the success of Fast Times with another Crowe script, The Wild Life (1984), which Linson also directed.^[6] He didn't produce another film until 1987's The Untouchables, directed by Brian De Palma, written by David Mamet, and based on the TV series of the same name. The movie was a huge hit, making a star of Kevin Costner and winning Sean Connery an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. It was also the start of long and productive collaborations for Linson with director De Palma, writer Mamet, and star Robert De Niro.^[7] Mamet would go on to satirize the Hollywood scene in his 1988 play Speed-the-Plow, in which the ambitious producer Charlie Fox was taken by many to be a caricature of Linson. As Linson told Time magazine, "Mamet has to get his material somewhere."^[8]

Linson's remaining films in the 1980s were Scrooged (1988), a modern satirical retelling of A Christmas Carol directed by Richard Donner, which reunited Linson with star Bill Murray; Casualties of War (1989), a Vietnam War drama starring Michael J. Fox and Sean Penn, once again directed by De Palma; and We're No Angels (1989), directed by Neil Jordan, written by Mamet, and starring De Niro and Penn.^[9] His next film was to be Arrive Alive, a black comedy directed by Jeremiah Chechik and starring Willem Dafoe and Joan Cusack, but the production was scuttled by Paramount Pictures after less than a week of shooting. Linson recounted the bizarre saga of Arrive Alive in his first book, A Pound of Flesh: Perilous Tales of How to Produce Movies in Hollywood, published in 1994.^[10] Publishers Weekly described the book as "a profusion of delightful anecdotes."^[11]

In the 1990s, Linson produced a characteristically eclectic group of movies, often involving longtime collaborators. Singles (1982) brought Linson back together with writer-director Cameron Crowe, while This Boy's Life (1993) -- adapted from the critically lauded memoir by Tobias Wolff -- was another film with De Niro. Point of No Return (1993) was a remake of the French thriller La Femme Nikita, directed by John Badham and starring Bridget Fonda. More successful was the 1995 crime drama Heat, written and directed by Michael Mann, the first movie to co-star De Niro and Al Pacino. Linson's next film was another Mamet script, The Edge (1997), followed by the Alfonso Cuaron version of Great Expectations (1998) and Mike Newell's Pushing Tin (1999). The ups and downs of producing these last films provided the material for Linson's second book, What Just Happened? Bitter Hollywood Tales from the Front Line, published in 2002.^[12] "Hollywood memoirs rarely dish as much dirt or name as many names," wrote Dade Hayes in Variety.^[13] Linson ended the 1990s with Fight Club (1999), directed by David Fincher and starring Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, and Helena Bonham Carter. Although the film was financially unsuccessful upon its initial release, it went on to become a cult classic.^[14]

Linson's films in the 21st century include two movies written and directed by Mamet, Heist (2001) and Spartan (2004); The Black Dahlia (2006), based on the book by James Ellroy and directed by De Palma; and Into the Wild (2007), based on the book by Jon Krakauer and directed by Sean Penn. Linson also wrote the screenplays for two films, both starring De Niro: What Just Happened, directed by Barry Levinson, based on Linson's book; and The Comedian (2016), directed by Taylor Hackford.^[15]

Linson was an executive producer on the long-running FX television series Sons of Anarchy, as well as Yellowstone, starring Kevin Costner. Yellowstone premiered on June 20, 2018 on the Paramount Network. The first season of Yellowstone averaged 5.1 million total viewers per episode, making it 2018's most-watched new cable series and ranking second across all cable TV series for the year.

Beginning with Sunset Strip in 2000, Linson has co-produced much of his work with his son John Linson, including Lords of Dogtown (2005), The Runaways (2010), The Comedian, and The Outsider (2018). John Linson was an executive producer on Sons of Anarchy, and co-created Yellowstone with Taylor Sheridan.^[16]

Linson is married to British actress and writer Fiona Lewis.

Filmography[]

He was a producer in all films unless otherwise noted.

Film[]

As writer

As director

Thanks

Television[]

References[]

External links[]

• Art Linson at IMDb