The Schmooze: November 2024

With a career that spans more than four decades, Windy City native Edward Zwick is a Hollywood icon. The director, producer, and screenwriter’s legendary body of work includes About Last Night , Glory , Legends of the Fall , and Defiance .

In 1985, alongside friend and fellow filmmaker Marshall Herskovitz, Zwick founded Bedford Falls Productions. The company produced the lauded films Traffic and Shakespeare in Love , as well as the TV shows thirtysomething , Relativity , Once and Again , and My So-Called Life .

Earlier this year, the New Trier alum released his memoir Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood. “I’ll be dropping a few names,” Zwick wrote in the book’s introduction. “Over the years I have worked with self-proclaimed masters-of-the-universe, unheralded geniuses, hacks, sociopaths, savants, and saints.”

What was the last book you read?

The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit

What’s your all-time favorite movie?

It’s a Wonderful Life

What’s your favorite Jewish food?

Lox and bagels

What are you listening to these days?

The Ezra Klein Podcast, The Scuffed Podcast , and Jason Isbell

Who was the last person you texted on your phone?

A text thread called the “Dog Pound” that includes by wife, children, daughter-in-law, and two-year-old grandson

If you could invite three people, famous or not, to a Shabbat dinner, who would they be?

Leon Wieseltier, Tom Stoppard, and Michelle Obama

If you could have any other occupation, what would it be?

A professor of history at a small liberal arts college or shortstop for the Cubs

Who are two of your biggest role models?

George Orwell and Mike Nichols

What are you currently binging on TV?

Election coverage

If you could offer the teen version of yourself one piece of wisdom, what would it be?

Life is not a race nor is it a performance. No one is gaining on you. No one is watching.