An independent filmmaker frequently compared with fellow New Yorker Woody Allen, Paul Mazursky spent years in show business, developing an acting career and a reputation as a writer before finally getting the chance to direct his own screenplays. A role Off-Broadway in a revival of "He Who Gets Slapped" while still a Brooklyn College student earned him an introduction to Stanley Kubrick, which in turn led to a role in the director's feature debut "Fear and Desire" (1953). By his own admission, Mazursky overplayed his GI cracking under the strain of combat. Typecast as a juvenile delinquent after the success of "Blackboard Jungle" (1955), he branched into comedy, performing an act called "Igor and H" (he was Igor) with fellow comic Herb Hartig and later working with the Second City Improvisational Revue in Los Angeles. Forced to write his own material, he eventually graduated to writing for others and with his partner Larry Tucker landed a lucrative gig on "The Danny Kaye Show" (CBS, 1963-67), scripting during his tenure there the 1966 pilot for "The Monkees" (NBC).
Mazursky had to content himself with executive producing his first feature screenplay, "I Love You Alice B. Toklas" (1968), when its star Peter Sellers absolutely refused to be directed by a neophyte. Together with co-writer Tucker, he fashioned an outstanding script helmed by Hy Averback, sending-up both the hippie and Establishment ways of living while creating believable and consistent characters who never lost their dignity despite the attendant hilarity. Sellers had his best role in years as the square lawyer who turns on to marijuana brownies, drops out for awhile, then tries to drop back in only to find conformity wanting. It was the first of four successive scripts reflecting Mazursky's wide-eyed infatuation with the rampant pop nuttiness of his adopted Los Angeles. He scored a critical and commercial success with his directorial debut, "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" (1969), a now-tame study of middle-class attitudes about sex and marriage that seemed risque at the time. Inspired by Mazursky's investigation of an Esalen encounter group, the movie made him rich enough, once and for all, to ignore the financial pressures that force most directors to accept unwelcome studio assignments.
Following the failure of the overly self-indulgent "Alex in Wonderland" (1970), an autobiographical tale of a young, one-hit director in search of a powerful theme for his next project, Mazursky re-examined the institution of marriage (and divorce) in the pain-tinged "Blume in Love" (1973) before dropping Los Angeles as a setting to make the road movie "Harry and Tonto" (1974). Although he had written it before "Blume in Love", he initially found no takers for its bittersweet story of a crotchety septuagenarian (Art Carney in a career-reviving, Oscar-winning role) crossing the country from East to West with his cat as companion. The underappreciated coming-of-age pic "Next Stop, Greenwich Village" (1976) chronicled Mazursky's own move from Brooklyn to exotic Greenwich Village in the 1950s and featured wonderful period atmosphere and characterizations. "An Unmarried Woman" (1978), his greatest success of the 70s, became a beacon of the women's movement, with Jill Clayburgh winning an Oscar nomination for her depiction of a woman rebuilding her life after a divorce.
Mazursky returned to Greenwich Village as the setting for "Willie and Phil" (1980), his look at a contemporary menage-a-trois. Its retelling of Francois Truffaut's "Jules and Jim" begins rather coyly with the two men meeting at a Bleecker Street Cinema screening of the Truffaut classic, and though an over-sentimentalization of his characters' situations softened the film's satiric bite (a common complaint aimed at his films in general), Mazursky's ability to get the audience to identify with those characters outweighed the negatives. Despite an appealing cast, beautiful scenery and some engaging scenes, the attractive parts of "Tempest" (1982), his reworking of Shakespeare's play, didn't quite make a whole, but a superb performance from Robin Williams as the Soviet musician who defects in Bloomingdale's saved "Moscow on the Hudson" (1984). A sweet film, longer on mood than message, it didn't quite know what to do with its lead character once he entered the Manhattan mainstream but still did surprisingly well in theaters, opening eyes wider to Williams' box office potential.
"Down and Out in Beverly Hills" (1986), based on Jean Renoir's "Boudu Saved From Drowning" (1932), marked Mazursky's return to West Coast subjects after a long absence and was his biggest box-office hit in years, proving perhaps that Beverly Hills lifestyles far outsell Greenwich Village funk. Again criticized for his failure to bring a sharp edge to his satire, he delivered a congenial, good-natured entertainment stocked with terrific performances (none finer than the scene-stealing work of Mike the dog) and probably laughed all the way to the bank, vindicated by the public's approval. "Moon Over Parador" (1988) dealt, less insightfully, with a parody of banana republic politics, but was still lots of fun, featuring Mazursky (a last minute replacement for an actress who failed to show) in a howlingly funny turn as Momma, one of his more memorable contributions acting-wise to the films he has directed.
Mazursky never really developed an arresting visual style, content to allow the characters and plots of his consistently literate scripts to drive his vehicles. He did, however, benefit greatly from a long collaboration with Pato Guzman, whose production designs greatly distinguished 11 of his films, perhaps never more so than in "Enemies, A Love Story" (1989), the very atypical picture which is arguably the director's finest. Reining in his impulse for broad comedy, Mazursky presented a tragi-comic narrative of a Holocaust survivor who finds himself with two wives and a mistress he would like to marry in post-World War II New York City, his failure to commit partly a result of an entire culture's displacement and ruin. The ambitious adaptation of Isaac Bashevis Singer's novel spoke eloquently of resilience, humor and passion in the shadow of genocide and boasted a brilliant ensemble working within Guzman's nicely detailed sets to evoke a bygone era.
"Scenes from a Mall" (1991), considering the teaming of Mazursky with Woody Allen and Bette Midler, was a profound disappointment, offering nothing new in its jabs at contemporary consumer culture while "The Pickle" (1993), despite recalling "Alex in Wonderland" (but with none of that film's offbeat charm), had more than one critic referring to it as "The Turkey". It is (to date) Mazursky's last script he has put before the cameras. He made his debut as a director-for-hire with "Faithful" (1996), scripted by and starring Chaz Palminteri, but despite solid acting, what had made an interesting stage play did not translate well to the screen. He also helmed the critically-admired "Winchell" (HBO, 1998), which garnered an Emmy for Stanley Tucci in the title role. His relative inactivity as a director during the 90s has freed him to act more frequently in films like "Carlito's Way" (1993, a terrific cameo as a weary judge), "2 Days in the Valley" (1996) and TNT's "A Slight Case of Murder" (1999), not to mention his voicing one of the animated "Antz" (1998).