Gary Ross

From the Kennedy Campaign to a Casserole Dish

The years between Penn and Hollywood went partly to politics. Ross worked on Ted Kennedy's 1980 presidential campaign and later wrote speeches and jokes for Michael Dukakis and Bill Clinton. He also wrote a novel before he turned to screenplays.

The script that started his film career began by accident. Less than a decade after leaving Penn, Ross went to the home of his friend Anne Spielberg, sister of Steven Spielberg, to return a casserole dish. They started talking, and within a few hours they had an outline for a story about a boy who wakes up in a grown man's body. That became Big, released in 1988 with Tom Hanks.

At the 61st Academy Awards in 1989, Ross and Spielberg were nominated for the screenplay written directly for the screen, and Hanks was nominated for best actor. Ross also co-produced the film and, by his own account, was on the set constantly and shot second unit. "I think I had a long apprenticeship," he told Slashfilm.

Dave and the Paul Selvin Award

Ross wrote Dave, the 1993 comedy in which a man who looks like the President is hired to stand in for him and ends up taking over the job when the real President has a stroke. He also appears in it briefly as a policeman. The script earned him a second Oscar nomination at the 66th Academy Awards in 1994. The Writers Guild of America gave it the Paul Selvin Award, which goes to the script that best embodies the spirit of the Constitution's call for civil rights and liberties.

In the same period he worked on Mr. Baseball, wrote the 1994 Lassie, and produced the 1997 comedy Trial and Error.

Brent's Rule on the Pleasantville Set

Ross chose an original script of his own, Pleasantville, as his first film as director, and he also produced it. Two teenagers are pulled through a television set into a 1950s black and white sitcom, and the town turns to color as its people change. The film was shot in color and printed in black and white, with digital work in almost every reel. Ross said he wanted his debut to be visual: "I didn't want that to be a verbal or a literary experience."

The shoot went badly in ways the audience never saw. Brent Hershman, a second assistant on the A camera, died driving home after a long production day. His death became a rallying point for crew members pushing for a 14-hour cap on the working day. Ross held his production to that limit. "We were the only movie in history to limit work to 14 hours," he told the Houston writer Michael Bergeron in 1998. "It was a blip, where people paid attention, and then they stopped."

In the third week of filming, Ross's mother died. That day the schedule called for the scene in which Joan Allen's character finds color breaking out on her face and her son helps her cover it with makeup, a scene Ross said was "very much about my relationship with my mother." He told Allen what had happened, both of them cried, and they decided to shoot it. The film is dedicated to his mother, to Hershman, and to the actor J. T. Walsh, who died before its release. Pleasantville opened on October 23, 1998, and grossed $49.8 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo. The Producers Guild gave Ross its Nova Award as the most promising producer in theatrical films.

Seabiscuit at the 76th Academy Awards

Ross adapted Laura Hillenbrand's book Seabiscuit: An American Legend, about an also-ran racehorse that caught the country's attention in the late 1930s, and directed and produced the film. He also cast himself in a small part as the Pimlico track announcer. It opened on July 25, 2003, and grossed $148.3 million worldwide on an $87 million budget, according to Box Office Mojo.

At the 76th Academy Awards the film received seven nominations, among them best picture, with Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall and Ross named as producers, and best adapted screenplay for Ross. Those two brought his career total to four Oscar nominations. The script also won the USC Scripter Award. He later wrote and produced the animated film The Tale of Despereaux.

One Film in Panem

Ross came to The Hunger Games through his two children, who had passed him Suzanne Collins's novel. He adapted the novel for the screen and directed it, shooting in North Carolina. Standing on set one day, he noticed two other Penn alumni nearby: Elizabeth Banks, who played Effie Trinket, and Allison Shearmur, then president of production and development at Lionsgate. "I'd say that was the happiest I've ever been working on a project," he said.

The film opened in March 2012 to $152.5 million in its domestic opening and grossed $695.3 million worldwide on a $78 million budget, according to Box Office Mojo. Weeks later, in April 2012, Ross announced he would not direct the sequel, Catching Fire. In a statement released by Lionsgate, he said: "As a writer and a director, I simply don't have the time I need to write and prep the movie I would have wanted to make because of the fixed and tight production schedule." He denied reports that the split came from difficult negotiations with the studio.

Ten Years in Jones County

The project Ross took up next had been with him for about a decade. Free State of Jones is a Civil War drama set in Jones County, with Matthew McConaughey as Newton Knight. Ross told Slashfilm that he spent a couple of years doing nothing but reading, was a visiting fellow at Harvard studying under the historian John Stauffer, and made repeated trips to Jones County. Once financing came through, he paid some salaries out of his own pocket and worked for the Directors Guild minimum.

He insisted on carrying the story past the war into Reconstruction. A tidy victory, he said, "would have been the white savior movie." The film opened on June 24, 2016, and grossed $25.0 million worldwide against a $50 million budget, per Box Office Mojo.

His next film went the other way commercially. Ocean's Eight, a spinoff of Ocean's 11, opened on June 7, 2018, and grossed $297.8 million worldwide.

Sources

• Ross, Gary 1956- | Encyclopedia.com
• Former student Ross leads a 'Big' life - The Daily Pennsylvanian
• Gary Ross Movies & TV Shows List | Rotten Tomatoes
• The 61st Academy Awards | 1989
• The 66th Academy Awards | 1994
• The 76th Academy Awards | 2004
• Gary Ross interview | Free Press Houston
• Pleasantville - Box Office Mojo
• Seabiscuit - Box Office Mojo
• The Hunger Games - Box Office Mojo
• 'Hunger Games' Director Won't Return for Round Two - ABC News
• Interview: Why Gary Ross Spent A Decade Working On 'Free State Of Jones'
• Free State of Jones - Box Office Mojo
• Ocean's Eight - Box Office Mojo