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The Filmmaker
Michael Hoffman grew up in Idaho and studied at Boise State University in his home State. Awarded a scholarship by the renowned Rhodes Foundation, Michael went to study at Oxford University in 1979, where he discovered the young Hugh Grant and shot his debut film with him: Privileged, a story about an upper class adolescent.
Together with Rick Stevenson, with whom he and others founded the Oxford Film Company after graduation, Michael created Restless Natives, a comedy about two Scotsmen who rob American tourist parties. He attracted great attention in the US in 1988 with Promised Land, a dark coming-of-age story with Kiefer Sutherland and Meg Ryan in the leading roles. In 1991 he was entrusted with the $25 million comedy Soapdish – likewise, an all-star cast production: featuring Sally Field, Kevin Kline, Whoopie Goldberg, a very young Robert Downey Jr. and Terri Hatcher among others.
In 1995 Hoffman returned to British material with Restoration. The film celebrated its world premier in 1996 at the Berlin Film Festival. In the same year, Michael shot the romantic comedy One Fine Day with George Clooney and Michelle Pfeiffer. The internationally acclaimed Shakespeare adaptation A Midsummer Night´s Dream followed, as well as Game 6, a film starring Michael Keaton and Robert Downey Jr. in the leading roles, which is based on a screenplay by the successful author Don DeLillo and premiered at Sundance Festival in 2005.
Prior to The Last Station, Michael completed a pilot for HBO with and about the star journalist Seymour Hersh, and the documentary Out of The Blue: A Film About Life and Football.
Michael Hoffman is married to the screenwriter Sam Silva, he has three children and a distinctive sense of British humor.
Director Statement
The film is adapted from the best-selling novel by Jay Parini, who drew on the diary entries of Tolstoy’s closest relatives and friends. Descendants of Tolstoy have acted as advisers throughout the production.
Michael Hoffman begins by saying that, “The Last Station gives us a very unusual opportunity to go beyond the standard biopic, in order to create a vivid, moving picture about the difficulty of living with love and the impossibility of living without it. It’s not a film about Tolstoy. It’s a film about the challenges of love.”
The director continues, “it’s a great story about relationships and a wonderful juxtaposition of old love and new love. The core of the movie is this great battle between idealism and reality. All of us start life with an ideal of what love should be, which contrasts sharply with what it turns out to be like in reality. That contrast is compelling.
“We follow Valentin’s progression in The Last Station from a boy who is infatuated with the ideal of fleshless, spiritual love to a man who gradually realizes that all we can hope for is the messiness of love in the real world.”
That dichotomy is reflected in Tolstoy himself, Michael muses. “He is seen as a living saint and a prophet of perfect love. Yet at the same time, he endures the most tricky marriage and in his private life is haunted by the difficulty of love as it manifests itself in the world. He is revered as the ultimate authority on love, but he can’t sort it out in his own living room and bedroom. That conflict is fascinating.”
Filmography
The Narrows - Executive Producer - 2008 Out of the Blue: A Film About Life and Football (documentary) – Director - 2007 Eagle vs Shark - Special Thanks - 2007 Twelve and Holding - Executive Producer - 2005 The Great New Wonderful - Executive Producer - 2005 Game 6 – Director - 2005 Me and You and Everyone We Know - Special Thanks - 2005 The Emperor's Club – Director - 2002 A Midsummer Night's Dream - Director, Writer (screenplay), Producer - 1999 One Fine Day – Director - 1996 Restoration – Director - 1995 Soapdish – Director - 1991 Some Girls – Director - 1988 Promised Land - Director, Writer (written by) - 1987 Restless Natives – Director - 1985 Privileged - Director, Writer (writer), Alan - 1982
