Ted Kotcheff obit

Ted Kotcheff, Director of ‘First Blood’ and ‘Weekend at Bernie’s,’ Dies at 94

The Canadian filmmaker also helmed 'North Dallas Forty,' 'The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz' and 'Wake in Fright' and exec produced 'Law & Order: SVU.'  

He was not on the list.

Ted Kotcheff, the unheralded Canadian moviemaker who moved gracefully among genres to direct such notable films as The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, First Blood and Weekend at Bernie’s, has died. He was 94.

Kotcheff, who went on to spend 13 seasons as an executive producer on the gritty Dick Wolf series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, died Thursday, The Globe and Mail newspaper reported.

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974), starring Richard Dreyfuss as a young hustler, is widely considered to be among the finest Canadian films ever made, and Kotcheff also directed a feature very high of the list of the best movies to come out of Australia — the harrowing thriller Wake in Fright (1971).

The Toronto native, who started his admired 60-year career directing for live television, also helmed the social satire Fun With Dick and Jane (1977), starring George Segal and Jane Fonda; the Nick Nolte-Mac Davis dark pro football drama North Dallas Forty (1979); and the action flick Uncommon Valor (1983), starring Gene Hackman.

Kotcheff and future Hill Street Blues co-creator Michael Kozoll had adapted a book by Canadian writer David Morrell into a movie script for Warner Bros. When the studio passed on the project, Orion Pictures snapped it up, and on Kotcheff’s suggestion, hired Sylvester Stallone to star as John Rambo, a former Green Beret on a suicide mission.

Made for about $16 million, First Blood (1982) grossed more than $125 million worldwide ($317 million today), gave Stallone his first post-Rocky hit and spawned three sequels — none of which Kotcheff wanted anything to do with.

“They offered me the first sequel, and after I read the script I said, ‘In the first film he doesn’t kill anybody. In this film he kills 75 people,’ ” Kotcheff recalled in a 2016 interview with Filmmaker magazine. “It seemed to be celebrating the Vietnam War, which I thought was one of the stupidest wars in history.

“Fifty-five-thousand young Americans died and so many veterans committed suicide. I couldn’t turn myself inside out like that and make that kind of picture. Of course, I could have been a rich man today — that sequel made $300 million.”

Kotcheff tackled material of a different sort when he directed the cadaver comedy Weekend at Bernie’s (1989), about two insurance-company employees (Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman) who attempt to convince partygoers that their stiff, embezzling boss (Terry Kiser) is still alive.

Kotcheff didn’t want to do a sequel to that one either, saying that he had run out of dead-man jokes.

William Theodore Kotcheff was born on April 7, 1931, in Depression-era Toronto to Bulgarian-Macedonian parents. He worked for a slaughterhouse and for Goodyear Tire & Rubber and graduated from the University of Toronto with a degree in English literature.

Kotcheff got his start at the Canadian Broadcasting Co. in 1952 at the dawn of the TV age, first as a stagehand and then, at 24, as the country’s youngest drama director.

A 1953 trip to New York City, his first to the U.S., to see Broadway plays ended with Kotcheff being arrested by border agents after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police betrayed him to the FBI for a brief association with a left-wing book club.

He was briefly jailed, branded a communist and sent back north. That banishment in 1957 led Kotcheff, eager to go abroad, to London, where he directed for television and the theater for more than a decade.

Kotcheff managed to get through a live 1958 teleplay about a nuclear bomb going off in the underground even though lead actor Gareth Jones had died while getting his makeup applied mere minutes before the show was to go on the air.

Working on the fly like that — and on different subjects — served him well. “I did an anthology series of one-hour hour plays. One week I would be doing a drama. The next week I would be doing a comedy, the next I would be doing a history play. You could see what you were good at,” he said in a 2016 interview.

After Kotcheff directed Laurence Harvey and Jean Simmons in the drama Life at the Top (1965), Michelangelo Antonioni called and asked him for suggestions on how to take 20 minutes out of Blow-Up.

“I gave him about 18 minutes’ worth of cutting suggestions, and surprisingly he used almost all of them,” Kotcheff said.

