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John Schlesinger RIP
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Glenn Folkvord (Hyperion Media)
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Jul 27, 2003 12:54 PDT
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http://apnews.myway.com//article/20030726/D7SGUAGO0.html
Oscar-winning director John Schlesinger, who daringly brought gay characters
into mainstream cinema with "Midnight Cowboy" and tapped into nightmares
with the teeth-drilling torture of "Marathon Man, died Friday at 77.
The British-born filmmaker had a debilitating stroke in December 2000, and
his condition had deteriorated significantly in recent weeks. On Thursday,
he was taken off life support at Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm
Springs. He died about 5:30 a.m., hospital spokeswoman Eva Saltonstall said.
Schlesinger broke ground in 1969 with his first American film, "Midnight
Cowboy." It starred Jon Voight as a naive Texan who turns to prostitution to
survive in New York and Dustin Hoffman as the scuzzy, ailing vagrant Ratso
Rizzo.
Voight called Schlesinger a "true genius" who took risks without worrying
about the outcome. "He was extremely kind, funny and mischievous. I owe my
whole career to him," Voight said.
The stocky, baldheaded filmmaker - who was gay - said in 1970: "I'm only
interested in one thing - that is tolerance. I'm terribly concerned about
people and the limitation of freedom. It's important to get people to care a
little for someone else. That's why I'm more interested in the failures of
this world than the successes."
The gay theme of "Midnight Cowboy" was regarded as scandalous, and it was
originally rated X. But the tale of outcasts trying to survive in a
merciless metropolis was embraced by critics and Hollywood despite its
shocking sequences.
Based on a novel by James Leo Herlihy, "Midnight Cowboy" was nominated for
seven Academy Awards and won three - best director, best picture and best
adapted screenplay. It was the only X-rated film ever to win the Oscar for
best picture; later, reflecting changing standards, the rating was lowered
to "R."
"Shakespeare said it best in Hamlet, 'We will never see the likes of him
again,'" Hoffman said.
Richard Gere, who starred as an American GI in Schlesinger's 1979 World War
II romance "Yanks," described the filmmaker as "an original."
"John's string of films in the '60s and '70s are as astonishingly good as
any films made - anytime, anywhere," Gere said. "Audacious, challenging,
irascible, moving, witty, wise and deeply personal."
After "Midnight Cowboy," Schlesinger explored homosexuality again in his
next project with 1971's "Sunday Bloody Sunday," which starred Peter Finch
and Glenda Jackson as acquaintances who each reluctantly share a love for
the same young man. The director received another Oscar nomination for the
film.
The characters in Schlesinger's films often struggled with their place in
the world, and he depicted them as lonely, disenchanted and sometimes
forgotten. In 1975, he directed an adaptation of the Nathanael West novel
"The Day of the Locust," about young wannabe-stars who find only
disappointment in Hollywood.
Schlesinger himself felt an estrangement from his own success. "If I've ever
had any commercial success, it's been a total fluke. I wouldn't have known
'Midnight Cowboy' would have done so well," Schlesinger said in 1990.
But he wasn't above directing commercial films, like his 1975 thriller
"Marathon Man." That teamed him again with Hoffman, who played an innocent
man tortured for information by Laurence Olivier, a hiding Nazi war criminal
with a penchant for unanaesthetized dentistry.
"It's more human to be frightened," Schlesinger said about his characters in
1994. "I've always had more sympathy for the struggler, the underdog, the
person who isn't so much glamorous as on the fringe of everything."
That turned Schlesinger toward more thrillers, including the 1985 tale of
true-life spy skullduggery "The Falcon and the Snowman," starring Sean Penn
and Timothy Hutton as two young Americans convicted of spying for the Soviet
Union.
Both protagonists - one a seminary dropout, the other a drug dealer - were
depicted as depressed and isolated. "It's kind of pathetic. ... Both of them
are," Schlesinger said in 1994. "It's one of the things, also, that appealed
to me."
"John left us some magic and I'm proud to have known him and worked with
him," Penn said Friday.
Schlesinger established himself as one of England's most promising young
directors with the 1962 "A Kind of Loving," which starred Alan Bates as a
man who marries his pregnant lover only to find himself ill-prepared for
commitments.
He followed that with 1963's "Billy Liar," about a lazy young man who hides
from responsibility by daydreaming - one of his dreams is about a young
woman played by then-newcomer Julie Christie.
"He was clever enough to see in this awkward, terrified creature something
that perhaps would never have been seen if it wasn't for him," Christie said
Friday.
She worked with Schlesinger again on his next film, 1965's "Darling," for
which her role as a ruthless model who bullies her way to success won an
Academy Award for best actress in 1965. Schlesinger was nominated for best
director.
Christie and Schlesinger also collaborated on 1967's "Far From The Madding
Crowd" and the 1983 TV movie "Separate Tables."
His other films included 1987's "The Believers," starring Martin Sheen as a
psychiatrist fighting a voodoo cult, and 1988's "Madame Sousatzka," which
featured Shirley MacLaine as an eccentric piano teacher who befriends a
15-year-old student but clashes with him over whether he should try to earn
money from his talent.
He started the 1990s with a story about how little neighbors can know about
each other - "Pacific Heights," with Michael Keaton playing a malicious
tenant who starts out charming but begins to terrorize his landlords,
Matthew Modine and Melanie Griffith.
Other notable films included 1995's "Cold Comfort Farm," about an orphan who
moves in with her eccentric, agrarian distant-relatives, and 1996's "Eye for
an Eye," in which Sally Field played a mother-turned-vigilante who hunts
down the rapist killer of her young daughter, who was freed from prison on a
legal technicality.
"He was a groundbreaking director and a wonderful man and I was honored to
know him and to work with him, and more importantly to be his friend," Field
said Friday.
His last film was the 2000 comedy "The Next Best Thing" - about a straight
woman (Madonna) who decides to have a child with her gay friend (Rupert
Everett).
Born in London in 1926, Schlesinger started out as a character actor for
stage, film and television and also made documentaries such as 1961's
"Terminus," about a day in the life of a train station.
The director lived in Palm Springs. He was survived by his companion of 30
years, photographer Michael Childers, and his brother Roger Schlesinger and
sister Hilary Schlesinger, both of London.
A public memorial was being planned for Los Angeles and London in late
September, and a private religious service was to be held with family next
week in London, according to Schlesinger spokesman Jeff Sanderson.
For highlights of his carrer go here:
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20030725/D7SGP65G0.html
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