Julia Phillips

{{for-multi|the American author|Julia Phillips (author)|the American physicist|Julia Phillips (physicist)}}

{{Infobox person

| name = Julia Phillips

| birth_name = Julia Miller

| image = JuliaPhillipsImg.jpg

| image_size =

| caption = Phillips in 1991

| birth_date = {{birth date|1944|4|7|mf=y}}

| birth_place = New York City, U.S.

| death_date = {{death date and age|2002|1|1|1944|4|7|mf=y}}

| death_place = West Hollywood, California, U.S.

| occupation = Film producer, author

| spouse = {{marriage|Michael Phillips|1966|1974}}

| children = 1

}}

Julia Phillips (née Miller; April 7, 1944 – January 1, 2002) was an American film producer and author. She co-produced with her husband Michael (and others) three prominent films of the 1970s—The Sting, Taxi Driver, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind—and was the first female producer to win an Academy Award for Best Picture, received for The Sting.

In 1991, Phillips published an infamous tell-all memoir of her years as a Hollywood producer, titled You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again, which became a bestseller.

Early life

Julia Miller was born on April 7, 1944 to a Polish-Jewish family{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/03/arts/julia-phillips-57-producer-who-assailed-hollywood-dies.html |newspaper=New York Times |title=Julia Phillips, 57, Producer Who Assailed Hollywood, Dies |first=Bernard |last=Weinraub |author-link=Bernard Weinraub |date=January 3, 2002 |quote=You can't imagine what a trip it is for a nice Jewish girl from Great Neck to win an Academy Award and meet Elizabeth Taylor in the same night. |access-date=April 16, 2019 |page=21 }}{{cite news |url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/1991/03/24/a-hollywood-story-of-highs-and-lows/ |newspaper=Chicago Tribune |title=Hollywood Story Of 'Highs' And Lows |first=Frank |last=Sanello |author-link=Frank Sanello |date=March 24, 1991 |access-date=April 16, 2019 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150411110222/http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1991-03-24/entertainment/9101260630_1_phillips-doesn-t-julia-phillips-producer |archive-date=April 11, 2015}} in New York City, the daughter of Tanya and Adolph Miller. Her father was a chemical engineer who worked on the Manhattan Project; her mother was a writer who became addicted to prescription drugs. She grew up in Brooklyn; Great Neck, New York; and Milwaukee. In 1965, she received a bachelor's degree in political science from Mount Holyoke College, and in 1966, she married Michael Phillips. After school, she worked as book section editor at the Ladies' Home Journal and then as a story editor for Paramount Pictures. In 1971, she and her husband, who had been a securities analyst for two years, moved to California to produce Steelyard Blues with Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland, released in 1973.{{cite journal |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6OgCAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA30 |journal=New York |title=The Sting of Success |date=January 27, 1975 |page=30 |volume=8 |issue=4 |issn=0028-7369}}

Film career

In 1972, Phillips along with her husband Michael Phillips and producer Tony Bill commissioned David S. Ward to write the screenplay for The Sting, for $3,500.{{cite news |url=https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2012/jun/04/how-we-made-the-sting |newspaper=The Guardian |title=How we made ... Michael Phillips and David S Ward on The Sting |first=Ben |last=Child |date=June 4, 2012 |access-date=April 16, 2019 |publisher=Guardian News & Media Limited}} In 1973, The Sting won the Academy Award for Best Picture and made Phillips the first woman to win an Oscar as a producer (an award shared by Tony Bill and Michael Phillips). In 1977, Taxi Driver, produced by the Phillipses, was nominated for Best Picture after winning the Palme d'Or at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival. Close Encounters of the Third Kind, her third major film, was produced with Michael Phillips. François Truffaut, one of the film's stars, publicly criticized Phillips as incompetent, a charge she rejected, writing that she essentially nursed Truffaut through his self-created nightmare of implied hearing loss, sickness and chaos during the production.{{cite book |last=Phillips |first=Julia |title=You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again |title-link=You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again |location=New York |publisher=Random House |year=1991 |isbn=0-394-57574-1 |page=[https://archive.org/details/youllnevereatlun00phil/page/274 274]}} Phillips was also a notorious drug user (cocaine especially), which she chronicled in detail in her memoirs. The side-effects of cocaine addiction caused her to be fired from Close Encounters of the Third Kind during post-production.{{cite book |first=Ray |last=Morton |title=Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Making of Steven Spielberg's Classic Film |location=New York |publisher=Applause Theater & Cinema Books |year=2007 |isbn=978-1-55783-710-3 |page=259 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=B-ERraCGxkYC}} Periods of drug abuse, gratuitous spending and damaging boyfriends took their toll over the next few years.

