News

Paul Mazursky died yesterday of pulmonary cardiac arrest. Born Irwin Mazursky in 1930, he'd go on to be nominated for five Oscars. After getting his start as an actor, Mazursky eventually became known best for writing and directing films that deftly captured contemporary life at the end of the 1960s and 1970s, with movies like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Blume in Love, Harry and Tonto, Next Stop, Greenwich Village, and An Unmarried Woman. His work was hugely influential, especially on those making similarly honest dramedies. 2006's Yippee, an autobiographical documentary about his trip to a Ukrainian Hasidic Jew festival, was his last feature. Most recently, he appeared as Norm on Curb Your Enthusiasm and has served as a film critic for Vanity Fair. He was 84.

The great Paul Mazursky is getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame December 13 (all together now: “Doesn’t he Have one already??!) and there’s a premature sense of the valedictory hanging over the occasion. Ok, maybe the director of “Harry and Tonto,” “An Unmarried Woman,” “Down and Out in Beverly Hills" and “Enemies: A Love Story” hasn’t been front and center recently. But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been acting up.Actually, the last movie Mazursky directed came out in 2006 -- “Yippee!” a documentary about the annual pilgrimage to Uman, a town in the Ukraine where the famous Hasidic leader Rabbi Nachman is buried. Nachman, who lived in the late 1700s and is associated with the more celebratory aspects of Hasidim, told his followers, “if you celebrate Rosh Hashanah at my grave, you'll have a year of joy.” So people return there year after year.

Paul Mazursky, 80, has always been a one-of-a-kind Hollywood filmmaker. He started out as an actor, wrote (often with a partner), directed and produced his films, and he hasn't stopped. He directed a 2006 documentary about a meeting of Hassidic Jews in the Ukraine (Yippee), directs theater and is prepping a Broadway musical version of Moon Over Parador. The director flourished inside the studio system during the 70s and 80s, a time when execs allowed all sorts of things to happen that they wouldn't today. Movies didn't cost as much. A single exec actually in charge of production could greenlight a movie. We talk about this in the flip cam interview below, as well as starting off his film acting career in 1953 on Stanley ...

Paul Mazursky, 80, has always been a one-of-a-kind Hollywood filmmaker. He started out as an actor, wrote (often with a partner), directed and produced his films, and he hasn't stopped. He directed a 2006 documentary about a meeting of Hassidic Jews in the Ukraine (Yippee), directs theater and is prepping a Broadway musical version of Moon Over Parador. The director flourished inside the studio system during the 70s and 80s, a time when execs allowed all sorts of things to happen that they wouldn't today. Movies didn't cost as much. A single exec actually in charge of production could greenlight a movie. We talk about this in the flip cam interview below, as well as starting off his film acting career in 1953 on Stanley ...