About

Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall are the producers of many of the most successful and best-loved motion pictures in history, including E.T., Jurassic Park. Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Back to the Future series and Schindler's List. Kennedy began her career as a volunteer at a public television station. She won got a job as a production assistant on a Steven Spielberg film and soon became an essential part of his team. Marshall too began as an unpaid assistant to director Peter Bogdanovich, then making his first film. Marshall continued working with the director, eventually becoming the producer of Bogdanovich's 1973 hit, Paper Moon. Marshall joined forces with Spielberg and George Lucas for Raiders of the Lost Ark, where he met Kennedy as well. Kennedy and Marshall founded Amblin Entertainment with Spielberg in 1984. The pair married in 1987, and in 1992 formed their own production concern, The Kennedy/Marshall Company. They have continued their work with Spielberg on pictures such as Munich as well as working with other directors on a wide variety of commercial and artistic successes, including blockbusters such as the Bourne Supremacy. In this podcast, recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 1996 Summit in Sun Valley, Idaho, Kennedy and Marshall speak separately about their paths to success in the film industry, and how they rose to the top of their professions by starting at the bottom.