In 1968, while directing a fundraiser at Royal Albert Hall that protested the practice of apartheid in South Africa, a musician accidentally set a U.S. flag on fire, getting Kotcheff into more trouble with American authorities.

“First a communist and now a flag burner!” he would write in his 2017 autobiography, Director’s Cut: My Life in Film. Kotcheff noted that he wasn’t allowed back into the States until 1972.

But, able to work in Australia, Kotcheff helmed the unsettling Wake in Fright, about a schoolteacher (Gary Bond) who gets stranded in the outback and must deal with a group of brutal beer-swillers. (Kotcheff allowed Peter Weir, then a youngster, to shadow him during production.)

Kotcheff accompanied Wake in Fright to the Cannes Film Festival — it was nominated for the Palme d’Or — but when the distrubutor went into bankruptcy, Wake in Fright disappeared from theaters and wasn’t seen for decades.

He returned to the Croisette in 2009 for a red-carpet screening of the film, introduced by Martin Scorsese. Roger Ebert called Wake in Fright “powerful, genuinely shocking and rather amazing. It comes billed as a ‘horror film’ and contains a great deal of horror, but all of the horror is human and brutally realistic.”

He won a BAFTA award in 1972 for directing Edna, the Inebriate Woman, about a homeless woman, for the BBC.

A year later, Kotcheff made his way back to Canada to direct the low-budget indie The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, with Dreyfuss portraying the ambitious son of a working-class Jewish family in Montreal. He had trouble finding his lead, but a recommendation from casting legend Lynn Stalmaster brought him to Dreyfuss.

“As soon as Richard opened his mouth, it was electric! He had Duddy’s manic energy,” Kotcheff said.

Mordecai Richler, Kotcheff’s onetime roommate in London, adapted his 1959 novel for the screenplay (the two also had collaborated on Life at the Top). Duddy Kravitz won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and led Kotcheff to follow fellow Canadian filmmakers Norman Jewison and Arthur Hiller to Hollywood.

“The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz is the axis on which my career and, in many ways, my life, has rotated,” Kotcheff wrote in his memoir.

Fun With Dick and Jane (1977) was his first major American studio film. He followed that with Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? (1978), another comedy starring Segal, and then North Dallas Forty (1979), which he also co-wrote.

His film résumé also included Tiara Tahiti (1962), starring James Mason; the Gregory Peck Western Billy Two-Hats (1974); Joshua Then and Now (1985), another adaptation of a Richler novel, this one starring James Woods; the Burt Reynolds-Kathleen Turner comedy Switching Channels (1988); and Winter People (1989), featuring Kurt Russell.

In the late 1990s, Wolf, a fan of North Dallas Forty and Duddy Kravitz, pitched Kotcheff on the idea for a cop series about sex crimes and the psychology behind them.

“What connection Dick found between the existential problems of a pro football player and a Jewish hustler trying to become someone and sex crimes in New York City, I didn’t have the foggiest idea,” he wrote in his book. “But I wasn’t about to complain.”

Law & Order: SVU took Kotcheff from directing to producing, and he cast Christopher Meloni and Mariska Hargitay as detectives Elliot Stabler and Olivia Benson. (Hargitay supplied the foreword for his book.)

His assistant once told him that he had auditioned more than 27,000 actors for SVU. “I’ve used just about every actor in New York,” Kotcheff said.

The NBC drama took him back to his early days in live television, when he and his creative team were forever rushing to production on tight deadlines. He also directed seven episodes, including the 100th installment of the series, which had the cops looking for a person who had cut off a man’s genitals and left them in an abandoned subway station.

Kotcheff ran SVU for 13 seasons and more than 280 episodes, through 2012. Nearly 60 years after launching his career at the CBC in Toronto, Kotcheff bid farewell to the show. “It was one of the richest — and certainly the longest contiguous — experiences of my career,” he wrote.

His wife, Sylvia Kay, died in January 2019 at age 82. She had appeared in Wake in Fright.

A documentary about his life, The Apprenticeship of Ted Kotcheff, narrated by Dreyfuss, is in the works.

