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New York Times
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Ted Kotcheff, Director Who Brought Rambo to the Screen, Dies at 94
Ted Kotcheff, a shape-shifting Canadian director whose films introduced audiences to characters including the troubled Vietnam War hero John Rambo, a dead body named Bernie and the young hustler Duddy Kravitz, died on April 10 in Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico, where he had lived for more than a decade. He was 94. His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by his son Thomas Kotcheff. 'My filmography is a gumbo,' Mr. Kotcheff wrote in his memoir, 'Director's Cut: My Life in Film' (2017, with Josh Young). 'Not being pigeonholed as the guy who makes one style of film has allowed me to traverse every genre.' Mr. Kotcheff was directing television dramas in Britain when he met the novelist Mordecai Richler, a fellow Canadian, in the 1950s. They became friends and ended up sharing an apartment in London, where Mr. Richler wrote 'The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz' (1959), a novel about an amoral Jewish wheeler-dealer in Montreal who will do whatever he can to rise from poverty to wealth. Mr. Kotcheff vowed to Mr. Richler that one day he would direct a movie version of it. And he did. The film, starring Richard Dreyfuss, was made 15 years later. Vincent Canby, reviewing 'Duddy Kravitz' for The New York Times, praised its 'abundance of visual and narrative detail,' which he speculated grew out of the 'close collaboration between Mr. Richler and Mr. Kotcheff.' In 1982, Mr. Kotcheff directed 'First Blood,' the movie in which Sylvester Stallone first played Rambo, a troubled former Green Beret and Vietnam War veteran who travels to a small town in Washington State in search of an Army buddy but is mistaken for a vagrant, harassed and jailed. He then escapes to the woods with a posse in pursuit. After filming the ending, in which Rambo killed himself, Mr. Stallone warned Mr. Kotcheff that the scene would anger audiences after the physical ordeal that Rambo had endured. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly in 2017, Mr. Kotcheff recalled Mr. Stallone saying to him, 'All this and now we're gonna kill him?' Attendees at a test screening uniformly reported that they loved the film but hated the ending. Mr. Kotcheff recalled that one audience member said aloud, 'If the director of this film is in this movie house, let's string him up from the nearest lamppost.' By then, though, Mr. Kotcheff had filmed an alternative ending — the one he ultimately used — in which Rambo walks out of a police station, wounded but alive. The movie was an immediate hit, grossing more than $125 million (about $407 million in current dollars). The movie's success spawned four sequels, none of which Mr. Kotcheff directed. He refused to direct the first, 'Rambo: First Blood Part II' (1985), because of the violence that the character unleashes. 'I read the script, and I said, 'In the first film he doesn't kill anybody,'' he told Filmmaker magazine in 2016. 'In this film he kills 74 people.'' Mr. Kotcheff's 'Weekend at Bernie's' (1989) had a modest box-office showing but became an unexpected cult hit. The movie follows two young employees of an insurance company (Jonathan Silverman and Andrew McCarthy) who frantically try to make Bernie (Terry Kiser), their murdered boss, appear alive through ruses like rolling him out to the sun deck of his beach house and rigging a device to make him appear to wave to passers-by. He declined to direct its sequel because, he wrote in his memoir, 'I felt that I had run out of dead man jokes, or at least the desire to stage them.' William Theodore Kotcheff was born on April 7, 1931, in Toronto. His father, Theodore, a Bulgarian immigrant, was a restaurateur. His mother, Diana (Christoff) Kotcheff, who was an ethnic Macedonian from Bulgaria, managed the home. Both his parents performed as members of a left-wing theater club that staged plays in a Bulgarian-Macedonian hall. Watching his parents, aunts and uncles act onstage nurtured Ted's love of theater; at age 5, he played a village child in one of the troupe's plays, 'The Macedonian Blood Wedding.' After graduating from the University of Toronto in 1952 with a bachelor's degree in English literature, he worked as a stagehand at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for two years before moving up to become a writer of documentaries and director of live dramas. Seeking greater opportunities, he left for Britain, where he directed television plays, movies and stage productions. Mr. Kotcheff was barred from the United States for 21 years. In 1953, he said, he was turned away by U.S. immigration officers in Vermont for having been a member of a left-wing book club, which he had joined as a teenager and remained with for seven months. In 1968, during an anti-apartheid charity event that Mr. Kotcheff directed at Royal Albert Hall in London, a member of the rock band the Nice burned the image of an American flag on cardboard. His 1971 film, 'Wake in Fright,' a thriller shot in Australia about a schoolteacher (played by Gary Bond) who descends into hell over the course of a few days in a town in the outback, was the country's official entry at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival. In 2009, after helping to declare it a Cannes Classic, Martin Scorsese called it a 'deeply — and I mean deeply — unsettling and disturbing movie.' He was finally let into the United States in 1974. The films he made after that included 'Fun With Dick and Jane' (1977), a comedy about a jobless middle-class couple (played by George Segal and Jane Fonda) who become armed robbers; 'North Dallas Forty' (1979), a gritty comedy-drama about a professional football team starring Nick Nolte and Mac Davis; and 'Uncommon Valor' (1983), the story of a retired Marine colonel (Gene Hackman) who organizes a rescue team to find American soldiers imprisoned nearly a decade after the Vietnam War. In addition to his son Thomas — from his marriage to Laifun Chung, who also survives him — Mr. Kotcheff is survived by a daughter from that marriage, Alexandra Kotcheff; two sons, Aaron and Joshua, and a daughter, Katrina Kotcheff, from his marriage to the British actress Sylvia Kay, which ended in divorce; four grandchildren; and a brother, Tim. After directing several TV movies in the 1990s, Mr. Kotcheff had a major final act as an executive producer of 'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,' from 1999 to 2012. He was in charge of casting the show, including its two leads, Mariska Hargitay and Christopher Meloni, and supervised the directors. He also directed seven episodes of the series, one of them focused almost entirely on Ms. Hargitay, who, as Detective Olivia Benson, keeps a little girl, who says she is a hostage, on the phone until the police can find her. Neal Baer, a former showrunner on the series, said the episode had its roots in 'The Human Voice,' a one-character 1966 TV movie directed by Mr. Kotcheff starring Ingrid Bergman as a woman on the phone with the lover who is abandoning her. Ms. Hargitay won her only Primetime Emmy for the episode. One project of Mr. Kotcheff's that never came to fruition, despite many years of work, was one about King Boris III of Bulgaria. 'He would say, 'I need money for King Boris!'' Mr. Baer recalled.
American Military News
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- American Military News
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. ___ © 2025 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Boston Globe
14-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Ted Kotcheff, ‘First Blood' and ‘Weekend at Bernie's' director, dies at 94
He eventually reached Hollywood to work with stars such as George Segal and Jane Fonda in the crime farce 'Fun with Dick and Jane' (1977) and Nick Nolte in the football satire 'North Dallas Forty' (1979). Advertisement Yet the project Mr. Kotcheff cited with special pride was 'The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz,' a 1974 coming-of-age drama starring Richard Dreyfuss in a film that became widely regarded as helping put Canada on the cinema map. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Mr. Kotcheff said he found a Hollywood producer interested in the script, which was based on a 1959 eponymous novel by his London collaborator and former housemate, Mordecai Richler. The story, set in Montreal, follows the overheated ambitions and moral compromises of a young man from a working-class Jewish family. Mr. Kotcheff had already directed a television adaptation for 'Armchair Theatre' in 1961 on Britain's ITV network. This time, the Hollywood producer suggested changes. 'Why not move it to Pittsburgh?' Mr. Kotcheff told the University of Toronto Magazine in 2013. 'And maybe we could make Duddy a Greek boy.' Advertisement 'It was my friend's book,' he continued. 'I couldn't do that to him. Duddy, a Greek boy? In Pittsburgh?' Mr. Kotcheff cobbled together enough funding for a low-budget shoot in Montreal, and the film found a home in art cinemas and festivals - winning the top prize in Berlin in 1974. New York Times film critic Vincent Canby wrote that 'Duddy' stood apart 'from the usual literature about unscrupulous ambition, most of which is pious and dull and goes without saying. There's not a bad performance in the film.' ''The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz' is the axis on which my career and, in many ways, my life, has rotated,' Mr. Kotcheff wrote in his 2017 autobiography, 'Director's Cut: My Life in Film,' co-authored by journalist Josh Young. Mr. Kotcheff headed to London in 1957 seeking a bigger creative arena than the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, where he had landed his first job after college. He moved into British television for 'ITV Playhouse' and other shows, working on teleplays that included adaptations of Eugene O'Neill's 'Emperor Jones' (1958) and Jean Cocteau's 'La Voix Humaine,' or 'The Human Voice,' in 1966, starring Ingrid Bergman. During a live 'Armchair Theatre' broadcast of the nuclear bomb drama 'Underground' in 1958, a lead actor, Gareth Jones, died of a heart attack. Mr. Kotcheff and the rest of the cast finished the show, improvising around Jones's lines. Mr. Kotcheff's cinema debut came in 1962 with the comedy 'Tiara Tahiti,' starring James Mason and John Mills (filmed in Tahiti), and he followed with other films in the 1960s including the racial drama 'Two Gentlemen Sharing' (1969), which was shot in London. Advertisement The door to the United States was still closed. During the anti-Communist 'Red Scare' in the early 1950s, Mr. Kotcheff was turned back at the border in Vermont, accused of being part of a leftist book club in Canada. Then in 1968, a musician burned an American flag at an event in London's Royal Albert Hall, where Mr. Kotcheff was part of the production team. That put him on another no-entry list, he said. 'First a communist and now a flag burner!' he wrote in his memoir. An offer came from Australia to direct 'Wake in Fright,' a 1971 psychological boiler about a teacher (Gary Bond) who becomes stranded in a mining camp and falls under the grip of hard-drinking locals who force him to take part in a sadistic kangaroo hunt. The film received a cool reception in Australia over the unflattering portrayal of outback life. The movie later was hailed as a landmark moment in Australia's new wave cinema that included director Peter Weir's 1975 drama 'Picnic at Hanging Rock.' (Mr. Kotcheff allowed Weir to shadow him on the 'Wake in Fright' set.) 'Wake in Fright' was rarely seen for decades after the distributor went bankrupt. A screening at the Toronto Film Festival was arranged in 2009, marking its return. 'Powerful, genuinely shocking and rather amazing,' wrote film critic Roger Ebert in 2012. 'It comes billed as a 'horror film' and contains a great deal of horror, but all of the horror is human and brutally realistic." Mr. Kotcheff was cleared to enter the United States in the early 1970s and found Hollywood studios eager to make offers. He made a niche in wry comedies such as 'Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?' (1978). Meanwhile, he and Michael Kozoll (co-writer of the NBC police series 'Hill Street Blues') crafted a script based on a 1972 book, 'First Blood,' by Canadian-born writer David Morrell. Advertisement After several actors turned down the lead role, Mr. Kotcheff said he suggested Stallone, star of the 'Rocky' franchise, to play the Vietnam veteran John Rambo, who stalks a small-town sheriff (Brian Dennehy) and his deputes after being abused and humiliated. 'First Blood' was a box office hit in 1982 and led to four movies with the Rambo character. Mr. Kotcheff turned down a chance to be part of them. 'They offered me the first sequel, and after I read the script I said, 'In the first film he doesn't kill anybody. In this film he kills 75 people,'' Mr. Kotcheff told Filmmaker magazine in 2016. 'It seemed to be celebrating the Vietnam War, which I thought was one of the stupidest wars in history.' In the late 1980s, Mr. Kotcheff heard about an off-the-wall story in the works by scriptwriter Robert Klane. It became 'Weekend at Bernie's' (1989), a romp about two salesmen (Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman) who try to keep up a ruse that their dead boss (Terry Kiser) is still alive and well and enjoying the fun at his beach house in the Hamptons. (Mr. Kotcheff makes a cameo as father of one of the young men.) Some critics called the movie a one-joke slog. But fans embraced the freewheeling insanity, giving the film a place among '80s wisecracking comedies including 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' (1986). Mr. Kotcheff said he passed on working on 'Bernie's' sequel. He quipped that he had run out of dead-guy gags. Advertisement William Theodore Kotcheff was born in Toronto on April 7, 1931. His parents worked various jobs and sold homemade moonshine during the Depression. Mr. Kotcheff said his father changed the spelling of his last name from Tsochev after arriving in Canada from Bulgaria. As a child, Mr. Kotcheff watched from backstage while his parents and friends put on plays in Bulgarian. 'They'd write their own scripts. Often the actors, working other jobs, didn't have time to learn the lines,' he recalled. He received a degree in English literature from Toronto University in 1952 and joined the state broadcaster as a stagehand, rising to become a director. His other films included the Western 'Billy Two Hats' (1974), starring Gregory Peck and Desi Arnaz Jr.; the POW drama 'Uncommon Valor' (1983), starring Gene Hackman, and 'Joshua Then and Now' (1985), a Gatsby-style tale based on a novel by Richler. Mr. Kotcheff joined the NBC crime series 'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit' as executive producer in 2000 and remained for more than a decade. His marriage to Sylvia Kay ended in divorce. He then married Laifun Chung and had two children together. Other survivors include three children from his first marriage; four grandchildren; and a brother. The original script for 'First Blood' ended with Rambo's suicide. During a test screening, the audience hated that conclusion, Mr. Kotcheff said in an interview with the Directors Guild of America. Weeks earlier, he and Stallone had privately worked out a rewrite with Rambo surviving - which unintentionally opened the way for sequels. 'I said, 'Well, boys,'' Mr. Kotcheff recalled, ''I just happen to have this other ending here in my back pocket.'' Advertisement
Yahoo
12-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Ted Kotcheff, ‘First Blood' and ‘Weekend at Bernie's' Director, Dies at 94
Ted Kotcheff, the Canadian filmmaker who introduced moviegoers to Sylvester Stallone's traumatized Vietnam War veteran John Rambo with 'First Blood' and helmed comedies like 'Weekend at Bernie's,' 'Fun With Dick and Jane' and 'The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz,' died Thursday. He was 94. His death was confirmed by his family to Canadian publication The Globe and Mail. More from Variety Sylvester Stallone Says He's Too Ugly to Play Ken, but Ryan Gosling Should Be the Next Rambo: 'If I Ever Pass the Baton, I'll Pass It on to Him' Cannes: Sylvester Stallone Says 'Rambo' Wasn't 'Meant to Be a Political Statement' Andy Vajna, 'Rambo' Producer, Dies at 74 After beginning his career in Canadian television and working in the U.K. industry, Kotcheff broke through with his 1974 feature 'The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz,' an adaptation of Mordechai Richler's 1959 coming-of-age novel starring then-rising star Richard Dreyfuss. The film took home the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and earned an Academy Award nomination for best adapted screenplay (for Richler and Lionel Chetwynd), launching Kotcheff's career in the American film industry. In Hollywood, Kotcheff turned in box office hits like the marital satire 'Fun With Dick and Jane,' starring George Segal and Jane Fonda, and the football insider drama 'North Dallas Forty,' starring Nick Nolte. But his most enduring feature came in 1982, with the release of the Sylvester Stallone actioner 'First Blood.' More to come… Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week What's Coming to Disney+ in April 2025 The Best Celebrity Memoirs to Read This Year: From Chelsea Handler to Anthony Hopkins
Los Angeles Times
12-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
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 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 rerelease 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.
