Fans of cinema are mourning this evening at the news that Curtis Hanson, the Oscar-winning co-writer and director of L.A. Confidential, has died at the age of 71, after an impressive career making celebrated dramas and smart, memorable thrillers.
Curtis Hanson got his start working for Cinema magazine, first freelance and as the publication’s editor, before he transitioned to making movies himself. His first screenwriting credit, The Dunwich Horror, is still one of the highest profile adaptations of horror author H.P. Lovecraft. He would go on to make his directorial debut with Sweet Kill, an erotic thriller starring Tab Hunter, two years later.
For many years Curtis Hanson was best known for writing and/or directing smart films, but mostly b-movie thrillers. Silent Partner is one of his more interesting screenplays, about a bank teller (Elliot Gould) who matches wits with a robber (Christopher Plummer) after a heist goes bad. In the early 1990s he rose to greater prominence with the hit films The River Wild, starring Meryl Streep as a white water rafting expert who saves her family from a kidnapper played by Kevin Bacon, and the disturbing thriller The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, starring Rebecca De Mornay as a nanny with deadly designs on the family that hires her.
Warner Bros.
It was his adaptation of James Ellroy’s sweeping crime novel L.A. Confidential that turned Curtis Hanson into Hollywood royalty. The complex and exciting noir drama starred Oscar-winner Kevin Spacey and future Hollywood stars Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce as 1950s detectives pursuing different cases that connect in unexpected ways, implicating gangsters, paparazzi, politicians and fellow officers in a corruption scandal. The film won two Academy Awards, for Best Adapted Screenplay (which Hanson shared with co-writer Brian Helgeland) and Best Supporting Actress (Kim Basinger).
Afterwards, Hanson segued into classier dramas, like the Oscar-nominated drama Wonder Boys and the Oscar-winning drama 8 Mile, a fictional film based loosely on the backstory of best-selling hip-hop artist Eminem, who also starred in the movie. Curtis Hanson was directing features until 2012, when an illness kept him from finishing his surfing drama Chasing Mavericks, which would eventually be finished by director Michael Apted (Nell).
In addition to his filmmaking duties, Curtis Hanson was also the Chairman of the UCLA Film and Television Archive, a position he that allowed him to host a series of memorable events in Los Angeles called “The Movie That Inspired Me.” Curtis Hanson enlisted the aid of talented filmmakers to present a 35mm screening of the movie that had the biggest influence on their career, and then hosted a Q&A afterwards, leading to impressive screenings of the original, theatrical cut of Blade Runner (followed by a Q&A with Christopher Nolan) and of Minnie & Moskowitz (followed by a Q&A with Sean Penn).
Curtis Hanson was a remarkable filmmaker who elevated thrillers to the heights of great drama, and made conventional dramas even more thrilling. He will be missed.
Top Photo: Jon Furniss/WireImage
William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and Canceled Too Soon, and watch him on the weekly YouTube series Most Craved, Rapid Reviews and What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
