Rod Lurie remembers governors, senators, congressmen and generals stopping by to see his father, a world famous political cartoonist and journalist. His father moved to the United States from Israel to take a job at Life, a now defunct magazine that once dominated newsstands.

‘While other fathers were discussing football games or discussing baseball games for the weekend, my dad was discussing who was going to win the primary or whether or not Anwar Sadat was going to invade Israel,’ Lurie said. ‘That really becomes the guiding force of my life.’

Lurie, a director, screenwriter and producer (‘The Contender,’ ‘Nothing but the Truth’), inherited his passion for political discussion from his father.

Politics are the hallmark of Lurie’s movies, which are anything but the typical Hollywood fare. Putting blatantly political tones into his work doesn’t seem to bother Lurie, who recently screened his latest film ‘Nothing but the Truth’ at Syracuse University.

‘When you’re a filmmaker, you’re presenting a point of view, and I think you need to have a strong point of view,’ Lurie said. ‘Even when I’ve made stuff that’s not overtly political, it certainly had political or constitutional undertones.’

‘Nothing but the Truth’ and his earlier, breakthrough hit ‘The Contender,’ which garnered two Oscar nods, swing unmistakably political.

‘There’s never any question that he has an opinion,’ said Doug Brode, a television, radio and film professor at SU and Lurie’s mentor. ‘He has a liberal bias; it’s there.’

Lurie remembers when movie critic Roger Ebert asked ‘The Contender’ co-star Jeff Bridges if the film was a thinly veiled anti-Republican film. Bridges chuckled and replied: ‘What do you mean by thinly veiled? Its not thinly veiled at all.’

But the genius of Lurie is that the political shading of his movies doesn’t impose a message on its audience, Brode said. And many mistakenly compare Lurie to Oliver Stone, another director with a distinctly political style of filmmaking, Brode said.

‘He has the ability to present his own liberal point of view while not forcing it on you,’ Brode said of Lurie. ‘Oliver Stone forces it on you.’

A Force of Nature

Lurie didn’t only get a love of politics from his father. He learned both resiliency and how to piss people off.

In the mid-1970s, Newsweek was keeping an important interview Lurie’s father did with the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from publication. Instead of letting Newsweek win, his father took the interview to another magazine for publication, Lurie said.

When Lurie was first breaking into the film industry, he was forced with an equally difficult situation, Brode remembered.Lurie had scripted a tightly budgeted film and tapped Eric Roberts, then still a midlevel star, for the main role. Lurie even double mortgaged his Pasadena house to come up with the funds for the movie.

Two or three days before shooting was set to begin, Roberts dropped out to take a supporting role in a different film that would make him three times the money. The studio pulled out, and Lurie’s movie fell apart.

‘I, as a normal person, would have done one of two things: A: Commit suicide or B: Get out the business. Fast,’ Brode said.

But Lurie did neither of those. He started over and kept going. The name of his film company, Battleplan Productions, symbolizes his strong willed commitment, Brode said.

‘Nothing is ever going to stop him. He’s a force of nature,’ Brode said.

‘Its like if he had been Gen. Custer at the Little Big Horn he would have somehow, some way found a way to win,’ Brode said. ‘Or if he had gotten killed, he would’ve come back from the grave.’

On the set of ‘The Contender,’ Lurie impressed his production partner Marc Frydman by never backing down during production, even though the film encountered problems along the way.

‘I had never seen anybody like Rod. Every time there was a problem, he was ready to roll up his sleeves,’ Frydman said. ‘The Contender’ was Lurie’s first movie with real star power – Bridges, Joan Allen and Gary Oldman all starred. But Lurie needed to shoot quickly, and each actor had a busy schedule, forcing Lurie to perform a madcap juggling act.

‘I am not sure if I could have kept all those balls up in the air,’ Frydman said. ‘He really made the movie happen.’

Lurie isn’t afraid of controversy or what people say about his work. But, as he points out, there’s no place to hide in Hollywood.

Even his own stars have been known to take issue with the director. When the final cut of ‘The Contender’ came out, Oldman didn’t like the way his character, Sen. Shelly Runyon, was portrayed. He thought the senator was the hero of the film, not the villain.

‘This really is a business where you have to have a backbone made out of steel, because people are taking shots at you all the time,’ said Lurie, who admits to wanting to hide under a rock sometimes.

Not Changing Anytime Soon

Lurie said he thinks two of his future projects are sure to put him directly in front of the firing line.

One is a television series he’s developing for Showtime. The premise: Female vice-cop by day, prostitute by night. Not conventional, but certainly appropriate for the premium cable station that loves to push the envelope.

‘There might be some feminist organizations that get very upset with me, but they’re going to have to wait to see what I do with it,’ Lurie said.

Another project is a remake of Sam Peckinpah’s ‘Straw Dogs’ (1971), a film that angered some because of a rape scene many interpreted as anti-feminist.

‘I’m going to have a big bull’s eye on my back, that’s absolutely for sure,’ Lurie said. ‘I’m pretty certain that I’m dead meat with critics.’

Lurie will return to the studio system with ‘Straw Dogs,’ a business arrangement he shares a love-hate relationship with. Screen Gems Studios, a subsidiary of Sony, is set to produce the film.

‘It’s very good for you financially, and the marketing is really strong, but it’s not the world’s most pleasant experience,’ Lurie said of making a movie for a studio. ‘You lose a little bit of ‘auteur’-ship.’

But ‘Straw Dogs’ offers him the chance to bridge commercialism and his biting commentary.

‘At the end of my life, I want to know I made movies that were contributive somehow to society,’ Lurie said. ‘I know that sounds kind of highfaluting but the truth is that I don’t want to lay on my death bed thinking about having made ‘Deuce Bigalow 2.’ Every movie you make should be something you’re prideful of.’

adbrow03@syr.edu

Published on November 9, 2008 at 12:00 pm