Phillips's early work in a producing team with her husband continues to receive acclaim within the industry. Twenty-five years after its Oscar success, The Sting was inducted into the Producers Guild of America's Hall of Fame, granting each of its producers a Golden Laurel Award.Producers Guild of America Awards 1997 In June 2007, Taxi Driver was ranked as the 52nd-best American feature film of all time by the American Film Institute.{{cite web |url=http://connect.afi.com/site/DocServer/100Movies.pdf?docID=281 |title=AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies -- 10th Anniversary Edition |access-date=October 20, 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101207092752/http://connect.afi.com/site/DocServer/100Movies.pdf?docID=281 |archive-date=December 7, 2010 |pages=3 |work=AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) |year=2007 |url-status=dead }} In December 2007, Close Encounters was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.{{cite press release |title=Librarian of Congress Announces National Film Registry Selections for 2007 |work=Library of Congress |date=December 27, 2007 |url=https://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2007/07-254.html |access-date=April 16, 2019 |first1=Jennifer |last1=Gavin |first2=Stephen |last2=Leggett |issn=0731-3527}}

Publishing success

In 1991, Phillips published You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again about her experiences in Hollywood. The book topped the New York Times bestseller list, but its revelations about high-profile film personalities, Hollywood's drug culture, and casting couch sensibilities drew ire from many former colleagues. Her follow-up book, Driving Under the Affluence, was released in 1995. It was mostly an account of how the success of her first book changed her life. In 2000, she helped Matt Drudge write his Drudge Manifesto.{{Cite web|url=http://extras.denverpost.com/books/chdrudge1224.htm|title=Drudge Manifesto, Chapter one online|access-date=March 2, 2007|publisher=Denver Post|year=2000|author=Matt Drudge and Julia Phillips}}

Death

Phillips died from cancer at her home in West Hollywood, California, on January 1, 2002, at the age of 57,{{cite news |url=https://variety.com/2002/scene/news/julia-phillips-producer-author-dies-at-age-57-1117857898/ |title=Julia Phillips, producer, author, dies at age 57 |first=Dana |last=Harris |date=January 2, 2002 |access-date=April 16, 2019 |magazine=Variety.com |publisher=Penske Business Media, LLC.}} and was interred in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California.{{cite web |url=https://www.kcet.org/history-society/hillside-memorial-park-a-jewish-modernist-masterpiece-in-the-midst-of-the-city |title=Hillside Memorial Park: A Jewish Modernist Masterpiece in the Midst of the City |first=Hadley |last=Meares |date=March 14, 2014 |access-date=April 16, 2019 |work=KCET |publisher=Public Media Group of Southern California}} She had one daughter, Kate Phillips-Wiczyk, who is married to Modi Wiczyk, co-founder of independent film and television studio Media Rights Capital.{{cite news |url=https://people.com/celebrity/hollywood-iconoclast-phillips-dies/ |title=Hollywood Iconoclast Phillips Dies |first=Stephen M. |last=Silverman |date=January 3, 2002 |access-date=April 16, 2019 |magazine=People |publisher=Meredith Corporation}}

Filmography

She was a producer in all films unless otherwise noted.

=Film=

class="wikitable" style="font-size:95%;" ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" \| Year ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" \| Film ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" \| Credit ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" \| Notes
rowspan=2\| 1973	Steelyard Blues
The Sting
rowspan=2\| 1976	Taxi Driver
The Big Bus	Executive producer
1977	Close Encounters of the Third Kind
1987	The Beat
1988	The Boost	Executive producer	{{center\|Uncredited}}
1991	Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead		Final film as a producer