Joseph Strick (b. 1923) is one of America’s great Academy Award-winning independent directors. He began his maverick career with an unassuming short, Muscle Beach (1946), creating a small piece of perfection in his montage of the infamous muscle-pumpers of Los Angeles. He made the award-winning Savage Eye in 1960 and then directed a string of controversial literary adaptations: Jean Genet’s The Balcony (1963), Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer (1970) and Joyce's Ulysses (1967), which contained the first use of the word “fuck“ on screen. He won an Academy Award in 1971 for his devastating short Interviews with My Lai Veterans.