Known as an “actors' director,” William Sachs has studied acting in London with renowned British actor Michael Gough, in New York with various teachers from The Actors Studio, and in Los Angeles with Chris O' Brien at the Charles Conrad Studio. He has directed some of the most highly acclaimed actors in the world including: Academy Award winners Sir Ben Kingsley, James Coburn, Cuba Gooding, Jr., and Mercedes Ruehl; Academy Award nominees Elliott Gould, and Karen Black; Emmy, Golden Globe, and other major award winners and nominees including Jennifer Aniston, Mario Van Peebles, and Peter Boyle. Other Actors he has directed have won awards and nominations such as the Image award, American Comedy Award, MTV Award, TV Guide Award, and numerous festival and foreign awards.
Sachs and his films have won a legion of awards. His latest film, Spooky House, starring Kingsley and Ruehl, recently won the coveted “Best of Fest” as well as “1st Place – Children’s Jury Award" at the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival, the largest family film festival in North America and nicknamed "Cannes for Kids." After Chicago, Spooky House was invited to more than one hundred festivals, but Sachs chose only the Shanghai International Film Festival, because only eleven US films were invited, and the Seattle International Film Festival, because of its prestigious reputation. In the latter festivals, Spooky House was not entered in competition and appeared in special event children’s sections. As well as directing Spooky House, Sachs also produced and co-wrote the screenplay with his wife, Margaret.
In addition to the Spooky House awards, Sachs’ films have appeared in and won more than 26 top awards at important festivals and organizations, including (partial list): a sweep of the top three awards at the Paris Film Festival of Science Fiction and the Fantastic, the Berlin Film Festival (nominated for the Golden Bear Award), the Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film, (won the Audience Award), the Buenos Aries Film Festival, the Internationale Westdeutsche Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen Film Festival, the New York Film Festival, the London Film Festival, the Marienbad, Film Festival, the Festival International De Cine De Cortometrage in Buenos Aires, the Edinburgh International Film Festival, the Chicago International Film Festival (different one from the children’s festival), the National Film Theater Festival (in association with the Royal College of Art and The Sunday Telegraph where Sachs’s film was also put into the permanent archives of the National Film Theater), the Southampton Film Festival, and festivals in Italy at Taormina and San Sebastian. A major stunt that Sachs created and directed also won the Stuntmen’s Association Award on a national televised award show for best stunt in its category.
Sachs is a consummate filmmaker. He studied film at the prestigious London Film School. His career has been varied and has covered a broad range of work. His approach to filmmaking has always been to try new things and stretch the edge with his art. He loves to experiment and has pioneered in many new film techniques. He was the first director to use a computer for special visual effects in his sci-fi film Galaxina. In the same film, Sachs used infra-red Ektachrome color film stock, which worked mostly from heat and gave the film an otherworldly look. No other films have ever used this stock that had to be kept frozen until eight hours before use.
Sachs was also one of the first directors to work with a computer for editing. Computers are now the norm in that area. In Spooky House, Sachs used a new sound technique, Dolby EX, which is 6.1 rather than the traditional 5.1 sound. In addition to other subtler effects, this extra, discrete rear channel allowed Sachs to spin the music around the theater in a scene where the entire set spun in a 360-degree circle at high speed.
Sachs’ very first film was made without a camera. Someone gave him a roll of film and, since he had no camera, he boiled the film in a pot on his stove, scraped off the emulsion, and painted directly on the film that ended up being used by Pink Floyd as a background during concerts.
Sachs has never been one to sit still or fall into a rut. Consequently his films have been varied in scope but within each film there are elements of style that remain consistent with the director. At film school, the great European directors fascinated him, so it is natural that his first film, There Is No 13, reflects this sophistication. The film was a critical success with quotes from the critics, such as.
"Unforgettable masterpieces of film that are written in golden letters in the records are rare. There Is No 13, a debut by the young American, William Sachs, is one such masterpiece. Undoubtedly, Sachs, whose remarkable fantasy film gives indications of a new direction in film story telling, is influenced in his structure by the synthesis of reality and imagination of Fellini, Resnais and Bunuel. Yet this style has been further developed… It is a deeply touching film, because this auteur's film, which is at first seen to be about a young man who is pushed by a film producer into fully distorted fantasies that follow one another in turbulent succession along with self ridicule, is then surprisingly experienced as a striking and stirring anti-war film. The distantiation of Brecht is applied in an excellently masterful manner. We will be hearing again from William Sachs. He has it in his hands."
Piet Ruivenkamp
Haags-che Courant, Holland
After There Is No 13,Sachs wanted to lighten the style of his films and for fun made a quick, very low budget experimental comedy that spoofed the horror films of the 50’s. Titled The Incredible Melting Man, the film became an instant cult classic and top-grossing picture reaching #10 on Variety’s chart of the 50 top-grossing films. Out grossing films made for more than ten or twenty times the budget and featuring special effects make-up by Academy Award winning make–up artist Rick Baker, it was called “Horrendously expert” by The Hollywood Reporter, “A horror gem” by Star force magazine, “Stunning” by Famous Monsters Magazine, and Archer Winston, of the New York Post said, “Writer-director William Sachs demonstrates simple mastery of the medium.”