 

Director

Soul of an Artist (2017)

Soul of an Artist

Director

2017

 

First Blood: Humorous Ending (2014)

First Blood: Humorous Ending

8.0

Video

Director

2014

 

First Blood: Alternate Ending (2014)

First Blood: Alternate Ending

7.2

Video

Director

2014

 

Fearless (2014)

Fearless

7.0

Short

Director

2014

 

Mariska Hargitay in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999)

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit

8.1

TV Series

Director

2000–2005

7 episodes

 

Buddy Faro (1998)

Buddy Faro

7.2

TV Series

Director

2000

1 episode

 

Cassidy Rae in The Return of Alex Kelly (1999)

The Return of Alex Kelly

5.4

TV Movie

Director

1999

 

Hector Elizondo, Roma Downey, Eric McCormack, and Sarah Rosen Fruitman in Borrowed Hearts (1997)

Borrowed Hearts

6.8

TV Movie

Director

1997

 

Judith Light in A Husband, a Wife and a Lover (1996)

A Husband, a Wife and a Lover

5.8

TV Movie

Director

1996

 

Charles Bronson in Family of Cops (1995)

Family of Cops

5.4

TV Movie

Director

1995

 

Dolph Lundgren and Maruschka Detmers in Hidden Assassin (1995)

Hidden Assassin

5.1

Director

1995

 

Love on the Run (1994)

Love on the Run

5.7

TV Movie

Director

1994

 

What Are Families for?

TV Movie

Director

1993

 

Red Shoe Diaries (1992)

Red Shoe Diaries

5.7

TV Series

Director

1992

2 episodes

 

Tom Selleck, Don Ameche, and Anne Jackson in Folks! (1992)

Folks!

5.7

Director

1992

 

Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman in Weekend at Bernie's (1989)

Weekend at Bernie's

6.4

Director

1989

 

Kelly McGillis and Kurt Russell in Winter People (1989)

Winter People

6.2

Director

1989

 

Burt Reynolds, Kathleen Turner, and Christopher Reeve in Switching Channels (1988)

Switching Channels

5.9

Director

1988

 

The Check Is in the Mail... (1986)

The Check Is in the Mail...

4.5

Director (uncredited)

1986

 

Joshua Then and Now (1985)

Joshua Then and Now

6.5

Director

1985

 

Randall 'Tex' Cobb in Uncommon Valor (1983)

Uncommon Valor

6.3

Director

1983

 

Sylvester Stallone in First Blood (1982)

First Blood

7.7

Director

1982

 

James Woods and Michael O'Keefe in Split Image (1982)

Split Image

6.3

Director

1982

 

North Dallas Forty (1979)

North Dallas Forty

6.9

Director

1979

 

Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? (1978)

Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?

6.4

Director

1978

 

Fun with Dick and Jane (1977)

Fun with Dick and Jane

6.4

Director

1977

 

Carol Mayo Jenkins and Andrew Skidd in Performance (1974)

Performance

7.2

TV Series

Director

1975

1 episode

 

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974)

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

6.7

Director

1974

 

Billy Two Hats (1974)

Billy Two Hats

6.3

Director

1974

 

Rx for the Defense

4.4

TV Movie

Director

1973

 

Play for Today (1970)

Play for Today

7.8

TV Series

Director

1971–1972

2 episodes

 

Lights Out (1972)

Lights Out

8.1

TV Movie

Director

1972

 

Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Paul Scofield, and Anna Calder-Marshall in ITV Saturday Night Theatre (1969)

ITV Saturday Night Theatre

6.0

TV Series

Director

1971

1 episode

 

Wake in Fright (1971)

Wake in Fright

7.6

Director

1971

 

Richard Beckinsale, Freddie Fletcher, Arthur Lowe, Jack Rosenthal, and Paula Wilcox in ITV Playhouse (1967)

ITV Playhouse

7.3

TV Series

Director

1969

1 episode

 

Two Gentlemen Sharing (1969)

Two Gentlemen Sharing

6.4

Director

1969

 

George Segal and Nicol Williamson in Of Mice and Men (1968)

Of Mice and Men

8.0

TV Movie

Director

1968

 

At the Drop of Another Hat (1967)

