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Frank Wilton Marshall ..(born September 13, 1946) is a four-time Academy Award-nominated American movie producer and director, often working in collaboration with his wife, Kathleen Kennedy. With Kennedy and Steven Spielberg, he was one of the founders of Amblin Entertainment. He is a partner with Kennedy in The Kennedy/Marshall Company, a film production company formed in 1991, which presently has a contract with Universal Pictures.
Background
Marshall was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of composer Jack Marshall. He's worked on many of Hollywood's biggest films since 1973. In 1981, with his wife Kathleen Kennedy and Steven Spielberg, he co-founded Amblin Entertainment, one of the industry's most productive and profitable production companies. Marshall's first producer credit was on Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) which marked his first collaborations with George Lucas, Spielberg and Kennedy. He went on to executive produce the sequels Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) with Lucas. Marshall also served as executive producer with Kennedy and Spielberg on the Back to the Future series (1985, 1989, and 1990). He's also collaborated with Robert Zemeckis, Joe Dante and Martin Scorsese, among others.
Marshall has also directed a number of large-scale entertainment features, beginning with the comedy-thriller Arachnophobia (1990), about poisonous spiders on the loose in suburbia. He had previously served as 2nd unit director on such features as Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Back to the Future, Always (1989) and the second and third Indiana Jones films. Marshall has also directed TV commercials for McDonald's and Diet Coke featuring Roger Rabbit as well as the live-action sequences of two "Maroon Cartoon" shorts, "Tummy Trouble" (1989) and "Roller Coaster Rabbit" (1990).
Marshall entered the business as a protege of Peter Bogdanovich whom he met at a birthday party for the daughter of director John Ford, a family friend. He invited Marshall, then an undergrad at UCLA, to work on his feature directorial debut, Targets (1968). Marshall received his introduction to film production working at various tasks including building and decorating sets, making sandwiches and even appearing in a bit part. After traveling through Europe post-graduation, he returned stateside to Wichita Falls, Texas as location manager on Bogdanovich's signature film, The Last Picture Show (1971). He would work on five more of the writer-director's films in as many years, first as a location manager and subsequently as an associate producer. Marshall went on to become a line producer on projects directed by Orson Welles (the abortive "The Other Side of the Wind"), Scorsese (the 1978 rock documentary The Last Waltz) and Walter Hill (The Driver 1978). He also executive produced Hill's The Warriors (1979) before being introduced to Spielberg by the legendary Verna Fields. That meeting resulted in Marshall being hired to produce Raiders of the Lost Ark, the film that would introduce him to Kennedy and prove to be the launching pad for his prolific career.
Marshall has also worked in TV, primarily as an executive producer of numerous "Making of..." specials about his Spielberg projects. He served as production executive on the animated spin-off series, "Back to the Future" (CBS, 1991) and "Fieval's American Tails" (CBS, 1992) as well the short-lived Spielberg/Tim Burton cartoon collaboration, "Family Dog" (CBS, 1993). Marshall made his TV directing debut on "Johnny Bago" (CBS, 1993), a wonderfully wacky spoof of "The Fugitive" and the like, which he executive produced with Robert Zemeckis.
Marshall departed Amblin in 1991 and formed The Kennedy/Marshall Company with his wife the following year. He embarked upon his second directorial outing, Alive (1993), a joint production of Paramount Pictures and Touchstone Pictures about a South American rugby team forced to resort to extreme measures to survive after a spectacularly shot plane crash in the Andes.
Marshall is particularly respected for his skills at organizing and managing high quality, large scale productions - both domestically as well as internationally. He was specifically brought in by Universal, for example, to supervise the difficult production circumstances of The Bourne Identity after filming had begun. He then deftly guided both sequels in the series: The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum through two complex productions from start to finish.
Marshall is also a former VP, member of the Board of Directors and member of the Executive Committee of the United States Olympic Committee. In 2003 Marshall co-chaired (with Bill Stapleton) a task force on a much needed seven month-long reform process that streamlined the organization and installed a new course for governance. Marshall was recently inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame class of 2008 for his years of service to the U.S.O.C.
Trivia
Marshall also enjoys magic and has been known to perform under the monicker of "Dr. Fantasy."
External links
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Films directed by Frank Marshall |
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