A Hollywood Story

If you like movies or television, there is strong likelihood that you have seen or heard of one of the many projects worked on or created by Tom ’70 or Paul Bernard ’86. Two of Hollywood’s most influential executives are alumni of Jesuit Dallas and as their name suggests, they are brothers. Tom is most prominently known as co-founder and co-president of Sony Pictures Classics and Paul is currently executive producer of the Emmy-nominated hit television show S.W.A.T.

A Passion and A Calling

Moving to Texas in 1966 just ahead of his freshman year, Tom had come from New Jersey where ice hockey was his passion, but as the saying goes “football in Texas is king.” Ultimately becoming an all-district and team captain his senior year, Tom also participated in theater, both at Jesuit and Ursuline.

“I remember a number of cinemas in the area were showing a lot of foreign films and avant-garde movies and there was a group from Jesuit that would frequent the movies. A lot of great stuff was being made in the mid-1960s and it was different from the Hollywood mainstream. Being at Jesuit exposed you to a higher level of what you would read, and what you would talk about in various courses gave the movies more relevance. It was a time of chance. The Dallas International Film Festival started about then and Kit Carson ’59, who graduated from Jesuit, was a key guy there. Additionally, Jesuit would hold film competitions, which was relatively unheard of in high school at that time. It all paved the way for my eventual involvement in cinema.”

Sixteen years later and not much had changed for brother, Paul. “The greatest thing we did every weekend while I was a student at Jesuit was pile into the trunks of our cars and go to the Gemini Twin drive-in theater on the corner of I-75 and Forest Lane. We were always watching movies; it was something we all just enjoyed!”

Path to the Big Screen

After graduation, Tom matriculated to the University of Maryland. “They had studios, camera equipment, stages. I started taking an introduction to film class, an extension of the world I was in at Jesuit. The films and music of the day were the mantra of the time. They were the way that ideas and points of view were being communicated and it was strong language and very subliminal but very powerful stuff.”

One day Tom and a friend saw in an underground paper that they were showing the movie based on the Merry Pranksters’ famed cross-country bus trip to the World’s Fair in 1964. “We saw the film and decided to contact one of the guys involved, Kenny Babbs, to ask if we could show the film on campus. He said, ‘yeah send me 200 bucks and after you do, I’ll have them send you the reels.’ We rented a room in the student union and a 16mm projector from the AV department, and we ran all over Washington D.C. promoting our screenings. It seemed like a zillion people showed up and from that we were able to start our own film series called Mud Cinema.” After that success, the two began renting movies from New York-based studios like New Line Cinema and United Artists. They realized that they were in competition with the campus efforts so they were looking for films they thought they could make money with and that others wouldn’t notice. “We always did theatrics as it was a competitive time and we got creative with some of our themes. For example, if a movie was about a truck and if you dressed up like a truck you got in free.”

After Jesuit, Paul enrolled at the University of South Carolina to study film. Like Tom, who met his wife, Nena, while a student at Maryland, Paul went on to meet his wife, Sherry, in the theater department and both wanted to go to New York City to get into the business. Tom already had some connections, and in 1989 introduced Paul to Ned Dowd, who was producing the crime drama State of Grace.

“I started as a foot messenger to learn New York City, then worked for leading actor Sean Penn as a production assistant (PA) which was an interesting experience. As a PA, you basically do anything that is asked of you, with a smile, and you do not get paid very much. I’m a 20-yearold college student, hanging out with Christopher Walken and all these people Sean knew. I finished that movie, went back to South Carolina, graduated from film school and we moved to New York City.”

After a brief stint in wardrobe on The Fisher King, Paul knew he wanted to be on the same path as Dowd. “Ned ran the set, scheduled the movies. He was the captain and he kept everything organized, calm, and cool.” Paul spent the next 600 days as a PA on Carlito’s Way, and then spent the summer of 1992 as line producer and production manager for the Grateful Dead.

Building a reputation through hard work and the success of his previous films, Paul was tabbed as assistant director for Interview with a Vampire, another critical and commercial smash. Bouncing from one acclaimed project to the next throughout the next decade, he served as assistant director on Mission: Impossible, Any Given Sunday, The Patriot, and the Day After Tomorrow, among others.

