Directors: Kaufman, Philip–Social Background, Career, Awards (Cum Advantage, Emmy)

Philip Kaufman is the honoree of the 2025 Career Achievement Award from LAFCA, of which I’ve been a member since 1991 and a three-year president, 1996-1999.

Born on October 23, 1936, Kaufman, a directir and writer, has made only 15 films over a career spanning five decades.

He has received a BAFTA Award along with several Oscar nominations and a Primetime Emmy Award.

Described as a “maverick” and an “iconoclast,” he is notable for his versatility and independence, directing eclectic and controversial films.

With his flawed career (more downs than ups), he is not considered a “genuine auteur” due to lack of control over the final cut of his pictures.

That said, his films have expressed an original vision, while working in genres like horror, fantasy, erotica, western, and crime.

He is kniwn for making movies for adult voewers, tackling such issues as artistic creation, manipulation by authorities, and sensual eroticism.

Kaufman’s films are strong on mood and atmosphere, assisted by lyrical, sometimes poetic cinematography that’s suitabke to the different historic periods of hs stories.

Some of his films combine a European art style, while still stressing clearly and uniquely American values, such as individualism and vigilante.

Kaufman’s breakthrough film, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) which earned him the BAFTA Best Adapted Screenplay Award as well as Best Adapted Screenplay nomination.

He is noted for directing such films as The Wanderers (1979), Rising Sun (1993), the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Henry & June (1990), and Quills (2000).

He gained prominence for The Right Stuff (1983), which received eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.

He is also known for directing the HBO film Hemingway & Gellhorn (2012), for which he received Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Dramatic Special nomination.

Kaufman was born in Chicago in 1936, the only son of Elizabeth (née Brandau), a housewife, and Nathan Kaufman, a produce businessman. He was the grandson of German Jewish immigrants.

One of his grammar and high school friends was William Friedkin, who also became a director.

He developed early love of movies, and during his youth he would go to double features.

He attended the University of Chicago where he received degree in history, and then enrolled at Harvard Law School where he spent a year. He returned to Chicago for a postgraduate degree, hoping to become a professor of history.

Before graduating Kaufman became involved in counterculture movement and in 1960 moved to San Francisco. He took various jobs there, including postal worker, and befriended a number of influential people, such as writer Henry Miller. He and his wife then decided to travel and live in Europe for a while where he would teach.

After spending time working on a kibbutz in Israel, he taught English and math for two years in Greece and Italy. During his travels he also met author Anaïs Nin, whose relationship with her lover, Henry Miller, later became the inspiration and subject for Kaufman’s film Henry & June (1990).

He met Massachusetts-born Rose Fisher in 1957, when he was 21 and she was 18, both were undergraduates at the University of Chicago. A year later, in 1958, they married. They had one son, Peter. Rose Kaufman was also a writer and had bit roles in two films.

After backpacking in Europe with wife and young son, they returned to the U.S. His time in Europe heavily influenced Kaufman’s decision to become a filmmaker, when he and his wife would wander into small movie theaters showcasing the works of experimental new filmmakers such as John Cassavetes and Shirley Clarke, among others.[1] He recalls the effect of being exposed to those filmmakers as the “start of something new” which would later inspire the European flavor of many of his films: “I could feel the cry of America, the sense of jazz … So I came back to Chicago in 1962 and set about trying to learn as much as I could, seeing every foreign movie I could.”

Goldstein (1964)
Kaufman returned to Chicago, looking for funding for his directorial debut, Goldstein (1964), co-written and co-directed with Benjamin Manaster. Kaufman initially conceived of the story in an unfinished novel, but at the urging of Anaïs Nin he made it into a “mystical comedy” film.

Inspired by a story from Martin Buber’s “Tales of the Hasidim,” itn was filmed on location in Chicago with a cast composed of actors from The Second City comedy troupe.

Fearless Frank (1967)

A comic book-counterculture fable, which Kaufman wrote, produced, and directed, co-starring Jon Voight in his film debut.

Kaufman spent four years trying to find a distributor, and the film was box-office failure when it finally played. But it helped Kaufman get a contract in Universal Studios’ Young Directors Program in 1969.

The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid (1972)

Kaufman’s wrote and directed The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid starring Robert Duvall as Jesse James, his first commercial film after the previous two independent ones. He researched the real life characters when writing the screenplay, though the film took liberties with some of the factual details.

He viewed thentext with amused detachment, perceiving the events as absurd spectacle.

The White Dawn (1974)

Based on the novel of the same name by James Houston, it was shot in documentary style, a story about whalers, played by Warren Oates, Louis Gossett Jr., and Timothy Bottoms, stranded in the Arctic at the turn of the century. To survive they battle polar bears and abuse the Eskimos who had originally saved them.

