by Stephen Vagg
Jamie Blanks was, in his own way, among the most influential Australian filmmakers of his generation. In 1998, a time when horror was a highly unfashionable genre in this country, the 26-year-old VCA graduate parlayed his student film, mock trailer and lifelong passion for cinema into a job directing the Hollywood slasher Urban Legend. Starring Alicia Witt, Joshua Jackson and Jared Leto, this movie grossed $70 million and led to two sequels, paving the way for other Australian filmmakers in the international horror space, particularly James Wan and Leigh Whannell (Saw), Greg McLean (Wolf Creek), and Colin and Cameron Cairnes (Late Night with the Devil).
How the Melbourne-born Blanks got his first feature was one of all-time great “breaking in to Hollywood” stories. He had made a short at VCA, Silent Number (1993), a classy babysitter-gets-mysterious-phone-call-on-a-dark-night thriller, which led to him being considered for directing Scream (1996) and I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997). After losing out on Scream to Wes Craven, Blanks spent $3,000 making a faux trailer on 35mm for I Know What You Did Last Summer and sent it to producer Neal H. Moritz; Blanks ultimately lost out on Summer to director Jim Gillespie, but an impressed Mortiz offered the Australian Urban Legend instead. “I think they responded to the fact that I loved the genre,” Blanks said later. Most Australians directing in Hollywood at the time did so off the back of a local feature(s); Blanks managed it based on a short film and trailer, a template later followed by filmmakers such as Wan, Peter Cornwell (The Haunting in Connecticut) and Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde).
Blanks subsequently directed the slasher Valentine (2001), starring Denise Richards, David Boreanaz, and Katherine Heigl. After a few years developing further projects, he and his wife Simone (a one-time assistant to Fred Schepisi) decided to return home to Australia, where Blanks directed the genre films Storm Warning (2007) and The Long Weekend (2008), both based on scripts by Ozsploitation legend Everett de Roche. Displaying the multi-discipline versatility one needs to stay employed in a challenging industry, Blanks also operated as an editor, composer, camera operator, producer and post-production supervisor; his feature credits in these capacities include Needle (2010), Crawlspace (2012), Not Quite Hollywood (2008) and Girl at the Window (2022), collaborating on the latter two (among others) with long-time friend Mark Hartley.
Blanks was working on numerous projects up until his death, which his family described as “unexpected, despite some ill health in recent years.”
Blanks’ passing has prompted an outpouring of grief on social media, with tributes from filmmakers such as James Wan, Don Coscarelli, and Joe Russo, and many more from the filmmaking and horror communities.
Blanks is survived by his wife, Simone; his son, Oliver; his parents and brothers. He is gone too soon, with too many stories left untold, but he left behind a splendid legacy.
