Oscar-Winning Producer Bruce Cohen to Be Honored Sunday in Reston

PHOTO: Film producer Bruce Cohen; photo courtesy of Washington West Film Festival

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There must be something magical in the water at J.E.B. Stuart High School. The Falls Church-area school is where Oscar-winning producer Bruce Cohen, Oscar-winning actress Julianne Moore and film director Tom Shadyac all went to school in the ‘70s.

“We were all friends in high school so it’s pretty funny that we all ended up having successful careers in the movie business,” Cohen said Tuesday in a phone interview with Patch. Cohen returns to Northern Virginia this weekend from Los Angeles to accept the inaugural Metropolitan Award from the Washington West Film Festival in Reston, surrounded by friends and family.

(Cohen and Moore are helping students with their efforts to try to change the Confederate name of the school.)

Cohen’s career includes a Best Picture Oscar win for American Beauty, as well as Best Picture nominations for Milk and Silver Linings Playbook. Cohen also produced Big Fish, and was executive producer of the ABC series Pushing Daisies, which won a total of seven Emmys and received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Comedy.

On Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Bow Tie Cinemas Theater in Reston, Cohen will accept his award and highlight favorite clips and moments of his impressive career and give an insider’s look into the producing experience. (Check the film festival Web site for tickets; all proceeds go to charity.)

“We are proud to bestow Northern Virginia native and Oscar-Winning producer Bruce Cohen with our inaugural Metropolitan Award, given to a world class filmmaker from greater Washington DC whose exceptional artistry and influence is the pride of the metropolitan region,” said Brad Russell, founder and president of the festival.

‘I’ve been a political junkie since I was a kid’

Cohen’s dreams of a film career started at home, in his Lake Barcroft neighborhood in the Falls Church area. That’s where he grew up with his sister Julie (also a producer, in New York), and his parents, Phyllis and George Cohen, who still live in the neighborhood today.

“I loved growing up in Falls Church, it was very exciting for me to be so close to Washington, D.C.,” Cohen said. “I’ve been sort of a political junkie since I was a kid...I think a lot of it had to do with growing up there. I remember my mom let me stay home to watch the Watergate hearings in junior high school because I was so interested in it and she had a feeling that I would learn way more watching the hearings than I would that week at school. I think she was right about that.”

Seeing Star Wars in 1977

“One of my really vivid memories was when ‘Star Wars’ opened, I was a freshman at Stuart and I remember going to the State Theater in Falls Church that Friday night and seeing “Star Wars’ and thinking it was just the best thing ever,” said Cohen. “I think people had a sense that opening day, that it was going to change things in a lot of ways.”

The producer of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” debuting in December, is Kathleen Kennedy, president of Lucasfilm. She and her husband Frank Marshall were the producers of “The Color Purple,” the first film that Cohen ever worked on. They became producing mentors of Cohen’s afterward.

“They were kind of the reason why I decided I wanted to be a producer and they’ve been my producing mentors for all these years,” he said. “I think back a lot now, when the new movie comes out, it’s going to set the world on fire. And it takes me back to 1977, when I first saw it, when I was just a kid.”

No fallback plan

When Cohen graduated from Yale in 1983 with a film degree, he wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted to do in the film industry. He moved to Los Angeles and spent the first 10 years of his career working as an assistant director.

Heading to L.A., Cohen said he had no fallback plan if he didn’t make it in the industry. He got into a training program for assistant directors and worked on the hit TV show, “Hill Street Blues.” His first film production experience was working on ”The Color Purple” with Steven Spielberg, where his decision to keep his head down and work hard resulted in the director eventually noticing him, which led to many more jobs working with Spielberg. The film was released in 1985.

What does a producer do?

“Each film or TV program is really like its own business that is formed to produce that particular show,” Cohen said. “And the producer is the CEO of the business. You’re in charge of every aspect of the production, both the creative and the financial side. And you’re in charge of that from when it’s first an idea all the way to the time when it makes it onto the screen or onto your TV set or onto the stage.”

For students today interested in breaking into the film industry, Cohen says “that the interest in the film industry as a career has exploded, and so there are tremendous opportunities as far as education goes.” But he notes a liberal arts background is a good beginning.

‘What we are is story tellers’

“Ultimately what we are is story tellers,” Cohen said. “The more stories you have, the better you’re going to be. So I actually feel like in many ways a liberal arts education might actually serve you better than just focusing on film and only taking film classes, ‘cause in the end, the more well-rounded citizen of the world you are, the more access you’re going to have to great ideas and for people to bring you great ideas that could end up becoming film and TV programs.”

In 2000, Cohen won the Best Picture Oscar as a producer for “American Beauty” at the 72nd Academy Awards. Watch his acceptance speech here:

Next up for Cohen: Richard Pryor film

Cohen isn’t resting on his laurels. He is currently working on bringing a film about legendary comedian Richard Pryor to life with filming likely beginning in the spring with Lee Daniels as director and Mike Epps in the title role. Others reported to have roles in the film are Kate Hudson, Oprah Winfrey and Eddie Murphy.