Robert Scott Hicks (born 4 March 1953) is an
Academy Award-nominated and Emmy Award-winning
film director from
South Australia.
Personal life
Hicks was born in
Uganda, the son of a homemaker and a civil engineer.
[www.filmreference.com/film/69/Scott-Hicks.html] He lived in Kenya, just outside Nairobi, until the age of ten. His family then moved, first to England and, when he was 14, on to Adelaide, Australia. Though British citizens, his father and grandfather were born respectively in Burma and
the West Indies, and spent their lives in exotic, far-flung locales as civil engineers building railways, bridges and harbors. His mother is Scottish. Scott lives with his wife and collaborator/producer Kerry Heysen in
Adelaide, South Australia where they maintain their own Yacca Paddock Vineyard on the
Fleurieu Peninsula. Their two sons, Scott and Jethro also live in
Adelaide.
Career
Hicks graduated from
Flinders University in South Australia (BA Honors) in 1975 and was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1997. He graduated into an industry which was emerging from decades of inactivity, stimulated by renewed government support for the arts. South Australia was at the forefront of this
Australian film revival, with established directors
Peter Weir and
Bruce Beresford coming to Adelaide to make their films. Hicks worked as a crew member on a dozen features over the next few years. At the same time, he was successful in bidding for contracts to write and direct short dramas and sponsored documentaries.
In his very early working years in the early 1980s, Hicks worked 3 times with WEA Records (Australia), firstly the movie "Freedom" filmed in and around Adelaide and featuring the music of Cold Chisel's
Don Walker and the vocals of INXS lead singer
Michael Hutchence. Following this, Hicks made a (very expensive for its time) music film clip utilizing 16mm film (not video) for popular South Australian band "Vertical Hold" who had a No.1 single in 1981 & another top 5 hit for WEA the next year. Hicks' film clip was for their 3rd single "Shotdown (In Love)" released in 1983 and was shown first on TV in Australia and then overseas including Hong Kong, Switzerland and at a U.S. "Aussie" Music Festival (in Los Angeles) late in 1983. He is, however, best known as the screenwriter and director of
Shine, the Oscar-winning
biopic of pianist
David Helfgott.
Geoffrey Rush won the
Academy Award for
Best Actor, for his portrayal as Helfgott, and the film was also nominated for
Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Armin Mueller-Stahl), Best Director,
Best Film Editing,
Best Music, Original Dramatic Score,
Best Picture and
Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen. The AFIs gave it significant recognition as well, with nine nominations total.
Hicks’ first Hollywood studio film "Snow Falling on Cedars" (1999) starring
Ethan Hawke,
Max von Sydow and
Sam Shepard, and based on David Guterson's novel of the same title, also received an Academy Award nomination. This was followed in 2001 by the adaptation of Stephen King’s novel
Hearts in Atlantis starring
Anthony Hopkins.
After working on
Hearts in Atlantis, Hicks decided to take time off and enjoy living at home. In that time, he fell into working on television
commercials.
[Filmmaker Scott Hicks] Hicks also enjoyed success in the world of American television commercials (which he terms “multi-million dollar mini-movies”) – one of which was inducted into the permanent collection of
the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
More than six years later, Hicks resurfaced as a director in
No Reservations. He followed that up with a more personal project, shooting a feature length documentary on the iconic composer
Philip Glass,
GLASS: a portrait of Philip in twelve parts. This film premiered at the 2007 Toronto International Festival, to great acclaim, and has since been released in the U.S. and at film festivals around the world. His latest project
The Boys Are Back, an Australian-UK co-production which stars
Clive Owen.
Hicks is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the
British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Hicks was a finalist in 2008 for the Australian of the Year Awards.
Filmography
Director :
Writer:
- Snow Falling on Cedars (1999) (screenplay)
- Shine (1996) (story)
- The Space Shuttle (1994) (TV) (writer)
- Submarines: Sharks of Steel (1993) (writer)
- Call Me Mr. Brown (1990) (writer)
- Sebastian and the Sparrow (1988) (writer)
Producer:
- GLASS: a portrait of Philip in twelve parts (2007) (producer)
- The Ultimate Athlete: Pushing the Limit (1996) (TV) (producer)
- Sebastian and the Sparrow (1988) (producer)
- You Can't Always Tell (1979) (producer)
- Down the Wind (1975) (producer)
Cinematographer:
- GLASS: a portrait of Philip in twelve parts (2007)
Second Unit Director or Assistant Director:
Miscellaneous Crew:
