I’m sorry about the passing of director Ted Kotcheff, whom I first met in the early fall of ’82 when he was promoting First Blood. I liked Ted — my idea of an excellent fellow — smart, friendly, engaging in a laid-back way. And he knew how to direct efficiently, and by my sights he wasn’t just a rote get-it-done guy. He had balls, character. His better films had a certain gravitas.
Kotcheff was fortunate enough to enjoy a 15-year peak period from the mid ’70s to late ’80s — The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (’74), Fun with Dick and Jane (’77), Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? (’78), North Dallas Forty (’79), Split Image (’82), First Blood (’82), Uncommon Valor (’83), Joshua Then and Now (’85), Switching Channels (1988) and Weekend at Bernie’s (’89).
Of these ten films, the best were North Dallas Forty (Nick Nolte as an aging football player, dependant on painkillers), First Blood (still the best Rambo film ever, and a huge financial success) and Uncommon Valor (former Marine Gene Hackman leading a crack team of commandos to rescue his son from a Vietnamese P.O.W. camp).
Weekend at Bernies was also a sizable hit, of course (it gradually became a cult film), but I personally hated it — coarse and crude, made for the animals.
During the First Blood promotion Kotcheff was kind enough to feed me a lot of good info on the troubled making of Tootsie. I wrote a big labored piece about this for The Film Journal, which I was managing editor of. I met Kotcheff and screenwriter Robert Kaufman at Joe Allen one night in early October, and I was given me a big rundown on the convoluted pre-production and production experience…excellent stuff.
The gist was the then-astounding notion that a present-day New York comedy about an actor who can’t get a job could cost $21 million, which at the time was way above the norm.
Kaufman was one of the uncredited Tootsie writers (along with Don McGuire, Murray Schisgal, Elaine May, director Dick Richards) and the stories were fairly wild, or certainly seemed that way at the time.
Kotcheff had 94 mostly good years — we should all be so fortunate.
