Ted Kotcheff (1931-2025)

[hearthesilence]

Ted Kotcheff

[beamish14]

Ted Kotcheff

Oh, shit. An absolutely amazing life and career. Made genuine classics of Canadian, Australian, AND American cinema

[JSC]

Apart from his film work, he did extensive television work in Britain, including directing the original
version of Alun Owen's No Trams to Lime Street, which the Beatles had seen and remembered
when they were presented with potential writers for A Hard Day's Night.

He also directed a really good television version of Cocteau's The Human Voice with Ingrid Bergman
from the mid-sixties which is worth checking out.

[beamish14]

Apart from his film work, he did extensive television work in Britain, including directing the original
version of Alun Owen's No Trams to Lime Street, which the Beatles had seen and remembered
when they were presented with potential writers for A Hard Day's Night.

He also directed a really good television version of Cocteau's The Human Voice with Ingrid Bergman
from the mid-sixties which is worth checking out.

Yes. Also one of the last living Play for Today directors

I wish Joshua Then and Now was out in HD. A much longer Canadian TV cut is on YouTube

[tolbs1010]

I wish Joshua Then and Now was out in HD. A much longer Canadian TV cut is on YouTube

I watched that cut on YouTube and liked the film a lot. One of Arkin's best roles.

Ted Kotcheff had such a varied career that he never gets the love from cinema fans/critics with an auteur mindset. Several excellent films in different genres. I even like Weekend At Bernie's, which has withstood the test of time as a well-done stupid comedy. Who knew Andrew McCarthy had comedic potential? Ted Kotcheff, apparently.

[beamish14]

I wish Joshua Then and Now was out in HD. A much longer Canadian TV cut is on YouTube

I watched that cut on YouTube and liked the film a lot. One of Arkin's best roles.

Ted Kotcheff had such a varied career that he never gets the love from cinema fans/critics with an auteur mindset. Several excellent films in different genres. I even like Weekend At Bernie's, which has withstood the test of time as a well-done stupid comedy. Who knew Andrew McCarthy had comedic potential? Ted Kotcheff, apparently.

Who knew Andrew McCarthy could be even tolerable in a film? :-"

His autobiography is fascinating. He described himself as being quasi-blacklisted due to being accused of Communist sympathies, but he subsequently directed the movie that helped open the floodgates to right-wing action films of the 80’s, First Blood

[GaryC]

Apart from his film work, he did extensive television work in Britain, including directing the original
version of Alun Owen's No Trams to Lime Street, which the Beatles had seen and remembered
when they were presented with potential writers for A Hard Day's Night.

He also directed a really good television version of Cocteau's The Human Voice with Ingrid Bergman
from the mid-sixties which is worth checking out.

Also, the Play for Today Edna, The Inebriate Woman, with a BAFTA-winning performance from Patricia Hayes. If I'm not mistaken, it was the first thing he made after finishing Wake in Fright.

[Aunt Peg]

Two other lesser known gems from Ted Kotcheff are The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974) with one of Richard Dreyfuss' best performances & Spilt Image (1982) (aka Captured) with an excellent Michael O'Keefe heading an impressive supporting cast.

[MichaelB]

In a bizarre coincidence, I saw the play The Shark is Broken last night, in which Duddy Kravitz gets several namechecks, on account of it being the film that Richard Dreyfuss made immediately prior to Jaws.

(Dreyfuss is one of the play's three characters, the others being Roy Scheider and Robert Shaw – the latter played by Shaw's real-life son Ian, the play's co-author – as they while away the boredom between takes while filming Jaws.)

[colinr0380]

His autobiography is fascinating. He described himself as being quasi-blacklisted due to being accused of Communist sympathies, but he subsequently directed the movie that helped open the floodgates to right-wing action films of the 80’s, First Blood

Although that first film is very different from the rest of the Rambo series, being about Stallone's wandering itinerant Vietnam vet (a bit in the tradition of the Mifune Yojimbo/Eastwood Man With No Name character) being run out of town by the local sherrif and eventually ironically using the tactics of the Vietcong to survive when he is made the subject of a persecutionary manhunt by the authorities. It was mainly with (the James Cameron scripted) First Blood: Part II and especially the ludicrous Part III that Rambo became a gun-toting, muscle-bound agent of American overseas power.