At the Drop of Another Hat

TV Special

Director

1967

 

Yvette Mimieux in The Desperate Hours (1967)

The Desperate Hours

6.9

TV Movie

Director

1967

 

ABC Stage 67 (1966)

ABC Stage 67

7.3

TV Series

Director

1966–1967

2 episodes

 

The Human Voice (1966)

The Human Voice

7.0

TV Movie

Director

1966

 

Life at the Top (1965)

Life at the Top

6.7

Director

1965

 

Armchair Theatre (1956)

Armchair Theatre

7.5

TV Series

Director

1958–1964

28 episodes

 

Drama 61-67 (1961)

Drama 61-67

7.5

TV Series

Director

1964

1 episode

 

John Gregson in First Night (1963)

First Night

8.1

TV Series

Director

1963–1964

2 episodes

 

Espionage (1963)

Espionage

7.6

TV Series

Director (as William T. Kotcheff)

1963

1 episode

 

ITV Television Playhouse (1955)

ITV Television Playhouse

8.1

TV Series

Director

1963

1 episode

 

Bob Dylan, David Warner, Ursula Howells, Reg Lye, and Maureen Pryor in The Madhouse on Castle Street (1963)

BBC Sunday-Night Play

8.6

TV Series

Director (as William T. Kotcheff)

1962–1963

2 episodes

 

Tiara Tahiti (1962)

Tiara Tahiti

5.8

Director (as William T. Kotcheff)

1962

 

I'll Have You to Remember

TV Movie

Director

1961

 

Hour of Mystery (1957)

Hour of Mystery

TV Series

Director

1957

1 episode

 

On Camera

6.5

TV Series

Director (as W.T. Kotcheff)

1956

1 episode

 

Writer

North Dallas Forty (1979)

North Dallas Forty

6.9

screenplay

1979

 

Carol Mayo Jenkins and Andrew Skidd in Performance (1974)

Performance

7.2

TV Series

teleplay

1975

1 episode

 

Wake in Fright (1971)

Wake in Fright

7.6

screenplay (uncredited)

1971

 

Actor

Ellen Gerstein, Alexandra Kotcheff, Ted Kotcheff, Lisa London, Pepe Serna, Hannah Leder, Stacie Bongo, Ryan Neatha Johnson, Jovan Adepo, Jacqueline Beiro, and Tamara Becker Cimmerian in The Planters (2019)

The Planters

6.4

Cliff Man

Last 'Hello' Man (voice)

2019

 

Hard

Short

Therapist

2014

 

Dustin Hoffman, Minnie Driver, Paul Giamatti, Rachelle Lefevre, and Rosamund Pike in Barney's Version (2010)

Barney's Version

7.3

Train Conductor

2010

 

Hayden Christensen and Peter Sarsgaard in Shattered Glass (2003)

Shattered Glass

7.1

Marty Peretz

2003

 

Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman in Weekend at Bernie's (1989)

Weekend at Bernie's

6.4

Jack Parker, Richard's Dad

1989

 

Producer

Mariska Hargitay in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999)

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit

8.1

TV Series

executive producer

co-executive producer

1999–2012

286 episodes

 

The Check Is in the Mail... (1986)

The Check Is in the Mail...

4.5

executive producer (uncredited)

1986

 

Randall 'Tex' Cobb in Uncommon Valor (1983)

Uncommon Valor

6.3

executive producer

1983

 

James Woods and Michael O'Keefe in Split Image (1982)

Split Image

6.3

producer

1982

 

Armchair Theatre (1956)

Armchair Theatre

7.5

TV Series

producer (as William Kotcheff)

1958–1959

2 episodes

 

First Performance

7.5

TV Series

producer (as William T. Kotcheff)

1957

1 episode

 

On Camera

6.5

TV Series

producer

1956–1957

9 episodes

 

William Shatner and Basil Rathbone in Encounter (1952)

Encounter

7.4

TV Series

producer

1956–1957

2 episodes

 

Additional Crew

Sylvester Stallone in Rambo (2008)

Rambo

7.0

technical consultant

2008

 

Why Shoot the Teacher? (1977)

Why Shoot the Teacher?

