Ted Kotcheff, ‘First Blood' and ‘Weekend at Bernie's' director, dies at 94
Prolific Canadian-born filmmaker Ted Kotcheff, who directed the films 'First Blood,' 'Weekend at Bernie's,' 'Wake in Fright,' 'The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz,' 'Fun With Dick and Jane' and 'North Dallas Forty,' in addition to a long run as an executive producer on 'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,' has died. He was 94.
Kotcheff's daughter Kate Kotcheff said via email that he died peacefully while under sedation Thursday night in a hospital in Nuevo Nayarit, Mexico.
In a 1975 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Kotcheff said, '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.'
Born in Toronto on April 7, 1931, to Bulgarian immigrants, Kotcheff began working in television in the early 1950s. He later moved to the U.K., directing for both stage and television. In 1971, he directed 'Wake in Fright' in Australia, which a Times review upon its 2012 re-release called, 'raw, unsettling and mesmerizing.'
Returning to Canada in the early 1970s, Kotcheff directed 1974's adaptation of Mordecai Richler's 'The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz' starring Richard Dreyfuss that would win the top prize at the Berlin Film Festival and earn writer Lionel Chetwynd an Academy Award nomination for adapted screenplay.
Kotcheff found huge success in Hollywood with 1982's 'First Blood,' which first introduced the traumatized Vietnam veteran John Rambo played by Sylvester Stallone.
Reviewing 'First Blood,' Times critic Sheila Benson wrote, 'this violent and disturbing film is exceptionally well made.' Benson 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.'
If 'First Blood' tapped into the despair and anxiety of post-Vietnam America, 1989's 'Weekend at Bernie's' became an unlikely cultural touchstone for its carefree, freewheeling playfulness, displaying Kotcheff's versatility.
The film follows two ambitious young men (played by Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman) who create a series of elaborate ruses over the course of a hectic weekend that their sketchy boss (Terry Kiser) actually isn't dead. In a review of 'Bernie's,' Times critic Kevin Thomas wrote that, '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,' also noting the filmmaker's small cameo in the film as father to one of the young men.
Eventually Kotcheff returned to television, working for more than 10 years and on nearly 300 episodes of 'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.'
In 2011, Kotcheff received a lifetime achievement award from the Directors Guild of Canada. He published a memoir, 'Director's Cut: My Life in Film,' in 2017.
Kotcheff is survived by his wife, Laifun Chung, and children Kate and Thomas Kotcheff. He is predeceased by his first wife, actress Sylvia Kay, with whom he had three children.
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© 2025 Los Angeles Times.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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Cal Foote does the splits at Jack's Bar in London on the night of June 18-19, 2018, while teammates Brett Howden (on the far side of Foote, in white with a lighter-coloured backwards ball cap) and Dillon Dubé (in white on the near side of Foote) clear space on the dance floor. Hart, who played as a goalie for the Philadelphia Flyers prior to his arrest last year, also testified Thursday about seeing Foote doing the splits over the complainant's body while she was lying on the ground between the beds; he said he was sure Foote was clothed and his body did not make contact with the complainant's, who he said was laughing. He explained that the splits were a 'pretty cool thing' that Foote was able to do upon request; surveillance footage shows he did the splits on the dancefloor at Jack's earlier that night. Men in the hotel room were egging him on to do it again, Hart said. 'Like hey Footer, do the splits,' Hart said. 'That was just kind of a thing he did. He's a big, tall dude, super flexible.' A photo of room 209 at the Delta Armouries hotel in London, Ont., marked up by Carter Hart during his testimony, depicting Cal Foote doing the splits over the complainant while she's on a bedsheet on the floor, as well as the positions of other players. Player Tyler Steenbergen also previously testified he partially saw Foote do the splits, but couldn't see what he was wearing, while the complainant herself testified that the genitals of the person who did the splits made contact with her face but she couldn't identify who it was. On Friday, Cunningham had Hart draw the splits on a photo of the hotel room. She suggested that Foote doing the splits, but without his pants, was just one more thing the players were trying to do to keep the woman in the room, seeing as most of them didn't actually want to have sex with her. Cunningham first confirmed with Hart if knew what 'teabagging' meant, which she defined as 'when a guy sort of squats or lowers himself over someone's face and dunks his testicles into her face or mouth.' 'You'd agree with me from your perspective there's nothing particularly exciting about seeing a fully clothed guy, who everyone already knows can do the splits, do the splits, right?' Cunningham said. Hart agreed. 'What would be more exciting,' the Crown attorney continued, 'would be to see a man with no pants on do the splits right over (the complainant's) face, essentially teabagging her. Don't you agree that'd be more exciting?' Hart responded: 'I mean, that'd be pretty weird.' Cunningham shot back: 'Well, the whole night was weird, wasn't it?' Hart agreed.
