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American director, producer, and screenwriter Joseph Strick learned about filmmaking when he served as a cameraman with the U.S. Air Force during WWII. Shortly after his discharge, he began working as a copyboy for the Los Angeles Times, and in his spare time, he made the documentary Muscle Beach (1948) with co-director Irving Lerner. He later moved to television work, and over a five-year period made the groundbreaking docudrama The Savage Eye (1959) in conjunction with Ben Maddow and Sidney Meyers. The film won him many awards and international recognition. Strick's fiction directorial debut, the black comedy The Balcony, garnered a Best Black and White Cinematography nomination from the Academy in 1963; he then began working on his first drama, a 1961 adaptation of James Joyce's complicated novel Ulysses. Nine years later, his documentary short Interviews With My Lai Veterans won an Academy award. A few years later, Strick became a producer. Strick died in 2010 at age 86.