Bob Balaban
Bob Balaban
Robert Elmer "Bob" Balabanis an American actor, author, producer, and director. He was one of the producers nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture for Gosford Park, in which he also appeared...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth16 August 1945
CityChicago, IL
CountryUnited States of America
puppets serious attention
If anyone would have been paying serious attention to my puppet shows, I would have been sent to therapy very young.
thank-god supportive my-family
My family was loving... they were very supportive and very affectionate, and basically I could do what I wanted, and basically it wasn't anything dangerous, thank God.
lakes my-family born
I was born on Wellington Avenue and my family that remains lives in the Lake Shore Drive area.
thinking able directors
And I think being a good director is being able to be completely tyrannical and you?ve got to be an absolute dictator while at the same time, you have to listen and see everything because it can all change on a dime.
watches encounters exciting
I loved being in Close Encounters, just to watch Steven Spielberg working was exciting.
mean ideas special
I mean, the whole idea of movies was it was special to go to see - you went to a movie theater to see something that was magical and amazing, in a very special location.
couple years awards
I produced and directed a movie a couple years ago that won some awards that Samuel Goldwyn released called 'The Last Good Time'. I wrote, produced and directed it, but I wasn't in it.
creating littles rooms
I was very much in my room with my marionette stage, you know, creating these incredibly boring things that I felt were so fascinating, and forcing my relatives to come, and charging money for them to see my little productions.
years chicago my-family
I'm from Chicago, my family started a chain of movie theaters in Chicago that were around for 70 years and then one of them became the head of Paramount and the other was the head of production at MGM and we all came out of Chicago.
holocaust different littles
Holocaust is very much a part of present discussion all over the place. There are little plaques everywhere you go around in different neighborhoods. "This person here was prosecuted." "This person was sent to this concentration camp." "A family of Jews lived here. They took over his business." Little, very discrete, very dignified plaques are everywhere.
children dad grandmother
My dad was born in Chicago in 1908... his parents came from Russia. They settled in Chicago, where they lived in a little tiny grocery store with eight or nine children - in the backroom all together - and my grandmother got the idea to go into the movie business.
play theater hooked
Oh, I was completely hooked on movies and plays and theater from the time I was a day old - I was very, very early on in love with movies and I loved plays.
niece father years
I have a 92 year old father whose doing beautifully who lives in Chicago and a sister and a nephew and a niece and I love coming back and try to do so fairly often.
captivated combine fact movies obviously people seeing special trying
But obviously as television began, it so undercut movies that he was trying to think of a way to combine seeing these special things, and the fact that people were just captivated by the magic box.