Ted Kotcheff, ‘First Blood' and ‘Weekend at Bernie's' director, dies at 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.
___
© 2025 Los Angeles Times.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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Michael McLeod films a selfie video with the complainant on the dance floor inside Jack's Bar. While a jury verdict typically comes much quicker, the benefit of a judge-alone trial is that the judge provides detailed reasons for their decision. The courtroom where it will happen is the largest at the London courthouse, and was previously used for the infamous Bandidos murder trial, in which six men were convicted in the mass slaying of eight men connected to the biker gang in 2006. During the Hockey Canada trial, the multiple prisoner's boxes along one side of the room remained empty, as the accused players, who are all out of custody, each sat at a table with their legal teams. In the publi c gallery, McLeod's parents sat in the centre of the front row each day of the trial; Hart's mother and Dubé's relatives were also often in attendance. A series of text messages between Michael McLeod and the complainant after she alleges he and four other members of the Canadian world junior hockey team sexually assaulted her in a London hotel room. E.M. was beamed into the courtroom via CCTV from a different room at the courthouse during her testimony, while the courtroom's background was blurred on the screen so that she couldn't see the players. Court documents reveal that while she was scared and anxious, E.M. initially believed she might be able to testify in person. But after sitting in the witness box during a tour of the courthouse before the trial, she began to cry. This prompted the Crown to ask that she testify remotely, an application that wasn't challenged by the defence. 'While E.M. would tell the truth regardless of mode of testimony, testifying in the courtroom in front of the accused would potentially prevent her from providing a complete account of the allegations,' according to an affidavit filed in January by the Crown from London police Const. Amanda Corsaut, who had interviewed E.M. this year. 'She has not seen any of the five defendants since the alleged events occurred. She is scared that they may be angry. E.M. worries it may be re-traumatizing for her to see them and testify in front of them.' As the Star first reported in May , Meaghan Cunningham, the province's lead sexual assault prosecutor as chair of the Crown office's sexual violence advisory group, warned E.M. last year that it was 'not a really, really strong case,' but that a conviction was possible. She said that while most news articles from 2022 'accept as true what is in your statement of claim' from the lawsuit, the public's view of the case could shift by the end of the trial. I think Canada has probably grown a bit as a nation There is a 'real possibility that the current perception of what happened could change,' Cunningham said, according to notes from a meeting with E.M. Talach said he believes E.M. went through with it all due to wanting a mix of accountability, healing, and prevention. And her actions motivated the public to push for change. 'Regardless of the outcome, I think Canada has probably grown a bit as a nation,' he said. 'And hockey has had to sit up and take notice of some important issues that we'll continue to discuss.'
