THE HILLS OF CALIFORNIA Brings Sam Mendes & Jez Butterworth Back To Broadway

One of the most dynamic theatrical duos of the modern era, director Sam Mendes and playwright Jez Butterworth, returns to Broadway this season with the new work, The Hills of California.

For over a decade this formidable team has gifted theatre audiences a string of epic and thrilling works, beginning in 2009 with Jerusalem starring Mark Rylance and returning in 2019 with the sprawling drama, The Ferryman.

Though their collaboration seems relatively new, the two share a lengthy history, having attended Cambridge University during the same period.

Mendes, who was a few years ahead of Butterworth at the school, recently told Vogue, that before collaborating, he followed the young playwright's early career with, "admiration and a dose of healthy jealousy."

He explained, “He’s kind of a rock star, Jez is...He sort of breezed onto the scene in a really effortless way, but didn’t seem to be an intellectual or wannabe. There seemed to be something raw about him. And there still is.” 

According to the feature, the pair's collaboration quickly became a close friendship, one which included reserved seats next to each other at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium. It was this love of football that would bring their latest collaboration to life, with Butterworth bringing a draft to Mendes' home when he was invited to watch a match.

Mendes told the publication, “My wife, Ali, said, ‘What’s that at the bottom of the coat closet covered in coffee stains?’ And he was like, ‘Oh yeah, I brought that for Sam.’ I was like, Fuck, I’ll read that. It wasn’t the act of a friend. It was because I wanted to know what Jez Butterworth was writing next.”

Butterworth has also praised his collaborator, noting that Mendes' insights and directorial vision have been instrumental in bringing these works to life, carefully balancing the heft of the text and large-scale productions with nuanced themes and emotions.

Of his first impressions of the latest work, Mendes told BBC Front Row, "I read it and I thought it was astonishing. Unfinished, but astonishing. And said look, I think it's a masterpiece."

Butterworth added, "He responded so fully to it that from that moment I was just praying that he was going to do it."

Together the two have contributed two of the most critically acclaimed, commercially successful, and highly awarded plays of the last 20 years, both on and off Broadway.

The acclaimed drama Jerusalem, led by a formidable Mark Rylance, earned the actor Tony, Drama Desk, Olivier, Evening Standard, and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Best Actor. For his part, playwright Butterworth earned Evening Standard Theatre and Critics Circle Theatre Awards for Best Play. 

In addition to being a twice-extended box office smash, the Broadway production of The Ferryman earned nine 2019 Tony Award nominations and won four, including Best Direction of a Play for Mendes and the top dramatic prize, Best Play. Veteran designer Rob Howell also earned two wins for his costume and scenic elements.

The play and the pair also took home high honors at the 2019 Drama Desk Awards (Outstanding Play, Outstanding Director of a Play), the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award (Best Play), and the Outer Critics Circle Awards (Outstanding New Broadway Play, Outstanding Director of a Play)

In its original UK run, The Ferryman won three Laurence Olivier Awards, including Best Play, Best Direction, and Best Actress for Butterworth's life partner, Laura Donnelly, who continues her artistic relationship with Butterworth and Mendes in The Hills of California. The work also earned Best Play honors from the Critics' Circle Theatre Awards and the Evening Standard Theatre Awards. 

Outside of their theatrical pursuits, their collaboration has also extended to the big screen, with Butterworth stepping in as an uncredited script doctor/screenwriter on the Mendes-helmed James Bond films, Skyfall and Spectre.

Butterworth and Mendes are both well regarded in their own spheres with Butterworth being the recipient of the 2007 E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a 1996 Olivier Award for Best Comedy for Mojo, a Europe Theatre Prize, and an Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright. Butterworth also enjoys a robust career as a screenwriter of film and television.

A well-known film and stage director, producer, and screenwriter, Sam Mendes has been appointed a 2000 CBE for his services to drama, and was knighted in the 2020 New Years Honours List. In 2000, Mendes was awarded the Shakespeare Prize by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation in Hamburg. In 2005, he received a lifetime achievement award from the Directors Guild of Great Britain. In 2008, The Daily Telegraph ranked him number 15 in their list of the "100 most powerful people in British culture".

In theatre, he is known for his reinventions of the stage musicals Cabaret, Oliver!, Company, and Gypsy. For his work on the London stage, Mendes has received three Laurence Olivier Awards for Company, Twelfth Night and The Ferryman and for his work on Broadway he has earned two Tony Awards for Best Direction of a Play for his work on The Ferryman in 2019, and The Lehman Trilogy in 2022.

In film, he made his directorial debut with the drama American Beauty, which earned him the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Director. For the war film 1917, he received the BAFTA Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Director, as well as his second Academy Award nominations for Best Director, Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay.