Prolific Canadian-born filmmaker Ted Kotcheff, who directed the movies “First Blood,” “Weekend at Bernie’s,” “Wake in Fright,” “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz,” “Fun With Dick and Jane” and “North Dallas Forty,” along with a future as an govt producer on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” has died. He was 94.
In a 1975 interview with The Occasions, Kotcheff stated, “The sense of being outside of the mainstream of the community has always attracted me. All my pictures deal with people outside or people who don’t know what’s driving them.”
Sylvester Stallone as John Rambo in 1982’s “First Blood,” directed by Ted Kotcheff.
(CBS Picture Archive / CBS through Getty Photos)
Born in Toronto on April 7, 1931, to Bulgarian immigrants, Kotcheff started working in tv within the early Fifties. He later moved to the U.Ok., directing for each stage and TV. In 1971, he directed “Wake in Fright” in Australia, which a Occasions evaluate upon its 2012 rerelease referred to as “raw, unsettling and mesmerizing.”
Returning to Canada within the early Nineteen Seventies, Kotcheff directed 1974’s adaptation of Mordecai Richler’s “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz” starring Richard Dreyfuss. It gained the highest prize on the Berlin Movie Competition and earned author Lionel Chetwynd an Academy Award nomination for tailored screenplay.
Kotcheff discovered large success in Hollywood with 1982’s “First Blood,” which launched the traumatized Vietnam veteran John Rambo, performed by Sylvester Stallone.
Reviewing “First Blood,” Occasions critic Sheila Benson wrote, “This violent and disturbing film is exceptionally well made.” She added, “If it is possible to dislike and admire a film in almost equal measure, then ‘First Blood’ would win on that split ticket. … Kotcheff has seared so many lingering examples of exultant nihilism into our brains that words to the contrary are so much sop. It’s action, not words, that makes ‘First Blood’ run, and the action is frightening, indeed.”
Andrew McCarthy, left, and Jonathan Silverman in a scene from Ted Kotcheff’s “Weekend at Bernie‘s” (1989).
(Phil Caruso / 20th Century Fox)
If “First Blood” tapped into the despair and anxiety of post-Vietnam America, 1989’s “Weekend at Bernie’s” turned an unlikely cultural touchstone for its carefree, freewheeling playfulness, displaying Kotcheff’s versatility.
The movie follows two bold younger males (performed by Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman) who create a sequence of elaborate ruses over the course of a busy weekend to show that their sketchy boss (Terry Kiser) truly isn’t useless. In a evaluate of “Bernie’s,” Occasions critic Kevin Thomas wrote, “A weekend among the rich, the jaded and the corrupt is just the right cup of tea for an acid social satirist such as Kotcheff,” additionally noting the filmmaker’s small cameo within the movie as father to one of many younger males.
Ultimately Kotcheff returned to tv, working for greater than 10 years and on practically 300 episodes of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”
In 2011, Kotcheff acquired a lifetime achievement award from the Administrators Guild of Canada. He revealed a memoir, “Director’s Cut: My Life in Film,” in 2017.
Kotcheff is survived by his spouse, Laifun Chung, and kids Kate and Thomas Kotcheff. He was predeceased by his first spouse, actress Sylvia Kay, with whom he had three kids.
