Emmy-winning director Marvin J. Chomsky has passed away at the age of 92. Chomsky had a stellar career, directing projects such as the Roots miniseries in 1977, Star Trek, Gunsmoke, and The Wild Wild West. His son Peter Chomsky gave a statement to The Wrap stating his father died in his sleep on Monday, March 28th. “Marvin Chomsky made a difference in our world using the medium of motion pictures to both entertain and educate viewers,” Peter Chomsky told The Wrap. Marvin J. Chomsky is a four-time Emmy-award winner in the categories of Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series (1978’s Holocaust), Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries, Movie or Dramatic Special (1980’s Attica and 1982’s Inside the Third Reich), and Outstanding Miniseries (1986’s Peter the Great).
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Chomsky spoke to the Director’s Guild of America about his storied career of directing projects based on historical events. “We had decided it’d be a story about family,” Chomsky said regarding Roots, the 1977 miniseries based on the novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family. “That was going to keep an audience rather than a discourse on the Nazi party. I said, ‘I’m not doing a documentary. It’s not even a docu-drama. It’s going to be a drama about people, and if you care about the people you will watch it.”
His feature film credits include 1971’s Evil Knievel, 1975’s Live A Little, Steal A Lot, 1976’s Mackintosh and T.J., 1979’s Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff, and 1984’s Tank. He recounted how one event in Holocaust involved him directing a group of extras on how to act when being killed by Nazi forces in concentration camps. He received some push-back from a cameraman that felt the scene was embellished.
“I like to approach these things, such as the Holocaust or Attica, with the dispassion of a surgeon,” Chomsky continued. “That’s my job. I’m there to tell a story but not get emotionally involved. To be aware of the level of emotion that is the subtext of all of this. This emotion will bubble up in any number of scenes of characters, even characters you never expected it to be in. So it’s a matter of being aware and letting it happen. If you can get it on film and it works, keep it. If it starts to throw the other actors off, correct it.”
Chomsky is survived by his three sons: David, Eric, and his youngest Peter (wife Genelle), along with his granddaughter Liliana, who is an actress and aspiring screenwriter. Peter Chomsky is a producer on Fargo, Dead to Me, Mozart in the Jungle, and Charmed.