Robert Lieberman lived and created a Hollywood story other Buffalo natives who love movies and television would have dreamed about.
He was the University at Buffalo’s first film major.
He started his filmmaking career shooting Buffalo Bills coaching films during the disastrous 1968 season, when the team went 1-12-1.
He went on to an award-winning career directing commercials before directing movies, including “Fire in the Sky,” “D3: The Mighty Ducks,” “Table for Five,” “Fighting Back: The Story of Rocky Bleier” and “All I Want for Christmas,” 19 TV pilots and episodes of “The X-Files,” Dexter,” “Criminal Minds” and “thirtysomething.”
Lieberman died July 1 in Los Angeles at age 75 after a lengthy battle with cancer.
The Hollywood Reporter story announcing his death last week mentioned his return to Buffalo last year for a special screening of “Fire in the Sky,” at the North Park Theatre when he was asked by Buffalo News reporter Tim O’Shei “what he would tell aspiring filmmakers.”
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The Hollywood Reporter gave Lieberman’s partial response.
Here’s the full response printed in The News: “My advice to people who are trying to get in the business is you’ve got to be absolutely fearless and relentless. If you want it, you’ve got to want it with everything of your being and then you have to pursue it with everything of your being. If you do, you will get it. I don’t know one story of people who came out to Hollywood and tried to make it and didn’t end up getting some part of that dream. They don’t get the whole dream, the way they would like it or the way they wrote it. But they end up as a cinematographer, an editor, a composer. They end up in the business, in a job they really like.”
He achieved the whole dream, telling O’Shei he was “a poster boy for anybody who thinks it’s a dream you can’t attain. I’m a poster boy for the idea that you can attain it. If you want to be a film director, go out to Hollywood.”
His death made me recall a few interviews I did with Lieberman, including one about a movie that wasn’t included in the Hollywood Reporter. It was about the film he directed that would have fulfilled the dream of every Bills fan.
He did something in 1999 that Marv Levy, Jim Kelly, Bruce Smith, Andre Reed, Steve Tasker and Scott Norwood couldn’t do. Win the big one.
He directed the Turner Network Television movie, “Second String,” in which a fictional group of second-string Bills won the Super Bowl in New Orleans.
“It may be the only way they win one,” Lieberman, a lifelong Bills fan, told me back then.
Lieberman said the original script had the Pittsburgh Steelers winning pro football’s biggest jewel. But he told TNT executives about his ties to Buffalo and the Bills, and they agreed to change the winner to the Bills.
“I’ll win one for them,” said Lieberman, who suffered with Bills fans everywhere when the team lost four straight Super Bowls in the ‘90s. “At least we’ll see what it feels like when they do it.”
“I’ve always dreamed about coming back to Buffalo to direct a movie,” Lieberman said. “To me, it’s a thrill to have made this journey from shooting coaching films to directing a film involving the Bills.”
In a 1991 interview a week before “All I Want for Christmas” premiered nationally, Lieberman discussed becoming the first honoree in the University at Buffalo’s new Distinguished Alumni Visitor Program.
“I am greatly honored to be a University of Buffalo graduate and to be born and raised in Buffalo,” Lieberman said. “Buffalo turns up in a lot of my films in a lot of ways. The name of my production company is Crystal Beach Entertainment, after the amusement park. I am completely honored by this award.”
Lieberman had fond memories of his time at UB.
The president of his fraternity – Sigma Alpha Mu – was actor Ron Silver, who has played Henry Kissinger, Alan Dershowitz and Angelo Dundee in his career. The treasurer was Shep Gordon, who was the manager of Teddy Pendergrass, Luther Vandross, Alice Cooper and Kenny Loggins and became the subject of the documentary, “Supermensch: the Legend of Shep Gordon.”
Lieberman, Silver, actor Peter Riegert (“Animal House,” “Local Hero”) and Steve Sunshine (producer of “Webster”) put on plays at UB together.
In a production of “Stalag 17,” Lieberman had William Holden’s role, his co-star was Riegert, the director was Silver, and Silver and Sunshine produced it.
“I always promised myself when and if I become successful, I would not forget my roots, and I would go back to the University at Buffalo to this department that I helped start and kind of give them some encouragement,” said Lieberman.
“When I was in Buffalo, I felt like I was on another planet far from Hollywood. When I came out to Hollywood in 1969, I had never met anyone who had exactly been to California. I was dreaming about becoming a director in Hollywood, and if someone – say Sydney Pollack – at that time had come to UB and said, ‘I was at UB,’ it would have been a great encouragement to me.”
If any present day UB students aspire to have a Hollywood career, they should get plenty of encouragement just by reading Lieberman’s Buffalo-to-Hollywood success story.
