He directed the 1968 cult film Pretty Poison,[3] and subsequently concentrated on directing for television, occasionally directing films such as Private School.[4]
As a screenwriter, he wrote the 1985 coming-of-age comedy Mischief, set in the 1950s.[5]
Black was under the influence of the French New Wave. "I longed to be the American Godard and Truffaut", he said. "I had the best intentions, but the reality of the American film business kicked in. After I left UCLA, I was determined to storm the Bastille by making my way into the industry with a short film."[10]
Skaterdater
Black wrote and directed the 17-18 minute film, Skaterdater (1965), which had no dialogue and was set in California. The short film was about a group of teenage boy skateboarders as well as the romance between one of them and a girl on a bicycle.[3][6][7][8][10] Black raised $17,000 to make Skaterdater, which was shot with car and tricycle-mounted cameras. United Artists bought the short film for $50,000.[8][10][11]
It was Black who decided to cast Perkins in the film: "I saw Tony (Perkins) in Neil Simon's The Star-Spangled Girl on Broadway and thought he’d be ideal. I sent him the script, and he wanted to do it. I then met him for the first time at Joe Allen's after a performance of the play. He had enormous charm and intelligence, the very qualities I wanted to come through in the role he would be playing. I was looking for the young Tony of Friendly Persuasion and Fear Strikes Out, not Psycho, although commentators naturally made the comparison between Norman Bates and the character in Pretty Poison."[10]
Black took 30 days to shoot at lush locations around Great Barrington, Massachusetts, in the autumn of 1967, with exactly one day in a studio for the scenes in the prison and an office. "While I was looking for the location in four states, I came across a lot of factories expelling worse things into rivers than shown in the film", Black recalled.[10]
During production, Black and Weld reportedly did not get along with each other. She often refused to do what Black demanded of her and would break down and cry.[10] "Don’t talk to me about (Pretty Poison)", she said, "I couldn’t bear Noel Black (the director) even speaking to me. When he said 'good morning,' it destroyed my day."[15]
Some reviewers panned the film, and when it did poorly at the box office, 20th Century Fox pulled it from theatres. But after other critics rose to the film's defense, the studio soon rereleased it, and it found a cult following.[3][6][11] "I don’t mind, especially as Pretty Poison is what people like to call 'a cult classic'", said Black. "Most of my few other features were done for money. I had two wives and two children to support."[10][13]Pretty Poison was awarded the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Screenplay in 1968.[15]
In 1969, Black spoke about his film to students at Boston University. "Essentially, we saw it as a story with many comedic elements in a serious framework — a kind of black comedy or existential humor of which Dr. Strangelove is a prototype", he said. "We hoped people would take it on more than one level."[3][13]
The film was released on DVD in 2006 by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.[6][15] "Lorenzo Semple Jr.'s screenplay is beautifully worked out, and the director, Noel Black, does a superb job of modulating the film's conflicting elements: the coming-of-age story and the thriller", Charles Taylor said in a New York Times review on the occasion of the film's DVD release, in 2006.[3]
Both of these films were flops.[3][6][8] "The gold-plated nail in my career coffin was pounded when, after the box-office failure of Pretty Poison, I accepted a dreadful project, Cover Me Babe, that never should have been made", Black remarked. "I reckoned that it was better to stay active than to wait for a project I believed in. That was a mistake. It was followed by another mistake, Jennifer on My Mind, one of the dozens of unsuccessful drug pictures at the time."[10][11]
1970s television work
"For five years after the two flops, I devoted myself to writing scripts", Black continued. "Finally in 1976, I decided to get back into directing through episodic television. The idea of it scared me because I had started in the film business at the top with my own feature."[10]
Marianne/Mirrors, A Man, a Woman, and a Bank and Private School
Black attempted a return to the big screen in 1978 with a voodoohorror film initially titled Marianne. Having suffered editorial meddling and script changes, it remained unreleased for six years, until it reappeared on video six years later under the title Mirrors.[7][10][13] The film stars Kitty Winn and Peter Donat.[9]
Immediately after Pretty Poison, Black co-wrote, with Fred Segal, a screen adaptation of Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March, one of many projects that failed to come to fruition.[8][10]
Towards the end of Anthony Perkins' life, he fought long and hard to get Black to direct Psycho IV (1990), but that too was in vain.[10]
Personal life and death
Black was married twice, to Sandra MacPhail and Catherine Cownie. Both marriages ended in divorce.[3][6] Black had two children, a daughter Nicole and a son Marco, from his marriage to MacPhail.[3][6] Marco Black was "inspired to join the family business" by his father, and he has worked as a unit production manager on CBS's Extant and an assistant director on such films as the Will Ferrell comedy Old School (2003).[7]
