Filmmaking "for the Fun of It": An Interview with Jack Hill (Interview‪)‬

As his web site notes, "legendary cult-film director, grunge auteur, notorious--these are some of the phrases used recently to describe writer-director Jack Hill. He has also been referred to as the man who initiated the women-in-prison genre of the seventies, and whose films helped define the so-called Blaxploitation genre, as well as the man who discovered Pam Grier. Unlike most cult films, though, Hill's films were commercially extremely successful in their initial release, despite being generally snubbed by contemporary critics. But that situation has been remedied in recent years, as many of today's serious critics--perhaps inspired by the enthusiastic support of Quentin Tarantino, who gladly acknowledges the influence of Hill's films on his own work--have been taking a new look at some of Hill's films of the sixties and seventies and using terms like 'post-modern', 'ahead of their time', and 'feminist manifesto' to describe them." Throughout our conversation, I was not disappointed by this rather hyperbolic introduction. Jack Hill has crammed more into his career than most, and our conversation took a number of surprising turns, further illuminating the world of exploitational filmmaking in the early 1960s. Hill's best films have now been taken up by a whole new generation of critics and filmmakers, and he seemed eager to talk about such films as Coffy (1973), Switchblad Sisters (1975), and The Big Doll House (1971). I had the chance to talk to Jack Hill on January 20, 2004, and our conversation ranged over a wide variety of Hill's exploits, from his early years as a musician, to his career as a director, and his future and current projects. WWD: I understand that your father was a designer for Disney and for Warner Brothers. Could you tell me some more about your father's work?