(24 March 1945 - 20 September 2016)
Until Curtis Hanson made L.A. Confidential, most cinemagoers would have known him as just another journeyman director. He made fifteen films, also producing most of them, between 1972 and 2012, plus a couple of TV movies. He also wrote some of his own films and worked on screenplays for other directors. Mad about movies from an early age, Hanson became a journalist interviewing directors for Cinema magazine, and thereby worked his way into the film business. His first screenplay was for The Dunwich Horror (1970), for American International Pictures, which starred Sandra Dee. He directed his own horror screenplay for Sweet Kill (1972) and in 1982 co-wrote White Dog with its director Sam Fuller. He directed Losin’ It (1983), one of Tom Cruise’s early films, and then began to reveal real mettle with The Bedroom Window (1987), a thriller starring Steve Guttenberg and Isabelle Huppert. After Bad Influence (1990) with Rob Lowe came The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992), a scary story of revenge. Surprisingly, Meryl Streep starred in Hanson’s tough action movie, The River Wild (1994), but it wasn’t until 1997 that he found his true voice in bringing James Ellroy’s deviously tortuous novel L.A. Confidential to the screen. It won Hanson an Oscar for Best Screenplay and Kim Basinger was named Best Supporting Actress. Wonder Boys (2000) with Michael Douglas was not a great success, but 8 Mile (2002), based on the life of Eminem, won a Best Song Oscar for the rapper. In Her Shoes with Cameron Diaz, Toni Collette and Shirley MacLaine (2005) was dismissed then as a chick-flick. Lucky You (2007) had Eric Bana as a poker player, and Chasing Mavericks (2012), Hanson’s last film, with Gerard Butler, was finished by Michael Apted when Hanson became ill.
MICHAEL DARVELL
