The Cinema of Robert Zemeckis

Kagan's study of director Robert Zemeckis is fast-paced and readable, but the author's evident contempt for his subject undermines the book's effectiveness. Denouncement comes early, when Kagan brands the director of such blockbusters as Back to the Future, Forrest Gump and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? a new kind of American filmmaker--""one obsessed by pure technique and technology, Hollywood storytelling, broad humor and a socially reactionary viewpoint (i.e. people are no damned good)""--and proceeds to analyze his films in terms of these characteristics. Kagan offers a brief, interesting sketch of the director's formative years as a movie enthusiast who would see four Frank Capra pictures on a Saturday and four more on Sunday. Steven Spielberg directed 1941, Zemeckis's first screenplay (co-written with partner Bob Gale), and became a lifelong supporter. The film failed, and Used Cars, according to Zemeckis,""opened and dropped dead."" Commercial success stormed in with Romancing the Stone and Back To the Future, but Kagan points out that giant box office may be an illusion after creative studio bookkeeping takes over. Forrest Gump, a multiple Oscar winner, was supposedly unprofitable, despite its $600 million gross. What Lies Beneath is dismissed as derivative, lifting ideas and gimmicks from Rear Window, The Sixth Sense and Psycho, and Cast Away is labeled""spiritually pathetic."" Kagan's educated but arrogant tone prompts us to applaud Zemeckis's opening statement in the book, which was delivered at a Director's Guild meeting:""Producers, agents and studio executives don't know exactly what it is that directors do. Actors think they know, and critics never know.""