Robert Wise

American Producer

About Robert Wise

Robert Earl Wise (September 10, 1914 – September 14, 2005) was an American filmmaker. He won the Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture for his musical films West Side Story (1961) and The Sound of Music (1965). He was also nominated for Best Film Editing for Citizen Kane (1941) and directed and produced The Sand Pebbles (1966), which was nominated for Best Picture.

Among his other films are The Body Snatcher (1945), Born to Kill (1947), The Set-Up (1949), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Destination Gobi (1953), This Could Be The Night (1957), Run Silent, Run Deep (1958), I Want to Live! (1958), The Haunting (1963), The Andromeda Strain (1971), The Hindenburg (1975) and Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979).

He was the president of the Directors Guild of America from 1971 to 1975 and the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1985 through 1988.

Wise achieved critical success as a director in a striking variety of film genres: horror-noir, western, war, film noir, horror, science fiction, musical and drama, with many repeat successes within each genre. Wise’s meticulous preparation may have been largely motivated by studio budget constraints, but advanced the moviemaking art. He received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1998.

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Quotes by Robert Wise

A Mac is a closed box, so Apple can make decisions about things that they don’t include. That makes, it in some ways, simpler for them.

Robert Wise

As I’ve always said, preproduction is so important. When you cast the actors, you’ve done much of the work. Now, you may need to guide them a little, take it up or down, have them go faster or slower, but the casting process is crucial.

Robert Wise

I think one of the major things a director has to do is to know his subject matter, the subject matter of his script, know the truth and the reality of it. That’s very important.

Robert Wise

I’ve always been proud of being a Hoosier. When I talk to people, I tell them that.

Robert Wise

My three Ps: passion, patience, perseverance. You have to do this if you’ve got to be a filmmaker.

Robert Wise

Of all the stars whom I worked with, I think Steve knew better what worked for him on the screen than any other. He had such a sense of what he could register, and that helped a lot in terms of shaping the character and the script.

Robert Wise

The Sand Pebbles has always been one of my favorite films, I suppose because its the most difficult film – from a physical and logistical standpoint – that I’ve ever made.

Robert Wise

You can’t tell any kind of a story without having some kind of a theme, something to say between the lines.

Robert Wise

You know, people always think if you start out as a film editor, you shoot less footage. Actually, just the opposite is true. I tend to grab as much coverage as I can because as a former editor I know how important it is to have those few frames.

Robert Wise

You look back on films sometimes and if they have not been as all-out successful as you anticipated you try to find reasons why maybe it didn’t come off for audiences as well as you would have liked.

Robert Wise