[jazzo]

In a bizarre coincidence, I saw the play The Shark is Broken last night, in which Duddy Kravitz gets several namechecks, on account of it being the film that Richard Dreyfuss made immediately prior to Jaws.

(Dreyfuss is one of the play's three characters, the others being Roy Scheider and Robert Shaw – the latter played by Shaw's real-life son Ian, the play's co-author – as they while away the boredom between takes while filming Jaws.)

Not to derail the thread too much, but I saw this play in Toronto a couple of years ago and quite liked it. Did you enjoy it, Michael?

The similarity between Ian Shaw’s physical presence now (in costume) and what we can only see of his father onscreen from four to six decades ago was striking and eerily effective. It reminded me of a beautiful line from Paul Auster’s Smoke, where William Hurt’s character, author Paul Benjamin, tells his temporary billet (played by an impossibly young Harold Parrineau Jr.) about a short story he just completed, where a man crashes while downhill skiing on the mountain that swallowed his father in an avalanche decades earlier. He looks down to find his father frozen in the ice beneath him, only now he’s older than the man almost mirroring his own face back at him.

I guess, both, Shaw and Auster have passed, so it’s not TOO off topic.

[jazzo]

I wish Joshua Then and Now was out in HD. A much longer Canadian TV cut is on YouTube

I watched that cut on YouTube and liked the film a lot. One of Arkin's best roles.

Ted Kotcheff had such a varied career that he never gets the love from cinema fans/critics with an auteur mindset. Several excellent films in different genres. I even like Weekend At Bernie's, which has withstood the test of time as a well-done stupid comedy. Who knew Andrew McCarthy had comedic potential? Ted Kotcheff, apparently.

Who knew Andrew McCarthy could be even tolerable in a film? [/b]

Don’t attempt to watch McCarthy’s self-indulgent “documentary” on the bratpack. You may want him executed after that.

[jazzo]

His autobiography is fascinating. He described himself as being quasi-blacklisted due to being accused of Communist sympathies, but he subsequently directed the movie that helped open the floodgates to right-wing action films of the 80’s, First Blood

Although that first film is very different from the rest of the Rambo series, being about Stallone's wandering itinerant Vietnam vet (a bit in the tradition of the Mifune Yojimbo/Eastwood Man With No Name character) being run out of town by the local sherrif and eventually ironically using the tactics of the Vietcong to survive when he is made the subject of a persecutionary manhunt by the authorities. It was mainly with (the James Cameron scripted) First Blood: Part II and especially the ludicrous Part III that Rambo became a gun-toting, muscle-bound agent of American overseas power.

But only Stallone, himself, can take credit for the absolutely bonkers fourth entry, which feels, to me, like very expensive Outsider Art painted in red viscera more than anything actually resembling a narrative.

I revisited the first one with my kids after not having seen it for decades, and thought it aged really, really well. There’s a reason my generation of tween was so taken with it in the early 80s (as portrayed with a great deal of affection and accuracy in Garth Jennings’ delightful Son of Rambow), but Kotcheff’s direction is sharp and witty, Sly’s lead performance is textured, and it remains a very well done, relatively small scale action picture.

But, man, do I love the 2008 Rambo’s batshit insanity.

[colinr0380]

I think, along with just the general climate of the 80s pushing everything to extremes, with the Rambo sequels we probably also have to factor in Stallone's decade-long back and forth rivalry with Schwarzenegger over who took the 'top action man' status. That probably as much as anything made the Rambo series (and Rocky series) go from its initial somewhat grounded first entry into overblown jingoistic action, before Stallone tried to do the Schwarzenegger pivot into more family-friendly self-deprecating action-comedy fare in the early 90s.