Rising Stars

Tom accepted a job with New Line Cinema after graduation but was soon offered an opportunity to help start a theatrical company. “The guy that hired me quit two weeks after I began, giving me the chance to run the company. Making it up as I went, and using techniques from my college film series, I rolled them into the theatrical distribution of films.”

Along with long-time business partner, Michael Barker, those efforts turned into a new venture called United Artists Classics. “It was great. When you are left to your own, you can invent and break the rules. We changed the way things were done. It was like the world of Mad Men with the ad agencies who said we will make our own ads. We didn’t need a middleman to go to the theaters, we called them ourselves.”

Moving forward, the pair created Orion Classics, and in 1992, cofounded Sony Pictures Classics, an autonomous division of Sony Pictures Entertainment. Together, Bernard and Barker have acquired, produced, and distributed some of the finest independent films in the history of cinema. Their films have won 41 Academy Awards and garnered 183 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture nominations for The Father, Call Me By Your Name, Whiplash, Amour, Midnight in Paris, An Education, Capote, Howard’s End and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which according to Tom, was his most satisfying project. The highest-grossing foreign-language film produced overseas in American history, Crouching Tiger continues to be hailed as one of the greatest and most influential wuxia films of all-time.

With a young family prompting a desire to get off the road and the realization that he could better his fortune in television, Paul entered the world of the small screen as an assistant director and

ultimately became a producer. Friend Dean Devlin, who produced Independence Day and several of Paul’s previous films, advised the rising TV executive to move from NYC to Los Angeles, stating, “If I wanted to make cars, I’d be in Detroit. You need to be in L.A. where all the studios are. It’s the hub of how it starts, is created, and developed.” “Jesuit is a very close group and to this day I still keep in touch with my high school friends. I’ve had classmates on set and friends in films. I’m currently working with Rob Markovich ’86 on some projects and possibly some other Jesuit guys. These days, I have a tough time getting to Texas, but it does have a decent film rate, so I hope to come back.”

“So, we moved to L.A., and I continued on in television with a movie here and there. One day the main producer on the hit TNT series, Leverage, left to do another show. I was already assistant director and Devlin said, ‘Paul, it’s your chance. You can do this.’ So, I became a line producer on Leverage and ultimately a TV line producer.” Over the course of five seasons, Leverage became a crossover sensation with tie-in novels, a South Korean adaption, a role-playing game, and a revival series. The show still runs in syndication.

Forging Ahead

“We continue to target films that we think we can make work, and that will have some sort of positive social impact on the world,” offered Tom. “We’re very much in the trenches in our job. We have no desire to sit behind desks expecting others to get things done. We want to stay involved. My brother Paul is much the same way. That is how you succeed. You do not make yourself obsolete and you stay in the flow. It goes back to our football coach at Jesuit, Gary Pasqua ’55, who reminded us that if you wanted to make the team, you have to persevere. If you give up, then you are out. You have to put the time in, and you have to put the work in.” Paul, who has won a plethora of awards in a career that now includes nearly 100 producing and directing credits in television and cinema, is currently executive producer on the hit CBS show, S.W.A.T., starring Shemar Moore, Lina Esco and Kenny Johnson about a tactical unit in Los Angeles. “S.W.A.T. shows black and blue, it is not left or right, and that is one of the reasons why we are very proud of our show. We seem to have a good following and it keeps getting better and better. With a television show, it is a marathon, and unbelievably we are now in our sixth season!” Of course, that doesn’t mean that’s it for Paul’s seemingly endless energy, who is also consulting for Village Roadshow, one of the leading independent entertainment companies in the world, and recently took over 12 catering trucks in N.Y. and L.A. “In our business there are a lot of smart ways to make means.” Every year the brothers and Jesuit Dallas alums attend the Oscars together. “We have a lot of fun and have done that for like 25 years,” continued Paul. “I worked my way up through the ranks on the production route which took me to producing and directing, and Tom took the studio route. I learned a lot from Tom. He has won many Oscars and pretty much every year I get to hear him thanked by name during an acceptance speech. That’s always really cool, and our time together is always special.”

“It goes back to the Jesuit experience, which gets you,” summarized Tom. “I learned at Jesuit that movies are very influential and can create tremendous impact. It gives me pleasure to know that so many of our films have touched people in a positive way.”

Tom and Paul attending the 2022 Oscars at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.