Oscar-winning Oklahoma filmmaker Gray Frederickson dies
He was not on the list.
Academy Award-winning Oklahoma City filmmaker Gray Frederickson died Sunday. He was 85.
An Oscar-winning producer whose projects ranged from Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather" trilogy, "Apocalypse Now" and the Oklahoma-made "The Outsiders" to documentaries like the Emmy-winning "Dream No Little Dream: The Life and Legacy of Robert S. Kerr" and his recent project "Sherwood Forest," Frederickson mentored thousands of aspiring actors, filmmakers and crew members over his six decades in the movie business.
"He is the godfather of Oklahoma film — absolute pun intended," Rachel Cannon, co-founder and co-CEO of Oklahoma City's Prairie Surf Media, told The Oklahoman in a 2021 interview.
"He literally was the foundation of the film industry here."
Born and raised in Oklahoma City, the closest Frederickson got to a movie career as a youth was working as an usher at the Lakeside Theater in the 1950s.
An alumnus of Casady School and the University of Oklahoma, Frederickson also attended the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.
From there, he moved to Rome, where he launched his film career as producer of 1963's "Nakita." That led to more opportunities, such as joining Italian director Sergio Leone's "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" as production manager. Frederickson forged a lasting friendship with that film's star, Clint Eastwood.
Frederickson moved his burgeoning career to Hollywood, and he made a key connection with fellow producer Albert S. Ruddy on the 1970 Robert Redford vehicle “Little Fauss and Big Halsy.” Two years later, he and Ruddy worked with studio legend Robert Evans to produce Coppola's “The Godfather."
Along with winning three Academy Awards, "The Godfather" launched a 50-year relationship between Francis Ford Coppola and Frederickson. The Oklahoma City native won the best picture Oscar in 1975 for "The Godfather: Part II" — the first sequel in Oscars history to win the top award — and garnered a best picture nomination in 1980 for his work on "Apocalypse Now."
"I got on a winning horse. I was with Francis Coppola, who's no slouch. I was lucky enough to be carried along with him," Frederickson told The Oklahoman in a 2021 interview. "I got lucky with him, but he says he got lucky with me." So, maybe that's good."
Frederickson even returned to his home state with Coppola in 1982 to film in Tulsa the coming-of-age drama "The Outsiders," based on the beloved 1967 book by Tulsa author S.E. Hinton and featuring future movie stars C. Thomas Howell, Tom Cruise, Patrick Swayze, Diane Lane, Ralph Macchio, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez and Matt Dillon.
"It's lasted. The (line) 'Stay gold, Ponyboy' has lasted. It's lasted as long as 'The Godfathers' and as long as 'Apocalypse Now.' I have some movies that have really lasted over the years — because they're great stories," Frederickson told The Oklahoman last year.
Although show biz occasionally brought Frederickson back to his home state — he was executive producer on Weird Al Yankovic's 1989 cult-classic "UHF," which filmed in Tulsa — shortly after writing the original story for the 1994 Drew Barrymore film "Bad Girls," Frederickson moved back to Oklahoma with his wife, Karen, and their two children, Kelsey and Tyler.
Upon returning to OKC in 1999, he mentored the future founders of Prairie Surf Media, Cannon and Matt Payne, who surprised Frederickson last year by naming the first soundstage at Prairie Surf Studios, their downtown Oklahoma City headquarters that was formerly the Cox Convention Center, "The Gray Frederickson Stage."
"There wasn't a film industry when Matt and I were in college; we left because we had to. Gray was coming back to build it, because he wanted to bring his family here, but there wasn't much to speak of when we left," said Cannon, an actor whose credits include the TV series "Mad Men," "Fresh off the Boat" and "Two and a Half Men" along with the upcoming Oklahoma-made movie "Reagan."
"When I got back, there were two phone calls that I had to make: One was Matt Payne and one was Gray Fredrickson."
In 2000, Frederickson joined Oklahoma City Community College as artist-in-residence, helping to launch the college's film production program, designed to give students the practical know-how to make and work on movies.
Earlier this year, the OCCC program was named to MovieMaker magazine's 2022 list of the 40 Best Film Schools in the U.S. and Canada.
“OCCC has a long standing history of over two decades of providing this outstanding program which was the brainchild of Academy Award winning producer and OCCC’s artist in residence Gray Frederickson. We applaud our faculty and staff for their ingenuity, innovation and tremendous efforts in producing the best and the brightest within the film industry,” OCCC President Mautra Staley Jones said in a summer statement about the honor.
The state's film workforce is built on the program Frederickson and his cohorts created at OCCC, Payne told The Oklahoman.
"When you're a 21-year-old student and you're sitting down on the regular with the guy that produced 'The Godfather' and he's treating you like a peer, it does instill a sense of confidence and self-belief that I think was really critical in getting out to Los Angeles and being able to network. ... But seeing the program at OCCC and all that allowed me to come home. What he built is what gave me the confidence that I could leave Los Angeles," said Payne, who has worked as a screenwriter on shows like "Vegas" and "The Defenders."
"Almost every single person that I've engaged with that works in Oklahoma film, they refer to Gray as a mentor and a friend ... and that says a lot about a guy when everyone sees him as that."
Although he had already worked on about 50 films, Frederickson continued to work as a filmmaker — especially in his home state — well into his 80s. Last year, he was producing a documentary called "Sherwood Forest," a film telling an overlooked World War II episode about a group of Oklahoma and Texas roughnecks shipped to England in 1943 to alleviate the war-torn nation's oil shortages.
Always looking for a great story, that's what a producer does. ... That's what it's about: telling stories to people like they did years ago around the campfire. Now we do it with a camera. Pretty cool," Frederickson told The Oklahoman.
In 2012, Frederickson was named an Oklahoma Film & TV ICON by the deadCenter Film Festival, and he was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 2019, with Coppola traveling to Oklahoma to help present his friend with the state's highest individual honor.
Frederickson told The Oklahoman in a 2019 interview that he considered induction into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame an even greater honor than winning his Academy Award.
“Oscar is an award for best picture. Oklahoma Hall of Fame is an award for me, so that’s why this is the best,” he said.
“It’s special because of Oklahoma. I’m Oklahoma. I mean, it’s like another appendage for me. It’s part of me; it’s who I am. And to be accepted by Oklahoma is really the pinnacle of everything for me.”
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