By Travis Johnson
Director Curtis Hanson has died of an apparent heart attack in Los Angeles. He was 71.
Active in the film industry since the early ’70s, Hanson began as a screenwriter, penning the Roger Corman-produced The Dunwich Horror before quickly segueing into directing with 1973’s The Sweet Kill. For the next decade or so he switched between the two, calling the shots on comedies such as Losin’ It and Little Dragons while writing White Dog (directed by Sam Fuller) and Never Cry Wolf (Carroll Ballard). The ’80s and ’90s saw him direct a string of successful but critically unloved films, including The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and The River Wild, until he co-wrote and directed 1997’s LA Confidential, based on the novel by James Ellroy, for which he shared an Oscar win for Best Adapted Screenplay with Brian Helgeland.
Easily the best film of his career, LA Confidential marked a turning point for Hanson, and the next few years saw him direct the Michael Chabon adaptation, Wonder Boys, and the Eminem-starring 8 Mile, both to significant acclaim. His final film, co-directed with Michael Apted, was 2012’s Chasing Mavericks, a biopic of surfer, Jay Moriarty.
Hanson had a reputation as a stickler on set. Speaking of his experiences working with the director on Lucky You, Eric Bana said, “He would probably fall into the perfectionist category. Oddly, it was kind of a grueling film to make because he’s the sort of director who likes to make a lot of the film in the edit, so it was a bit of a slog. When you’re sitting at a poker table and you have a 360 degree set, it presents its own challenges. He’s a filmmaker that I really respect and love working with, so it was a pretty good experience.”
LA Confidential star Kevin Spacey recalled a few times when he and Hanson argued over story points. “Curtis and I never came to blows, but there were two issues. One was that I was quite determined that when the character I played got shot, it should be really shocking, and not just him falling to the ground. So there was an argument about whether I should fall out of the chair and onto the ground, and I argued that the chair should be placed against the doorframe so there’s no way that I can get shot and stay seated – it’s just more shocking. Then there was a discussion [laughs] about them wanting to change the name of Rollo Tomasi to some innocuously boring name like John Flip or something. It was a crazy idea, but they said, ‘Well, we don’t think the name is believable’. I said, ‘That’s exactly why it should remain the same, because it’s a name that you ever forget’. It was also from the book. Rollo Tomasi was such a great name, and for those to be my last words, and then to be repeated to dupe the bad guys, was a great ending. They were the only two things that we ever had a difference of opinion about. There was no way that it came to blows.”
