An Interview with Ulu Grosbard

Abstract

Ulu Grosbard brings an impeccable precision and delicacy to his work with some of the America’s finest film actors—Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall, Dustin Hoffman, and Meryl Streep. And although Grosbard’s film career has been confined, thus far, to five films—The Subject Was Roses (1968), Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things about Me? (1971), Straight Time (1978), True Confessions (1981), and Falling in Love (1984)—that circumscribed field is profuse with radiant moments of acting. The frame within which Grosbard works is poetic realism, the most celebrated, home-grown school of American drama. It is deeply character-driven, rich in psychological tensions, and refulgent with a sense of time and place. Clearly, we are in the territory of The Actors Studio, where Grosbard has attended sessions since the 1960s. The Studio is also the native habitat of the directors with whom Grosbard inaugurated his film career as assistant director: Elia Kazan (Splendor in the Grass, 1961), Arthur Penn (The Miracle Worker, 1962), and Sidney Lumet (The Pawnbroker, 1965).