By Erin Free
FilmInk salutes the work of creatives who have never truly received the credit that they deserve. In this installment: director Buzz Kulik (pictured far left), who helmed Brian’s Song, Riot, Seargeant Ryker and The Hunter.
We’ve discussed many times in the Unsung Auteurs column the lack of decent recognition paid to directors who have built their careers helming telemovies, episodic television and TV mini-series. Hugely popular in the 1970s and 1980s, telemovies pretty much disappeared from view once screened, outside of an eventual release on VHS. Now, they are largely lost to time and memory unless someone has thoughtfully uploaded them to YouTube, where they sit unhappily in blurry, second-generation perpetuity. Sure, it’s great that Act Of Love starring Ron Howard and Mickey Rourke is available to watch, but getting through it in its rugged, uploaded state is certainly a chore.
On top of all that, telemovies were never exactly a celebration of the auteur, with the praises of their often very talented directors rarely sung. Buzz Kulik is one of these directors, a man with many, many small screen credits to his name, as well as a handful of interesting feature films. Kulik’s best-known work is an absolutely essential piece of both enduring Americana and sports-related cinema, but his name is rarely mentioned in connection with it. A male “weepie” about enduring friendship to rival even Beaches, 1971’s Brian’s Song is an absolute heartstring-wrencher. Based on the real-life friendship between Chicago Bears NFL teammates Brian Piccolo (James Caan) and Gale Sayers (Billy Dee Williams), this humble but deeply moving telemovie really soars when it shows how their bond strengthened when the big-hearted Brian Piccolo contracts a fatal disease, and Gale looks after him. This wonderful telemovie is still mentioned today, and is famous for its ability to make “grown men cry.”

Born in 1922, Seymour “Buzz” Kulik served in WW2, and went to work in the mail room of a major New York advertising agency upon his return. It was here that Kulik saw a notice of employment for a new medium called “television”, to which he instantly responded. A lifelong baseball fan, Kulik directed the cameras at Yankee Stadium before starting a career directing live television programming in the medium’s New York heyday. He moved to Los Angeles in 1953 and eventually began directing episodes of some of the landmark series of the 1950s and 1960s including Perry Mason, Gunsmoke, Have Gun Will Travel, Wagon Train, Rawhide, Dr. Kildare and The Defenders.
Television remained Kulik’s realm for decades, with the director eventually moving from episodic work onto telemovies and mini-series, where he directed a number of major projects, including 1973’s Incident On A Dark Street, 1986’s The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case, 1984’s George Washington, 1985’s Kane & Abel, 1986’s Women Of Valor, and many more. Kulik also directed more than a few telemovies boasting a decidedly unusual flavour (though seen as a fairly “middle of the road” medium, the telemovie could occasionally be a very peculiar thing indeed), with the oddball likes of 1974’s Bad Ronald (in which a young weirdo lives secretly in the walls of a big house and spies on its new residents) and 1975’s women-in-prison flick Cage Without A Key, starring The Partridge Family’s Susan Dey as an innocent teen who ends up in behind bars after being framed for a crime she didn’t commit.

Buzz Kulik also directed a handful of very interesting feature films, making a not-especially-auspicious debut with 1961’s The Explosive Generation, a teens-gone-wild exploitation flick in which William Shatner’s high school teacher cooks up an unlikely revolution when the parents of his students protest his teaching of sex education in class. Kulik helmed a vehicle for squeaky clean singer Pat Boone with 1963’s The Yellow Canary and the 1966 David Janssen programmer Warning Shot, before he began a small run of far more interesting flicks. Starring an excellent Lee Marvin, 1968’s Seargeant Ryker is a highly effective wartime courtroom drama in which a Korean War military man is accusing of jumping ship and switching alliances with the Communist Chinese. Nicely performed and well-paced, it’s a solid little flick, as is 1968’s Villa Rides, in which Yul Bryner’s famous Mexican revolutionary teams up with Robert Mitchum’s American aviator.
This rollicking adventure was eclipsed, however, by Kulik’s next film. 1969’s Riot is a wholly underrated prison drama starring Jim Brown and Gene Hackman. Filmed entirely within the walls of Arizona State Prison, and featuring many of the institution’s staff and inmates as both extras and featured players, Riot crackles and burns with authenticity, as Hackman’s schemer uses an opportunistic riot protest as a means for escape, and attempts to rope in Brown’s reticent heavy hitter for support. It’s a tough, uncompromising prison flick – surprisingly forgotten today – with a few eye-opening sequences, and an unforgettable climax.

