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Clearly, Crichton is an ambitious man. But then he came of a very achievement-oriented family. His father was the busy executive editor of Advertising Age. Growing up in Roslyn, N.Y., Crichton recalls that he and his brother and two sisters had to take music lessons whether they liked them or not. By the time Crichton was 14, he was already 6 ft. 7 in. tall. Before long, the high school basketball coach was whipping star performances out of this less-than-natural athlete. Crichton worked hard, because, as he says facetiously, "I wanted to be kissed by the cheerleaders." He continues to work hard, and those cheerleaders have now been replaced by starlets. Yet Crichton seems happiest when he is trying something entirely new. Directing Binary, his first film, was, he says, "like a drug high that went on for twelve days. I was just zinging along for miles."
Crichton's success is in many respects conventional, but one should not count on his doing the normal thing. Even if he does, he will undoubtedly do more of it than anyone else.