The prolific filmmaker born in Canada, Ted Kotcheff, who directed the films “First Blood”, “Weekend At Bernie's”, “Wake in Blous”, “The learning of Duddy Kravitz”, “Fun with Dick and Jane” and “North Dallas Forty”, in addition to a long executive as an executive producer in “Law & Order: Special Uits” A 60 -year -old career has died, has died. He has died. He was 94 years old.
Kotcheff's daughter, Kate Kotcheff, said by email that she died peacefully while she was under sedation on Thursday night at a hospital in Nuevo Nayarit, Mexico.
In a 1975 interview with The Times, Kotcheff said: “The feeling of being out of the main current of the community has always attracted me. All my images deal with people outside or people who do not know what they drive them.”
Sylvester Stallone as John Rambo in “First Blood” of 1982, directed by Ted Kotcheff.
(CBS Photo Archive / CBS through Getty Images)
Born in Toronto on April 7, 1931, son of Bulgarian immigrants, Kotcheff began working on television in the early 1950s. He later moved to the United Kingdom, directing both in stage and television. In 1971, he directed “Wake in Blous” in Australia, which reviews the time in its 2012 relay called “raw, disturbing and fascinating.”
Returning to Canada in the early 1970s, Kotcheff directed the 1974 adaptation of “The apprentice of Duddy Kravitz” by Mordecai Richler, starring Richard Dreyfuss. He won the first prize at the Berlin Film Festival and won the writer Lionel Chetwynd a nomination for the Academy Award for an adapted script.
Kotcheff found a great success in Hollywood with “First Blood” of 1982, which introduced the veteran traumatized of Vietnam John Rambo, played by Sylvester Stallone.
When reviewing “First Blood”, the criticism of Times, Sheila Benson, wrote: “This violent and disturbing film is exceptionally well done.” He added: “If it is possible that you do not like and admire a movie to almost equal measure, then 'First Blood' would win in that divided ticket … Kotcheff has roasted so many persistent examples of exultant nihilism in our brains that words to the contrary are so much note. His action, no words, that makes the 'first blood' be scared and the action is scaring, in fact.”
Andrew McCarthy, on the left, and Jonathan Silverman in a “Weekend At Bernie” scene by Ted Kotcheff (1989).
(Phil Caruso / 20th Century Fox)
If “First Blood” took advantage of the despair and anxiety of America after Vietnam, “Weekend At Bernie's” of 1989 became an unlikely cultural touchstone for its carefree and free concern, showing the versatility of Kotcheff.
The film follows two ambitious young people (played by Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman) who create a series of elaborate tariffs in the course of an agitated weekend to show that his incomplete boss (Terry Kiser) is not really dead. In a review of “Bernie's”, the critic of Times, Kevin Thomas, wrote: “A weekend among the rich, the tired and the corrupt is the right cup of tea for a social satiric acid like Kotcheff”, which also points to the little cameo of the filmmaker in the film as the father of one of the young men.
Finally, Kotcheff returned to television, working for more than 10 years and in almost 300 episodes of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”.
In 2011, Kotcheff received an award for the achievement of Lifetime from director Guild of Canada. He published a memory, “Director's Cut: My Life in Film”, in 2017.
Kotcheff survives his wife Laifun Chung; Brother Tim; Children Aaron, Kate, Joshua, Alexandra and Thomas; and grandchildren Isabella, Dante, Dorian and Elsie. He is killed by his first wife, actor Sylvia Kay and granddaughter Matilda. A private funeral took place in Mexico and a monument will be carried out on a later date.
