STEPHEN FURST

Written by Michael Darvell
 

(8 May 1954 - 16 June 2017)

Stephen Furst

The American actor-director (and sometime writer and producer) Stephen Furst has died aged 63. Once a pizza delivery boy in Hollywood, Furst put his photo and cv inside the pizza boxes and was thus discovered for a role in National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978). Television took up most of his time after that, alongside crazy and comic features or horror flicks. He was also in National Lampoon’s Class Reunion, an early screenplay by John Hughes who wrote the TV Delta House series in which Furst played Flounder, his character from Animal House. From 1983 onwards he appeared mainly on TV. Feature films, however, included The Dream Team, Little Bigfoot 2: The Journey Home, Deadly Delusions, Going Greek, Echoes of Enlightenment, Sorority Boys, Wild Roomies, Everything’s Jake and, his last film, Seven Days of Grace in 2006. As a director he was responsible for Magic Kid II, Stageghost, Game Day, Title to Murder, and episodes of Babylon 5, the TV series in which he played Vir Cotto over 100 times. Among his films as a producer were My Sister’s Keeper with Cameron Diaz and Abigail Breslin, Cold Moon, written and directed by his actor-director son Griff Furst, and Jack Snyder’s River Runs Red, a thriller due out in 2017. Stephen Furst and his wife Lorraine had another son, Nathan, a film composer.

MICHAEL DARVELL

 
Michael Darvell

Michael Darvell trained as a librarian at Watford and in Surrey before joining Ealing Libraries where he became Music Librarian for the borough. He edited Masthead, the magazine of the University of North London School of Librarianship, The Surrealist, the staff magazine of Surrey County Library, and contributed to the Assistant Librarian and London Librarian professional journals. A freelance film reviewer since 1970, he has written for Film, Films Illustrated, Film Review, Movie Maker and Radio Times, as well as editing Montage, the London film societies magazine, for ten years. A change of career saw him joining What’s On in London as Features Editor and he eventually stepped into the shoes of the late F. Maurice Speed (founding father of Film Review annual) as the magazine’s Editor. From 2007 to 2015, he was co-editor of the Film Review annual with Mansel Stimpson. As well as writing about films, Michael has reviewed theatre for The Stage newspaper, and has written about music theatre and cabaret for the Classical Source and Musical Theatre Review websites. He is also a former restaurant critic for the ViewLondon website. Michael has been a member of the London Film Critics’ Circle since 2005.

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