Sidney Lumet was of my father’s generation.  He was 7 years younger than my dad, also named Sidney, but the both were conscious beings through The Depression.  Both served in World War II.  And they both came of age professionally in the 50s.   Lumet was a young television director in New York.  My father was in manufacturing in Baltimore.

12 Angry Men was my dad’s idea of a great movie. And indeed, it is a great movie. And Lumet’s first of five Best Director nominations.

In 1964, I was born. And in that same year, Dr. Strangelove and Fail-Safe were both released. I was surprised to see that Strangelove was released before Fail-Safe, as the former seems a satire based on the latter. In any case, Fail-Safe is a great movie. The Pawnbroker, which was actually in the can before FS, was released months after, and offered a spectacular performance by Rod Steiger, perhaps the best of his career. (His silent scream in the film was so oft imitated that it has become a movie cliche’.)

Just before this year, in ’63, Lumet divorced American royalty, Gloria Vanderbilt, and married into another American royal family, marrying Lena Horne’s daughter, Gail. What was a nice Jewish boy from Philly doing married to a shiksa heiress and a black girl, albeit from the best of showbiz families, the day after the Kennedy assassination? The secret to Lumet’s work must lie in there somewhere. We all seem to remember him as a gentle man with an easy laugh and great professionalism, but to imagine him as a craftsman first is to disregard the giant, hairy, hangin’ balls this little Jew (5′ 6″) must have had. Jews weren’t welcome everywhere in the early 60s. Black celebrities were still being brought into clubs and hotels through the kitchen. But there Lumet was, living his life.

It was somewhere along that time that Lumet stopped making movies for my father and, I would find later, started making movies for me, and the generation before me and the generations after me.

The Group, a film he made in 1966, is one that I discovered via the satellite a few years ago. Amazing cast of strong-willed actresses who have mostly been forgotten or undervalued as years have passed. Joan Hackett, Shirley Knight, Elizabeth Hartman (who I think was my impetus for looking up the film, wondering what happened to her after A Patch of Blue), Carrie Nye, Joanna Pettet, Jessica Walters, and Candice Bergen in her first movie role. You have to be a man who genuinely likes women to take something like this on (unless you are a doing it as gay camp).

He did four Sean Connery movies in nine years, as Connery tried to push away from Bond. Imagine the 6′ 3″ Scotsman and the small Jew of Philly locked in a passionate movie marriage, working with the respect that both men either demanded or commanded in their professional lives.

In 1973, really for the first time, it all seemed to come together with Serpico. Lumet was, indeed, a consummate pro behind the camera. He handled actors as well as anyone ever has. And he got Pacino between Godfathers. The story of a young cop who became enlightened was a perfect real-life metaphor for the prior decade of cultural faith and disillusionment.

He made the lark of Murder on the Orient Express into something more, casting a 37-year-old Albert Finney, best known for his on-screen sexual hijinks, as Poirot, bringing Lauren Bacall and Ingrid Bergman into movie theaters, not to mention Connery, Gielgud, and Vanessa Redgrave. It was the era of Irwin Allen spectacles with star after star on the poster… but Lumet cast the film with actors who happened to have some star power, not stars who acted some. It was eclectic, challenging casting, as obvious as it seems now.

There were seven Oscar nominations, not including Best Picture. There was plenty of heavyweight BP competition and Orient Express was certainly not assured a slot had The Towering Inferno not been nominated, but it would have had a fighting chance against Harry & Tonto, Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Day for Night, Amarcord, and others.

(Side Note to Mark Harris: Let’s have a book about the 1975 Oscars, please! Godfather II, Chinatown, The Conversation, and Lenny. Wow. And imagine, Gordon Willis wasn’t even nominated for his cinematography on The Godfather: Part II. Earthquake was and The Towing Inferno won! Hackman couldn’t break into the Best Actor nominees list. And there were 3 Godfather II actors nom’ed for Supporting Actor. Has that ever happened in any category other than song? What a year!)

The next year, Pacino came back to Lumet after another round with Francis and they delivered Dog Day Afternoon, which flipped Pacino from cop to bank robber… but oh, what a bank robber. It was another template movie for Lumet. As much as the story hinged on a gay relationship, it’s not a movie about a gay hero/anti-hero. And what was extraordinary about this at the time is that the idea of having an openly gay man at the center of a Hollywood movie was challenging enough.. but for the issue of him being gay to be, really, a secondary plot… a narrative driver and not the subject of the film… was a breakthrough. The film was also prescient about the media, long before the 24-hour news cycle. Another deceptively “craftsmanlike” work by Lumet.

And then there was Network, which for me is still above and beyond. It’s funny, as I see some of the younger critics going after this masterpiece for being too theatrical or whatever silliness they cough up. Chayefsky was often theatrical. But the theater of Network has been surpassed by reality over and over as the years have passed. It is Shakespeare. And as filmmakers continue to tell that story, in ways grand and subtle, it is the text that touches the beating heart of the matter.

How many times do you think Glenn Beck watched the film growing up? And he was just “killed” by Fox News, not for declining ratings, but because advertisers were uncomfortable with the message!

10 Oscar nominations, 4 wins. But Rocky took Best Picture, which could also have been reasonably expected to be won by All The President’s Men. And ironically, John Avildsen, who had been fired from Serpico and replace by Lumet won Best Director.

