The San Diego Book Festival is hosted by film director Ed Zwick, whose new Hollywood memoir tells it all

On a recent Friday night, Jim Belushi walked into a high-rise apartment in Chicago and shouted: “Are you late? Have you talked about me yet?”

Belushi was invited, as were the other 40 or so people attending the event who came to hear veteran film director Ed Zwick talk about his new memoir, “Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood.”

Belushi shouted, some people laughed, and Zwick continued, “I haven’t mentioned you yet, Jim, but I will.”

Also among the guests that night were Stuart O’Kane and Jason Britt, the film production team behind many projects over the years. Their first encounter with Zwick was the film version of the David Mamet play, “Sexual Perversion in Chicago,” which became “About Last Night” and turned the duo into what Zwick calls “lifelong friends.”

About Last Night was Zwick’s first successful film. The film was directed by and starred Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, and Jim Belushi, who, Zwick wrote, “became a great ally of mine, and performed admirably.”

Belushi’s stories are some of the best in the book, but it’s a good, honest book. Its first line is: “I tell stories for a living.” True to its word, the book’s 300 pages are filled with stories about the making of TV shows like “Thirtysomething” and “My So-Called Life” and nearly two dozen movies, including “Glory” and “Legends of the World.” .. Fall, Shakespeare in Love, The Last Samurai, Blood Diamond, and Jack Reacher: Never Go Back.

Zwick is the featured headliner for the 5th Annual San Diego Book Festival, which takes place from 9am to 6pm Saturday at two locations in Coronado. Over 90 speakers have been booked and there will be over 40 events. Zwick’s performance will be at 11 a.m. at the Coronado Center for the Performing Arts. Other speakers are San Diego poet laureate Jill Soto, New York Times bestselling author Matthew Quirk (“The Night Agent”), Dr. Judith Orloff (“The Genius of Empathy”) and Anita Moorjani (“Dying to Be Me”).

Zwick’s memoir is filled with enough bold names for dozens of old-fashioned gossip columns: Tom Cruise, Denzel Washington, Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Meg Ryan… and so on.

“The book was born when Covid came,” said Zwick, who lives with his family in Santa Monica. “It put a halt to plans to reimagine Thirtysomething(else) and during that hiatus, I started looking at some of the work I’d done. I’m not a retrospective person. I’m always looking forward. But when I was… “Watching my films, I was amazed by the people I was with and the relationships I made.”

His book is a generally sunny outing, in sharp contrast to the recent memoir by another David Mamet, whose recently published book, Everywhere an Oink Oink, lives up to its subtitle, “A bitter, bitter, accurate account of forty years in Hollywood.” “.

Zwick knows and respects Mamet, and said he would like to share the stage with Mamet to discuss the memoir.

There’s no doubt that Zwick shares some of Mamet’s views on Hollywood and filmmaking. His take: “These days, the big movies with movie stars and all the bells and whistles tend to be about superheroes and comic books. This is not complaining. “It is what it is.”

He’s still working on a new film project, and is pleased with the reception his book has received, praise like this from the Wall Street Journal: “The author warns early on that he will drop names, and he certainly does. … Not everyone is remembered.” Very fondly, but overall the author seems humble about his success and charmingly self-deprecating…. (A) Honest Memoir at the Movies and More.

In the book, Zwick wrote about how Brad Pitt was sometimes volatile while filming “Legends of the Fall”; how the demanding Julia Roberts spectacularly dropped “Shakespeare in Love” and cost the studio $6 million; how he sued now-disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein; How he enjoyed working with Denzel Washington in “Glory” and Tom Cruise in “The Last Samurai.”

The book is interspersed with chapters offering “tips” and “lessons,” such as “It’s Possible to Make a Bad Movie from a Good Script” and “Falling in Love with Actors: But Don’t Mistake It for Real.” . Transfer your fascination with them to the screen. And do not sleep with them even though they are bright and attractive.”

The only thing the book doesn’t offer is much about his personal life. We know that he is happily married, has two fine children (both of whom are writers) and has successfully dealt with a serious health problem. His high school years? Just a little. His childhood? Not much.

This is the paragraph that begins Chapter Fifteen: “My paternal grandfather was a cruel Jew. I was named after him. My Hebrew name is Isaac. In Chicago in the 1920s, his five brothers (“the Uncles,” as they were known in my family), Duffy, Fat, Zus, Zell, and Jules, were the “bookie commissioners” (read bookmakers) for the Capone gang. As a boy, I secretly reveled in my family’s unsavory past.

That sounds like it might make a good book, doesn’t it? What about the movie?

“Successes, Failures, and Other Delusions: My Forty Years in Hollywood” By Ed Zwick (Gallery Books, 2024; 304 pages)

The San Diego Book Festival presents Ed Zwick

when: 11 am on Saturday

where: Coronado Center for the Performing Arts, 650 D Ave., Coronado

Acceptance: Free but registration required

Register: sandiegowritersfestival.org

Kogan writes for the Chicago Tribune.