Kulik made a couple more solid flicks with 1972’s highly unconventional To Find A Man (a touching tale of teenage friendship dealing head-on with the topic of teenage pregnancy and abortion, and featuring a lovely big screen debut from future Dynasty star and The Lady In Red herself, Pamela Sue Martin) and the pacy, highly entertaining Burt Reynolds 1973 action crime comedy Shamus before closing out his big screen career with 1980’s Steve McQueen actioner The Hunter. Peter Hyams (Capricorn One) was hired to write and direct, but was fired after doing a draft, at which point powerful leading man McQueen wanted to replace him as director. The Directors Guild of America would not allow it, however, because McQueen had been on the project before Hyams. Kulik was then brought in for what would be a largely unhappy experience, with McQueen taking over the direction of many scenes. Though Steve McQueen’s final film (the actor passed away with cancer in 1980 shortly after filming) is not highly regarded, this action biopic on real life bounty hunter Ralph “Papa” Thorson is actually a highly entertaining film.
A superb director actors and a true master craftsman, Buzz Kulik passed away in 1999 at the age of 76, leaving behind an extraordinary body of work, much of it unrecognised for its quiet power and filmmaking skill.
If you liked this story, check out our features on other unsung auteurs Kris Kristofferson, Rick Rosenthal, Kirsten Smith & Karen McCullah, Jerrold Freeman, William Dear, Anthony Harvey, Douglas Hickox, Karen Arthur, Larry Peerce, Tony Goldwyn, Brian G. Hutton, Shelley Duvall, Robert Towne, David Giler, William D. Wittliff, Tom DeSimone, Ulu Grosbard, Denis Sanders, Daryl Duke, Jack McCoy, James William Guercio, James Goldstone, Daniel Nettheim, Goran Stolevski, Jared & Jerusha Hess, William Richert, Michael Jenkins, Robert M. Young, Robert Thom, Graeme Clifford, Frank Howson, Oliver Hermanus, Jennings Lang, Matthew Saville, Sophie Hyde, John Curran, Jesse Peretz, Anthony Hayes, Stuart Blumberg, Stewart Copeland, Harriet Frank Jr & Irving Ravetch, Angelo Pizzo, John & Joyce Corrington, Robert Dillon, Irene Kamp, Albert Maltz, Nancy Dowd, Barry Michael Cooper, Gladys Hill, Walon Green, Eleanor Bergstein, William W. Norton, Helen Childress, Bill Lancaster, Lucinda Coxon, Ernest Tidyman, Shauna Cross, Troy Kennedy Martin, Kelly Marcel, Alan Sharp, Leslie Dixon, Jeremy Podeswa, Ferd & Beverly Sebastian, Anthony Page, Julie Gavras, Ted Post, Sarah Jacobson, Anton Corbijn, Gillian Robespierre, Brandon Cronenberg, Laszlo Nemes, Ayelat Menahemi, Ivan Tors, Amanda King & Fabio Cavadini, Cathy Henkel, Colin Higgins, Paul McGuigan, Rose Bosch, Dan Gilroy, Tanya Wexler, Clio Barnard, Robert Aldrich, Maya Forbes, Steven Kastrissios, Talya Lavie, Michael Rowe, Rebecca Cremona, Stephen Hopkins, Tony Bill, Sarah Gavron, Martin Davidson, Fran Rubel Kuzui, Elliot Silverstein, Liz Garbus, Victor Fleming, Barbara Peeters, Robert Benton, Lynn Shelton, Tom Gries, Randa Haines, Leslie H. Martinson, Nancy Kelly, Paul Newman, Brett Haley, Lynne Ramsay, Vernon Zimmerman, Lisa Cholodenko, Robert Greenwald, Phyllida Lloyd, Milton Katselas, Karyn Kusama, Seijun Suzuki, Albert Pyun, Cherie Nowlan, Steve Binder, Jack Cardiff, Anne Fletcher ,Bobcat Goldthwait, Donna Deitch, Frank Pierson, Ann Turner, Jerry Schatzberg, Antonia Bird, Jack Smight, Marielle Heller, James Glickenhaus, Euzhan Palcy, Bill L. Norton, Larysa Kondracki, Mel Stuart, Nanette Burstein, George Armitage, Mary Lambert, James Foley, Lewis John Carlino, Debra Granik, Taylor Sheridan, Laurie Collyer, Jay Roach, Barbara Kopple, John D. Hancock, Sara Colangelo, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Joyce Chopra, Mike Newell, Gina Prince-Bythewood, John Lee Hancock, Allison Anders, Daniel Petrie Sr., Katt Shea, Frank Perry, Amy Holden Jones, Stuart Rosenberg, Penelope Spheeris, Charles B. Pierce, Tamra Davis, Norman Taurog, Jennifer Lee, Paul Wendkos, Marisa Silver, John Mackenzie, Ida Lupino, John V. Soto, Martha Coolidge, Peter Hyams, Tim Hunter, Stephanie Rothman, Betty Thomas, John Flynn, Lizzie Borden, Lionel Jeffries, Lexi Alexander, Alkinos Tsilimidos, Stewart Raffill, Lamont Johnson, Maggie Greenwald and Tamara Jenkins.