Bill Holden, one of Hollywood’s greatest leading men ever, had the film as his swan song. His only other great work before his passing would be in Blake Edwards’ show biz reflection, SOB. It was obviously Peter Finch’s last great work. And even Robert Duvall would, after The Betsy, end up changing his career considerably soon after Network, going from the weak brother type to the men of strength that would mark the rest of his career, starting with Apocalypse Now and The Great Santini.

Lumet had the guts to take the Ned Beatty scene as dramatic as he did. (“You’re on television, dummy.”) The rating talk as Dunaway straddles and rides Holden. The negotiations with the capitalistic anarchists. The simple elegance of Bea Straight’s speeches.

Lumet was 50. Chayefsky was 53. Holden was 58, a projection of their near future.

Lumet adapted Equus and The Wiz from the stage shows. Neither set the world on fire.

But then Lumet did one of the few real comedies of his career, Just Tell Me What You Want. It was a throwback to the black and white days of romantic discord. The male lead was 12 years older than his romantic female lead. Lumet was 13 years older than the wife he had just divorced and was involved with his fourth wife when he made the film. The film, written by Jay Presson Allen, tells the story of wealthy New Yorkers who split up and then make up. Hmmm…

The epic Prince of the City took Lumet back to the police department, with another true story, and another great film. He co-write the film with Jay Presson Allen. Then, after another okay stage adaptation, The Verdict.

The Mamet script was magnificent. But the casting of Paul Newman was the genius stroke. Lumet was a true master of taking the beautiful and breaking it down, leaving nothing but a prayer as a reason to go on. Connery, the buttoned up Pacino of the Godfather films, Finney, Holden… and now, Newman. He had played the anti-heroes. It was a part of his persona. But here, he was both the beautiful intricate monument and the mildew in its cracks.

Still not even 60, it seems to have gotten harder for Lumet. There were interesting stories that he just couldn’t crack. But he kept working. There’s great stuff in Power, even if the film doesn’t quite come together.

Naomi Foner’s script for Running on Empty was pretty perfect. But how do you make that movie? Judd Hirsch? Christine Lahti? Stephen Hill? The biggest movie name on the film was River Phoenix, aged 18. But it fit Lumet like a glove. It was about honor and family and the price that people of character may be asked to pay and just where all those lines are. With that cast and those words and Lumet behind the camera, it was painfully, beautifully true, from start to finish.

Lumet’s first solo outing as a writer/director was Q&A, which ended up being a landmark moment in Nick Nolte’s acting career as well, the first role where he really lost all connection to the star we thought of as Nick Nolte (joining Holden & Newman & others). Fake teeth and platform shoes and a terrible mustache, Nolte, previously cast as a laid back underdog, was one of the scariest men on screen that year. It’s flawed film, mostly creaking when Lumet asks his daughter, Jenny, to be the female leg of a romantic triangle between Hutton and Assante. She has the beauty, but was still too raw as an actress to keep up with the vets. (Amazingly, it was the same year in which Coppola cast his daughter in G3.)

It would be a hard road for Lumet after that. Five films in seven years that didn’t quite work, including the infamous Melanie Griffith going undercover as a Hasidic Jew turn. Lumet was getting actors who were famous, but not quite openers, from Don Johnson to Andy Garcia to James Spader to Sharon Stone trying to do Gena Rowlands.

But there would be a happy 11 o’clock number. Call Me Guilty was a surprise hit amongst those who saw it. The problem was, almost no one who saw it and loved it was paying for it. Through Oscar season and the festival circuit, it was beloved. But Yari, trying to launch his own distribution, couldn’t find a paying audience. Still, a success d’ esteem for the then 82-year-old Lumet,

And then, one last great little film. Down & dirty. Lumet took hold of Kelly Masterson’s first script, Before The Devil knows You’re Dead, a tale of two seriously f-ed up brothers, their parents, and the woman between them. And Lumet did what he does best. He threw down.

Any film that opens with a naked Phillip Seymour Hoffman doing Marisa Tomei doggie-style with unrelenting gusto and deep gasps for air is not 12 Angry Men redux. Ethan Hawke played the screw-up brother in a triumphant turn. (another pretty boy broken down by Lumet) Hoffman got to be the nastiest prick of his career. And Tomei balanced between then, doing the double Ginger Rogers and making it look easy. Lumet’s eye for new talent was as good as ever, casting stage actors Michael Shannon, Amy Ryan, and Brían F. O’Byrne before they made names for themselves on movie screens.

Most of the memories you and I are reading in the media about Lumet are from that film’s press effort. I am looking for my DP/30 with him, which I fear was lost to the bankruptcy of the media company I was working with back then. In any case, I can nod in agreement with the unanimity about the man at that time. He was gracious and funny and happy to have real conversations. His life spanned most of the history of American cinema and his career a full half of it. It was one of those moments where you are happy to be meeting your idol.

For me, Lumet was like a movie parent. He was 20 feet tall and all he seemed to want from everyone else was for them to be 20 feet tall too. He is responsible for so many indelible memories that stick it my mind and my heart. So much advice given and received. And I can only imagine from all of that work who he was as a man. He had to be a glorious handful. You could feel his passion and his perfectionism and his understanding of humanity through all of his work.

There are so few directors working into those older years. It’s really down to the Brits now… in English, anyhow. I guess the good thing is that a guy who often reminds me of Lumet’s professionalism and boundless curiosity, Stephen Frears, is too busy doing the work to linger on the meaning of the work.

So goodbye to Lumet. His work will be missed, but his example will not soon be forgotten.

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