Rob Lieberman on the set of "Private Eyes" in Toronto. 

This was going to be his blockbuster.

From the time he was a Buffalo kid in the 1950s and ‘60s, Rob Lieberman dropped hard-earned pocket change to see movies at the North Park Theatre on Hertel Avenue. The spacious cinema with its classic marquee was a short walk from his family’s modest home. It’s also where he’ll be returning this weekend for a screening of his would-be blockbuster.

But reaching a point in life where he could make films – box-office smashes or otherwise – required more than settling into movie theater sets. It required making moves: As a young man, Lieberman wrote dozens of letters to Hollywood luminaries, asking for advice – not jobs – and as a University at Buffalo student, he secured himself a position as a video assistant with the Jack Kemp-era Buffalo Bills.

In his early 20s, Lieberman made the cross-country move to Los Angeles and spent much of the 1970s and ‘80s building his credentials as a director of television and film. As filmmakers often do, Lieberman worked between projects on the development of a story, this one called “Fire in the Sky,” a science fiction tale centered on a 1975 alien abduction. In the early 1990s, with a greenlight from Brandon Tartikoff, then the chairman of Paramount Pictures, Lieberman shot the project on a $15 million budget. In the months leading up to the film’s March 1993 release, he realized there had not been a space movie released in a long time. Knowing the market might be open to it, he thought to himself, “I bet this film could be a smash hit.”

But then another notion crept into Lieberman’s mind. “I’m a glass half empty kind of guy,” he admitted during a phone interview this week. “I thought, ‘What could screw me?’ ”

The answer came on the weekend when “Fire in the Sky” was released. A huge storm swept the Eastern Seaboard, keeping many movie fans home and, by Lieberman’s analysis, limiting the film’s box office receipts. “Fire in the Sky” earned just over $6 million on opening weekend, and grossed just under $20 million worldwide. Given the film’s $15 million budget, those numbers were underwhelming – but in the years since, “Fire in the Sky” has developed an audience and become a calling card of sorts for Lieberman, who has directed several theatrical and television movies, dozens of TV shows and thousands of commercials.

“It has probably the most cultlike following,” he said. “After all these years, I still get letters about it, emails about it. People still ask me questions about it.”

That prompted Lieberman, who was planning a visit home to Buffalo this weekend, to team with UB’s Department of Media Study to arrange for a special showing of “Fire in the Sky” at 9:30 p.m. Saturday in the North Park. Tickets for the event are $15 and benefit Squeaky Wheel Film & Arts Center in Buffalo. The screening will be followed by a question-and-answer session with Lieberman, who speaks with a deep pride about his life’s work, but also puts it modestly in context. “My career has not been as stellar as many,” Lieberman told The News, speaking from Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife, the former model Victoria Peters.

This understated self-assessment is classic Lieberman. His friend and former wife, the actress Marilu Henner, with whom he has two adult sons who are also in the entertainment industry, told The News in an interview five years ago, “I think he’s always comparing himself to Stanley Kubrick.”

That’s a lofty and elusive reference point, and although Lieberman, 75, acknowledges he won’t reach legendary status, it’s clear in conversation with him that a lifetime spent behind the camera has been energizing.

Here are excerpts of the conversation, edited for space and clarity:

You’ve said the trajectory of your career would have been quite different if the opening weekend of “Fire in the Sky” hadn’t been abbreviated by a major storm. Why?

Hollywood director Rob Lieberman moved from Buffalo to L.A. in his early 20s and succeeded in his making his dreams come true.

Totally. They would have said I’m a director of blockbusters. The film itself, as you can see 30 years later, was a good film – and it is a good film. People love it. I get a lot of residuals from people who are downloading it or streaming it. They say, “Oh, that’s interesting. Let me see what that is.” And they get the biggest surprise of their life. They go, “Wow, why didn’t I see that when it first came out? That’s a really good movie.”

Have you found the streaming services help people find some of your work that would otherwise be on the back shelf?

Undoubtedly. My career has not been as stellar as many. I’ve made a lot of what I consider to be very fine films, but not one of them broke out into that mega blockbuster nomenclature. My films get discovered. Someone goes, “We’re not doing anything tonight. That looks like an interesting story.”

I imagine you’re gleaning this type of feedback through residual checks?

It’s so crazy. You’re talking about a film you made 30 years ago, and you open up an envelope and it’s 1,800 bucks. Free money. Why? Because a bunch of people in Switzerland watched it, and a bunch of people in Indonesia watched it.

One of your first jobs in film was as a video assistant for the ‘60s-era Buffalo Bills. What are your memories of that?

On a Friday, I would drive out to Buffalo Niagara International Airport and get on a charter flight with the Buffalo Bills and we’d play cards all the way down to Miami or Cincinnati. They were just college-age themselves, basically, but they were big and I was just a little shrunken Jewish guy. But I got to be really good friends with them. They called me “Jesus” because I had shoulder-length hair. When they were in training camp at Niagara University, to get a straight-down shot they put me way up on scaffolding, so I wrapped myself in a sheet and would bless them, and they’d laugh. But the most important part of that was to my father, who was a dyed-in-the-wool Bills fan. I could bring them home to meet my dad, and I was such a hero to my father. It was unbelievable.

You left Buffalo as a young man 50-some years ago to pursue a film career in Los Angeles. Today, given the factors that are different – movies are being shot in many places, including Buffalo, and streaming services have a deep need for content – what would you tell aspiring filmmakers?

I think I did the right things. My advice to people who are trying to get in the business is you’ve got to be absolutely fearless and relentless. If you want it, you’ve got to want it with everything of your being and then you have to pursue it with everything of your being. If you do, you will get it. I don’t know one story of people who came out to Hollywood and tried to make it and didn’t end up getting some part of that dream. They don’t get the whole dream, the way they would like it or the way they wrote it. But they end up as a cinematographer, an editor, a composer. They end up in the business, in a job they really like.

I wanted to be in this business, and now looking back over my whole career, loved that I spent my life in this business. Not that everything was so pleasurable – there were a lot of miserable times and miserable people, but all businesses have that. But I got to go to work and have fun: Do what I wanted to do, create what I wanted to create; wake up in the morning with blank canvases and go out and paint, and with somebody else’s money – and lots of it. It’s craziness, and I got to do it for over 50 years.

Do you still consider yourself an active filmmaker?

For sure. I’m available, but it’s a crowded field, and sometimes it’s the right time to take your bow and leave the stage. I feel very satisfied and rewarded. This is a good time to be giving back. I’m a poster boy for anybody who thinks it’s a dream you can’t attain. I’m a poster boy for the idea that you can attain it. If you want to be a film director, go out to Hollywood.

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The historic North Park Theatre, which has been undergoing extensive restoration for years, marks the completion of the final phase of the project. It includes the newly restored grand lobby, which reveals a stained glass window that had been hidden by a drop ceiling for

Rob Lieberman on the set of "Private Eyes" in Toronto. 

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