6.9

production consultant

1977

 

Thanks

Valeriy Tsoi, Paul Plesca, John Yoo, Ira Grossman, Stefan Chapovskiy, Jean Phoenix Le Grand, Angelo Bash, and Gustavo Servat in War Gene (2020)

War Gene

9.1

Short

special thanks

2020

 

Ellen Gerstein, Alexandra Kotcheff, Ted Kotcheff, Lisa London, Pepe Serna, Hannah Leder, Stacie Bongo, Ryan Neatha Johnson, Jovan Adepo, Jacqueline Beiro, and Tamara Becker Cimmerian in The Planters (2019)

The Planters

6.4

extra special thanks

2019

 

We Get to Win This Time (2002)

We Get to Win This Time

5.4

Video

special thanks

2002

 

Self

SEGAL

Self

Completed

 

The Apprenticeship of Ted Kotcheff

Self

Pre-production

 

Dad Strangelove

Self

In Production

 

Pritan Ambroase in Hollywood Insider (2018)

Hollywood Insider

3.3

TV Series

Self

2021

1 episode

 

First Blood: Rambo Takes the 80s Part 1 (2018)

First Blood: Rambo Takes the 80s Part 1

7.0

Video

Self

2018

 

Soul of an Artist (2017)

Soul of an Artist

Self

2017

 

Sauvage: Survivre au Cinéma (2017)

Sauvage: Survivre au Cinéma

2017

 

David Stratton in David Stratton's Stories of Australian Cinema (2017)

David Stratton's Stories of Australian Cinema

7.7

TV Series

Self

2017

 

Bo Gritz in Erase and Forget (2017)

Erase and Forget

6.4

Himeself

2017

 

A New Breed: Ted Kotcheff Remembers Billy Two Hats

Video

Self

2015

 

Gone South: How Canada Invented Hollywood (2014)

Gone South: How Canada Invented Hollywood

5.2

Self

2014

 

The Seventh Art (2012)

The Seventh Art

8.5

TV Series

Self

2013

1 episode

 

Le soldat de cinéma (2013)

Le soldat de cinéma

7.4

TV Movie

Self

2013

 

Big Guns, Bigger Heroes: The 1980's and the Rise of the Action Film (2012)

Big Guns, Bigger Heroes: The 1980's and the Rise of the Action Film

6.8

Video

Self

2012

 

Ted Kotcheff's Gourmet Cinema (2011)

Ted Kotcheff's Gourmet Cinema

Video

Self

2011

 

Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina in Pierrot le fou (1965)

Cannes Film Festival

6.9

TV Series

Self - Interviewee

2009

1 episode

 

Not Quite Hollywood: Deleted and Extended Scenes (2008)

Not Quite Hollywood: Deleted and Extended Scenes

6.1

Video

Self

2008

 

Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (2008)

Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!

7.6

Self

2008

 

E! True Hollywood Story (1996)

E! True Hollywood Story

6.5

TV Series

Self

2008

1 episode

 

On Screen! (2005)

On Screen!

7.2

TV Series

Self

2005

1 episode

 

SVU: The Beginning

8.7

Video

Self

2003

 

Guts and Glory (2002)

Guts and Glory

3.8

Video

Self (uncredited)

2002

 

When Muscles Ruled the World

8.3

TV Movie

Self

2002

 

Drawing First Blood (2002)

Drawing First Blood

6.3

Video

Self

2002

 

I Love 1980's (2001)

I Love 1980's

6.8

TV Series

Self - Director, 'First Blood'

2001

1 episode

 

Sylvester Stallone in The Making of 'First Blood' (1982)

The Making of 'First Blood'

5.6

TV Movie

Self

1982

 

Elwy Yost in Talking Film (1978)

Talking Film

7.6

TV Series

Self

1981

1 episode

 

The Great Canadian Culture Hunt

TV Mini Series

Self

1976

1 episode

 

Mike Douglas in The Mike Douglas Show (1961)

The Mike Douglas Show

7.1

TV Series

Self - Director

1976

1 episode

 

The Larry Solway Show (1974)

The Larry Solway Show

TV Series

Self

1974

1 episode