The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

Kaufman wrote and began directing The Outlaw Josey Wales in 1975, but was fired after artistic differences with star Clint Eastwood, who then directed the film. The enmity also stemmed from their mutual pursuit of actress Sondra Locke, then 32 and married to Gordon Leigh Anderson.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

Kaufman science fiction thriller Invasion of the Body Snatchers became his first box office hit. A remake of the 1956 version, this version moved the setting to San Francisco and recreated the alien threat as a horror film than science fiction, in a way that was disturbing yet humorous

The Wanderers (1979)

The Wanderers, based on comic novel by Richard Price, was different from his previous films. It is the story of a benign Italian gang of teenagers in the Bronx of 1963, with Ken Wahl (debut) and Karen Allen (second film). The film has become a cult favorite.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) co-writer

In 1981, Kaufman was involved with the first Indiana Jones film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, for which he received story credit. Thecharacter of Indiana Jones were created by George Lucas, while Kaufman came up with the MacGuffin, the Ark of the Covenant.

The Right Stuff (1983)

In 1983, Kaufman directed and wrote the screenplay for the critically acclaimed The Right Stuff, an adaptation of the best-selling book of the same name by Tom Wolfe. The story is based on the events and lives of the original test pilots who were selected to become the first U.S. astronauts. The film helped launch or boost the careers of actors Ed Harris, Scott Glenn, Fred Ward, Dennis Quaid.

Kaufman hired William Goldman to write the screenplay, but after disputes about the story’s focus, Goldman quit and Kaufman wrote the text as a satiric chronicle of the astronaut program.

Goldman wanted the story to portray patriotism and center on the astronauts, whereas Kaufman wanted much of the story to focus on Chuck Yeager (played by Sam Shepard), whom Goldman’s script left out completely. Goldman writes in his memoirs, “Phil’s heart was with Yeager, who represents a real man and existentialist, a man in a leather jacket on a horse meeting a jet plane in the desert.”

One of the decade’s more ambitious pictures, it was nominated for 8 Academy Awards (including Best Picture) and won 4, yet failed at the box office. Kaufman earned the Writers Guild and Directors Guild nomination for his.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988)

The film is based on the novel by Milan Kundera which takes place during the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Kaufman was nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar.

Henry & June (1990)

In 1990, he wrote and directed Henry & June, about the affairs of Henry Miller, June Miller, and Anais Nin in 1931 Paris. It was the first film to be given an NC-17 rating by the MPAA.

Rising Sun (1993)

Kaufman directed Rising Sun in 1993, an adaptation of Michael Crichton’s thriller set Los Angeles, starring Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes. Crichton angrily withdrew early on due to Kaufman softening the book’s more anti-Japan posturing.

In 1995, Kaufman narrated China: The Wild East, a documentary by his son, Peter Kaufman.

Quills (2000)

Kaufman directed Quills, a film about the desperate efforts of the Marquis de Sade’s jailers to censor his licentious works, starring Geoffrey Rush, Joaquin Phoenix, Kate Winslet and Michael Caine. The film was a commercial flop.

Twisted (2004)

Twisted as a thriller about a young policewoman (Ashley Judd) whose casual sex partners are murdered while she herself suffers alcoholic blackouts. Samuel L. Jackson and Andy Garcia co-starred.

Hemingway & Gellhorn (2012)

In 2012, 8 years after his previous film, Kaufman directed an HBO biopic about Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn, Hemingway & Gellhorn, starring Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman. The film had been planned for many years, but languished as a project so Kaufman could care for his wife Rose, who was fighting terminal cance.

Kaufman lives in San Francisco, where he runs his production company, Walrus and Associates.

In 1958, Kaufman met Rose Fisher and the couple married the following year. Their only son, Peter, was born in March 1960. Rose, who appeared in bit roles in Henry & June and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, died in 2009, aged 70, from cancer.

She co-wrote the screenplays of The Wanderers and Henry & June. Son Peter Kaufman was the producer of Henry & June, Rising Sun, Quills, Twisted, and Hemingway & Gellhorn.

Filmography

1964 Goldstein, Co-writer and director Benjamin Manaster

1967 Fearless Frank

1972 The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid

1974 The White Dawn

1976 The Outlaw Josey Wales, script based on the novel The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales

1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Remake of the 1956 film

1979 The Wanderers, Based on the 1974 novel, adapted with Rose Kaufman

1981 Raiders of the Lost Ark, script, Story No With George Lucas

1983 The Right Stuff, Based on the 1979 novel

1988 The Unbearable Lightness of Being, based on 1984 novel, adapted with Jean-Claude Carrière

1990 Henry & June, Written with Rose Kaufman