Norman Jewison Tribute

 

Actress and singer Cher speaks to the audience at a tribute event and screening for director Norman Jewison at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Angeles on Friday, April 17, 2009

Film legend Norman Jewison is simply giddy about the prospect of catching up with old friends this weekend as Hollywood toasts his career and the 20th anniversary of his Canadian Film Centre.

“I haven’t seen Cher for years,” the amiable, Toronto-born filmmaker, who directed the singer-actress in her Oscar-winning role in 1987′s “Moonstruck,” said with his trademark warm chuckle from his Los Angeles office Thursday.

“I think I’ve only seen her once (since) we made the picture … I’ve only seen her once because I’ve been doing other things and making other films and I live in Canada so I’m not in Los Angeles all year and so I don’t really get a chance to see too many people,” said Jewison, who also has a farm in Caledon, Ont., and a home in Malibu.

“I’m here two or three months a year at most. A lot of catching up to do.”

Actors Cher, Faye Dunaway, Eva Marie Saint and Carl Reiner, songwriters Marilyn and Alan Bergman and cinematographer Haskell Wexler were to join Jewison on Friday at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for a panel discussion about his about his nearly half-century of filmmaking.

The chat, to be moderated by journalist Leonard Maltin, is being held in collaboration with the CFC, a Toronto-based training centre Jewison founded in 1988. Others on the guest list include Mia Kirshner, Kevin Zegers and Alan Thicke.

Cher once labelled Jewison a “curmudgeon” for making her work so hard on the set of “Moonstruck,” but the forever-friendly movie maker says she was just ribbing and there will be no ill feelings on Friday.

“She was teasing,” Jewison, 82, said with a laugh. “In a way,” he added after a pause for comical effect.

“I was pretty tough with her I guess at one point but I always promised her I’d tell her the truth.”

Friday’s event, which also includes a screening of “Moonstruck,” was one of several parties dedicated to the director-producer, whose other celebrated films include “In The Heat Of The Night,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” “The Hurricane,” “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming” and “Rollerball.”

On Thursday, he was slated to attend an industry party in his honour at the London West Hollywood hotel, and on Saturday the LACMA is set to screen his 1971 classic “Fiddler on the Roof.”

Momentum for the events has been beyond his expectations, he said.

“It’s now taken on a kind of life of its own,” said Jewison, who has a lifetime achievement award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Though he’s made many of his films in the U.S., Jewison says he’ll always consider himself a Canadian filmmaker, first and foremost.

“Canadians have always exported a lot of their talent to America and there’s nothing wrong with that because I really feel it’s important that artists find where they are wanted or where they can do the work,” he said.

“I’m very proud of what Canada has produced for the size of a country we are, with our population. We really have produced a lot of talent and I think this is why the Canadian Film Centre, in the last 20 years, has graduated 1,000 people.”

It’s no surprise, then, that Jewison – who has just finished co-writing “Bread & Tulips,” an English-language version of an Italian romantic comedy – is itching to return to Canadian soil.

“Can’t wait to get back!” he exclaimed when asked when he plans to return to his Caledon farm, where he raises cattle, horses and chickens.

“I don’t want to miss the tulips, the ones that the deer haven’t eaten. I’m looking to get back and also I’ve got my maple syrup so I’ve got to get back.”

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