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Oscar®-winning Screenwriter Frank Pierson: Statement from Pierson Family

Posted Monday, July 23rd, 2012 - Comments Off on Oscar®-winning Screenwriter Frank Pierson: Statement from Pierson Family
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July 23, 2012

Oscar-winning screenwriter Frank Pierson died today in Los Angeles of natural causes following a short illness.  He was 87.

A three-time Academy Award® nominee, Pierson won an Oscar for his original screenplay of “Dog Day Afternoon.” He received nominations for “Cat Ballou” and “Cool Hand Luke.” Pierson’s writing credits also include “Presumed Innocent” and “A Star Is Born,” which he also directed.

Pierson was currently working as Writer and Consulting Producer on the Emmy Award®-winning drama “Mad Men” and had served the same duties on numerous episodes of “The Good Wife.”

Pierson was president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 2001-2005 and had served as Governor of the Writers Branch for 17 years.

Pierson is survived by his wife Helene, his children Michael and Eve and five grandchildren.

There will be a private funeral for the family this week. A public memorial will be planned in the near future.

The family requests contributions are made to STAND UP 2 CANCER.

Statement from Phil Robinson, Academy Governor (Writers Branch)

Young rock ‘n rollers always look to the old bluesmen as models of how to keep their art strong and rebellious into older years.  For screenwriters, Frank has been our old blues master for a long time.  From great, great movies like “Cat Ballou”, “Cool Hand Luke”, and “Dog Day Afternoon”, to his joining the writing staffs of “The Good Wife” and “Mad Men” well past his 80th birthday, he’s always shown us – better than anyone else – how to do it with class, grace, humor, strength, brilliance, generosity, and a joyful tenacity.

He was both a great and a good man, I miss him already, and I feel very, very lucky to have known him.

Statement from Susan B. Landau

I am deeply saddened to announce the sudden passing of Frank Pierson who was an iconic, titanic figure in the Hollywood community.  The Oscar-winning writer was a celebrated director, the former President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Writers Guild, a dedicated member of the Directors Guild and the former Artistic Director of AFI.  He was fiercely dedicated to his wife and children, his friends, his politics, to the Hollywood community, and to young filmmakers all over the world with whom he was in constant touch.  He was thrilled be part of the “Mad Men” community at the time of his passing.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon