- Born
- Died
- Saul Zaentz learned gambling as a youth in Passaic, New Jersey, playing a card game called briscola. Later, in his twenties, he earned a full-time living as a gambler.
Saul settled in San Francisco after WWII, at first working for a local record distributor and eventually joining the jazz record label Fantasy Records. Working as a salesman and manager for years at Fantasy taught him the value of good relationships with vendors and distributors. This approach greatly affected his approach to the movie business.
Saul and a group of partners bought Fantasy Records in 1967. Fantasy was a successful independent record label, but Saul wanted to expand, to make films. He and his partners worked very hard to cultivate deals with film distribution houses all over the world. Many of these distributors invested in or helped secure funding for his films, in light of the success of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). As a result, Saul was able to remain independent of Hollywood, making the films he wanted to make.
- IMDb mini biography by: Gordon Whiting - Led Fantasy Records on an acquisition campaign that resulted in many elite independent labels coming to the company fold, including Riverside, Pablo, Contemporary, Milestone, Specialty and Stax/Volt.
Carefully chooses the best writers, directors, cinematographers and actors for his films, including Miloš Forman, Anthony Minghella, Peter Weir, Hector Babenco, Sven Nyquist, John Seale, Jean-Claude Carrière, Peter Schaffer, Bo Goldman, Jack Nicholson, Ralph Fiennes, Kathy Bates, Javier Bardem, Stellan Skarsgård and Helen Mirren.
Known as a risk-taker, Zaentz has financed all, or part of, every film he has made. This affords him final cut on a given project, in most cases, ownership rights. A member of the producers group on the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts in the 1990's and 2000's, Zaentz was described in the New York Times as "perhaps the last of the great independent producers".
- IMDb mini biography by: Gordon Whiting
- SpouseCelia Zaentz(May 15, 1960 - September 1975) (divorced, 4 children)
- Children
- In order to light all the opera house chandeliers in Amadeus (1984), Zaentz contacted the Vatican's candlemaker, who agreed to supply the production with the thousands of candles necessary for the scene.
- Producing the Musical version of "Lord of the Rings" to open in London in the Spring of 2005. This will be the most expensive and complex stage show ever staged anywhere in the world.
- As of 2018, holds the record (along with Sam Spiegel) of winning the Academy Award for Best Picture three times, for producing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Amadeus (1984) and The English Patient (1996).
- After the success of The English Patient (1996), Zaentz intended to collaborate further with Anthony Minghella on a screenplay written by Minghella called "The Seven Deadly Sins". The film's plot revolved around a man who knows his marriage has failed and feels suicidal, but is stopped by the seven deadly sins, who convince him to live life according to their passions. Zaentz was to have produced the film in partnership with the Jim Henson Co and Stanley Donen was signed to direct. Herbert Gold and Marshall Brickman were reported to be doing rewrites of the script at various stages but the film failed to make it into production.
- Former owner of Fantasy Records who used its profits to finance his films.
- You have to believe.
- Studios are like flies - they'll both eat honey or shit with equal enthusiasm.
- [from his Oscar acceptance speech for Amadeus (1984)] The five pictures nominated this year all had a curious relationship, in the fact that the filmmakers who made them had to fight and overcame many obstacles to make their films and to film their visions. One has to be proud to be a peer of the people who made The Killing Fields (1984), A Passage to India (1984), A Soldier's Story (1984) and Places in the Heart (1984).
- You don't make movies to be art movies. You make movies that move you emotionally because if you're going to commit five years of your life to a movie, you need something to keep you going.
- The question is why does Hollywood go on making crap they pass off as movies? The answer is money.
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