Jerry Zucker is an American director, screenwriter, and producer. He became famous thanks to comedy films and series, many of which he wrote and directed in collaboration with his older brother David. He independently directed the melodrama "Ghost", which was nominated for an Academy Award in the nomination "Best Film".
Childhood, personal life and the beginning of a career
Jerry Zucker was born March 11, 1950 in the city of Milluoki, Wisconsin. After graduating from high school, together with his older brother David and Jim Abrahams, he organized a comedy troupe in the city of Maddison. The trio began writing scripts for sketches and television shows, hoping to break into show business.
In 1987, Jerry Zucker married a girl named Janet. The couple has two children, son Bob and daughter Kate.
Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker
In 1977, the comedy trio Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker overtook the first success. The comedy "Kentucky Solyanka," directed by their director John Landis, was a hit movie. In 1980, all three wrote and directed a parody catastrophe film "Airplane", which collected in cinemas forty times more than its production budget.
Young filmmakers began to develop a comedy series that would ridicule the stereotypes and clichés of police procedures of those times. The series "Police Squad!" with Leslie Nielsen in the lead role did not become a hit among viewers and was closed after the sixth series.
After this setback, Jerry Zucker and two of his permanent associates wrote and directed the spy parody movie Top Secret and the black crime comedy Ruthless People. In 1988, they returned to the idea of a mockery of the police genre and wrote the script for the movie Naked Gun. All three films of a successful series of comedy films were written by the Zucker brothers and Jim Abrahams, and the older brother Jerry David directed the film. After the release of the third part of The Naked Gun, the three of them comedians no longer worked.
Films of Jerry Zucker and his two associates are still classics of cinema and are included in the lists of the best comedies of all time.
Solo works
In 1990, the youngest of the Zucker brothers decided to try himself in a completely new genre. He directed the Ghost melodrama, which became the highest grossing film of the year, raising half a billion dollars, and received several Academy Award nominations, including for the best film.
Following this success in 1995, Jerry Zucker directed the historical melodrama The First Knight. The film did not perform well at the box office, raising $ 127 million with a budget of 55, and received mixed reviews from critics.
Jerry’s latest directorial work is the 2001 comedy Rat Race. He continues to produce films and television shows to this day.