Next Sachs turned his love of cars into a youth oriented comedy - a classic drive-in fifties style movie. Van Nuys Blvd. became so popular among the teenage and young adult audience at the time that the Los Angeles Police Department had to close down the famous Southern California cruising street. One traffic officer told Sachs that after the movie came out people began coming from places as far away as Japan and were cruising the boulevard in taxis. The low budget picture’s grosses immediately soared into the millions and became another teen classic, garnering excellent reviews in major publications such as: The Hollywood Reporter, “…Sachs has directed the proceedings with an affecting light touch;" Variety, “Van Nuys Blvd. has what it takes… it should pay off;” and the Los Angeles Times “…a good natured summer season comedy…Writer-director William Sachs has taken a fast, light touch.”
Because of the success of his previous spoof, and still having fun spoofing other films, Sachs next attacked the science fiction genre with the sci-fi spoof Galaxina, which starred the now legendary Dorothy Stratten, comedian Avery Schreiber, and one of Hollywood’s more serious actors, former Yale acting professor Stephen Macht. Another low budget film, Galaxina, opened in New York and Los Angeles, became the number one grossing picture in those cities, and went on to become one of the top grossers on Variety's top fifties list and other top ten lists. The critics enjoyed the picture, saying:
"Sachs has directed this wild and woolly picture with aplomb."
Charles Ryweck
The Hollywood Reporter
"…A clever and almost cute homage to the overblown space epics of recent years… endearing characters and imaginative sets… a touch of technical class… an enjoyable parody of the space genre."
David Linck
Boxoffice
"For the past several years, Hollywood has been foisting comic books on us disguised as movies. By technically perfecting the special effects, Star Wars, Alien, Superman, and Star Trek somehow whizzed by our frontal lobes and made us believe that those ridiculous things could actually be happening. In pretending to be better than comics, they have been subtly putting down the genre from which they sprang. Reading The Empire Strikes Back in its presently available comic book form makes you realize how dependent your enjoyment of the film was upon special effects. As a comic book it's pretty dull. Well Galaxina is the exact opposite. It's a great comic book…
"Like Airplane, Galaxina zips from gag to gag with nary a thought, making it everything that Barbarella was trying to be. This, combined with the bizarre Hollywood Babylon-type murder of its star, Dorothy Stratten, making this her only picture, seems to indicate that we may have another cult classic on our hands… If you read National Lampoon and miss the old Mad magazine, if you've got a secret box of old Vampirellas and Howard the Ducks stashed away in your mother's garage, if you have every issue of Heavy Metal and are anxiously waiting for their premiere film, then Galaxina may be just the appetizer for you."
Michael Dare
LA Weekly
After three comedies, Sachs was in the mood for a socially significant drama and made Hitz, which dealt with the realities of life on the tough streets of Los Angeles’ inner cities and barrios. It starred two Academy Award nominees, Elliott Gould and Karen Black, and introduced, future Academy Award winner Cuba Gooding Jr. in his first role, along with a strong cast of serious actors and actual gang members in major roles. Because of its realism, Hitz has been used by leading LA-gang activist, Father Greg Boyle (who calls it “a true depiction of gang life in Los Angeles”) to show at-risk youth the hopelessness and hazards of gang life.
Sachs next attacked the action adventure genre for television in The Last Hour that premiered on HBO where it was reviewed with comments such as, “…carries on at an electrifying pace and has a cinematic energy that makes it hard to turn away from the TV.” The film became a major foreign success and, for example, in Japan alone it sold more than 22 thousand home video units where the average for a major studio picture is seven thousand. Later, in the US, it became a top selling video and at video retailers such as 20/20 Video it was listed among their top rentals.
Sachs has also earned a unique reputation as one of only a few Hollywood film doctors. Retained by both producers and completion bond companies, some of the films he has saved have become major grossers and launched stars’ and directors’ careers. His first doctoring assignment was an unreleasable motion picture called The Gap. He reconstructed the entire picture and retitled it Joe. It went on to become one of the highest grossing independent pictures ever, launching the careers of Susan Sarandon and Peter Boyle. The box office success of Joe single-handedly put Cannon Films on the map. Sachs was later recruited by Cannon to save Exterminator 2, and as a result the film made more money for Cannon and launched the career of Mario Van Peebles.
Trimark Pictures enlisted Sachs’ services to salvage two of their films: the first, Servants Of Twilight, based on the Dean Koontz novel, that was immediately sold to Showtime; the second, an unreleasable horror film originally intended for straight-to-video and starring the then unknown Jennifer Aniston. He re-made the picture, added a little humor, and created an unexpectedly entertaining picture titled Leprechaun that became an immediate box office hit, spurring five sequels. Leprechaun helped raise Trimark’s quarterly profits 200% in the first quarter of its release and enabled the company to raise public money in the hundreds of millions of dollars, igniting its rise toward becoming a leading independent motion picture company.
In the TV arena, as an executive and director of Heritage Entertainment Inc. Sachs was given a concept and wrote and developed a presentation for a television series based on the legendary King Arthur which was sold and became the acclaimed and successful British TV series Arthur of the Britons. The series ran for twenty six episodes and starred Brian Blessed, Rupert Davis, Oliver Tobias and Michael Gothard. Sachs wrote the teleplay They Slew the Dreamer for Turner Entertainment and wrote and directed a series of public service announcements and music videos narrated by the Ambassador to the United Nations from Bosnia Herzegovina as part of an international campaign that raised money for transporting injured Bosnian children to foreign hospitals.
Sachs is a member of the Directors Guild of America, where he has served on the Creative Rights Committee, and the Writers Guild of America, where he has served as a screen credits arbitrator. He has guest lectured at the UCLA, Cal State Northridge, and California Institute of the Arts film schools.