Jake Eberts obit

“Chicken Run” Executive Producer Jake Eberts Dies

 

He was not on the list.

Montreal-born pro­ducer Jake Eberts, whose movies won 37 Oscars — includ­ing four for best pic­ture — died Thurs­day morn­ing in his home­town after a brief ill­ness. He was 71.

He was exec­u­tive pro­ducer of seven the­atri­cal ani­mated fea­ture films, includ­ing the 2000 hit Chicken Run, on which he part­nered with Jef­frey Katzenberg.

Oth­ers were The Nut­cracker Prince (1990), The Thief And The Cob­bler (1993), James and the Giant Peach (1996), Doo­gal and Renais­sance (both 2006), and The Illu­sion­ist (2010).

Born John David Eberts on July 10, 1941, he grew up in Mon­treal and Arvida, Que­bec. He attended Bishop’s Col­lege School in Lennoxville, Que­bec and grad­u­ated from McGill Uni­ver­sity (Bach­e­lor of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing 1962) and Har­vard Busi­ness School (MBA 1966).

Eberts’s work­ing career began as a start-up engi­neer for L’Air Liq­uide in Spain, Italy, Ger­many and France. He then spent three years as a Wall Street investor. He moved to Lon­don in 1971, where he joined Oppen­heimer & Co., ris­ing to the posi­tion of man­ag­ing direc­tor of the British bro­ker­age and invest­ment com­pany in 1976.

With no appar­ent prior inter­est in film, he turned to film financ­ing in about 1977, and joined David Put­tnam in found­ing Gold­crest Films, an inde­pen­dent film pro­duc­tion com­pany, for which he served as pres­i­dent and CEO. His first ven­ture was the 1978 ani­mated movie Water­ship Down, directed by Mar­tin Rosen.

He pro­duced or financed over 50 films, includ­ing Char­i­ots of Fire, Gandhi, The Killing Fields, Dances with Wolves, Dri­ving Miss Daisy, The Dresser, Local Hero, A River Runs Through It, Black Robe, Ocean and Grey Owl. He worked with such famed actors as Robert Red­ford, Ben Kings­ley, Mor­gan Free­man, Bruce Beres­ford, Richard Atten­bor­ough, Pierce Bros­nan and Albert Finney.

“He was an extra­or­di­nary film pro­ducer and an extra­or­di­nary man,” said his close friend, Mon­treal direc­tor and fre­quent ten­nis part­ner Denys Arcand, a close friend and fre­quent ten­nis part­ner of Eberts. “He took film­mak­ing seri­ously. He felt cin­ema should be used to bet­ter mankind. This is a lofty stan­dard in an age where movies are being adapted from comic books. He had such noble ideals and morals.”

“He was such a smart and elo­quent man, yet he was also such a hum­ble man and such a gen­er­ous man — he gave to so many causes,” said pro­ducer Denise Robert, Arcand’s wife and film col­lab­o­ra­tor. “He brought out the best in every­body. It’s a great loss for us, but it’s also a great loss for the world.”

“It’s a huge loss for the film com­mu­nity, but also for mem­bers of his extended fam­ily,” said the producer’s brother, Jay Eberts. “He touched the lives of so many and brought so much light into the world. He was an inspi­ra­tion to us all.”

Mon­treal film pro­ducer Kevin Tier­ney described Eberts as some­one scarcely seen nowa­days in the movie busi­ness: “A great entre­pre­neur with a great esthetic sense. They just don’t make them like him any more.”

In 1985, Eberts founded Allied Film­mak­ers, based in Lon­don and Paris, an inde­pen­dent fea­ture film devel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion company.

Eberts served as media advi­sor to Par­tic­i­pant Media and the Abu Dhabi Media Com­pany. He sat on the board of the Sun­dance Channel.

A res­i­dent of Lon­don and Paris for 50 years, Eberts was chair­man of National Geo­graphic Films (which dis­trib­uted March of the Pen­guins) and trustee emer­i­tus of the Sun­dance Institute.

In 1991, Eberts pub­lished My Inde­ci­sion Is Final, his auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal study of the film indus­try. In 1992, he became an Offi­cer of the Order of Canada. Eberts was awarded hon­orary doc­tor­ates by McGill Uni­ver­sity in 1998, Bishop’s Uni­ver­sity in 1999 and Trent Uni­ver­sity in 2005.

Eberts’s most recent project, the IMAX 3D doc­u­men­tary Jerusalem, is sched­uled for release in 2013.

“I could never be a direc­tor because I could never stand focus­ing all that time on just one project,” he said last year in a Mon­treal Gazette inter­view. “I’m much more the exec­u­tive producer.”

Eberts began, oddly enough, as an engineer.

“Peo­ple wouldn’t think of some­one with a chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing back­ground to end up in the movie world,” he said. “But life can take you down these won­der­ful paths.”

Besides his brother, Jake Eberts is sur­vived by his wife Fiona and their adult chil­dren: sons Alex and Dave and daugh­ter Lindsay.

The funeral is pri­vate. Plans for a memo­r­ial will be announced soon.

Filmography

He was a producer in all films unless otherwise noted.

 

Film

Year     Film     Credit  Notes

1978    Watership Down         Executive producer     Uncredited

1981    Chariots of Fire            Executive producer

Escape from New York            Executive producer

1982    Pink Floyd – The Wall Executive producer

The Plague Dogs         Executive producer

Gandhi Executive producer

1984    This Is Spinal Tap         Executive producer

Another Country         Executive producer

The Killing Fields         Executive producer

1985    A Room with a View    Executive producer

1986    The Name of the Rose Executive producer    

1987    Hope and Glory           Executive producer    

1988    Me and Him    Associate producer    

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen          Executive producer    

1989    Last Exit to Brooklyn    Associate producer    

Driving Miss Daisy       Co-executive producer           

1990    Texasville         Executive producer    

Dances with Wolves    Executive producer    

The Nutcracker Prince Executive producer    

1991    Black Robe       Executive producer    

1992    City of Joy                   

A River Runs Through It          Executive producer    

1993    Super Mario Bros.                  

The Thief and the Cobbler      Executive producer    

1994    No Escape       Executive producer    

1996    James and the Giant Peach     Executive producer    

The Wind in the Willows                    

1997    The Education of Little Tree               

1999    Grey Owl                    

2000    Chicken Run    Executive producer    

The Legend of Bagger Vance             

2003    Open Range               

2004    Two Brothers              

2005    The Magic Roundabout           Executive producer    

2006    Renaissance    Executive producer    

2007    Whatever Lola Wants            

2009    Journey to Mecca       Executive producer    

2010    The Illusionist  Executive producer    

The Way Back Executive producer     Final film as a producer

2015    A Walk in the Woods   Executive producer     Posthumous release

Thanks

Year     Film     Role

1985    The Emerald Forest     Thanks

2002    K-19: The Widowmaker          The producers wish to thank

2011    Hugo    Thanks

2014    The Journey Home      In memory of

2015    A Walk in the Woods

The Little Prince

Television

Year     Title     Credit  Notes   Other notes

1982    P'tang, Yang, Kipperbang        Executive producer     Uncredited      Television film

2001    Snow in August                                   Television film

2006    Skyland            Associate producer                

2011−12          Iron Man: Armored Adventures          Associate producer

Executive producer                

Thanks

Year     Title     Role     Notes

2011    Kingdom of the Oceans          Special thanks Documentary