He directed a comedy-infused horror film that played at Cannes Film Festival and was championed by Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael.
A bedtime story he told his daughters became the huge hit film, “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.”
But Stuart Gordon’s first big splash — one that so resonated it’s in the title of his new memoir — came with a play he produced and directed as a student on the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus in 1968.
That summer, in his native Chicago, Gordon had been teargassed and witnessed police beating antiwar protesters at the Democratic National Convention. It inspired him to create a version of the musical “Peter Pan” that would be an allegory for the convention: Chicago’s Mayor Daley would be Captain Hook and the police would be the pirates.
There was more, including a half dozen women who performed a dance while naked, portraying innocence, Gordon maintained.
Madison officialdom couldn’t handle the nudity. There were newspaper headlines and arrests, high drama. Was it obscene or was it art?