Alan J. Pakula

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Alan J. Pakula

Pakula in Sweden, 1990.
Born April 7, 1928
The Bronx, New York City, New York, USA
Died November 19, 1998 (aged 70)
Melville, Long Island, New York, USA
Spouse(s) Hope Lange (1963-1971)
Hannah Cohn Boorstin (1973-1998)

Alan Jay Pakula (April 7, 1928 – November 19, 1998) was an American film director, writer and producer noted for his contributions to the conspiracy thriller genre.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Career

Pakula started his Hollywood career as an assistant in the cartoon department at Warner Brothers. In 1957, he undertook his first production role for Paramount Pictures. In 1962, he produced To Kill a Mockingbird, for which he was nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award. In 1969, he directed his first feature, The Sterile Cuckoo, starring Liza Minnelli.

In 1971, Pakula released the first installment of what would informally come to be known as his "paranoia trilogy". Klute, the story of a private eye's relationship with a call girl (played by Jane Fonda, who won an Oscar for her performance), was a commercial and critical success. This was followed in 1974 by The Parallax View starring Warren Beatty, a similarly labyrinthine post-Watergate thriller notable for its experimental use of hypnotic imagery in a celebrated film-within-a-film sequence in which the protagonist is inducted into the mysterious Parallax Corporation.

Finally, in 1976, Pakula rounded out the "trilogy" with All the President's Men, based on the bestselling account of the Watergate scandal written by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who were played in the movie by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. It was another commercial hit, considered by many critics and fans to be one of the best thrillers of the 1970s.[1]

Pakula scored another hit in 1982 with Sophie's Choice, starring Meryl Streep. His screenplay, based on the novel by William Styron, was nominated for an Academy Award. Later commercial successes included Presumed Innocent, based on the bestselling novel by Scott Turow, and another political thriller, The Pelican Brief, an adaptation of John Grisham's bestseller.

[edit] Personal life

Pakula was born in New York to Polish Jewish parents Jeanette (née Goldstein) and Paul Pakula.[2] He was educated at Yale University, where he majored in drama. From October 19, 1963 to 1971, Pakula was married to actress Hope Lange. He was married to Hannah Cohn Boorstin in 1973, until his death.

Pakula died in 1998 in a bizarre car accident on the Long Island Expressway in Melville, New York at the age of 70. A driver in front of him struck a metal pipe, which went through Pakula's windshield, striking him in the head and causing him to swerve off the road and into a fence. He was killed instantly.

[edit] Filmography

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/all_the_presidents_men/
  2. ^ http://www.filmreference.com/film/62/Alan-Pakula.html

[edit] External links

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Films directed by Alan J. Pakula

The Sterile Cuckoo (1969) • Klute (1971) • Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing (1973) • The Parallax View (1974) • All the President's Men (1976) • Comes a Horseman (1978) • Starting Over (1979) • Rollover (1981) • Sophie's Choice (1982) • Dream Lover (1986) • Orphans (1987) • See You in the Morning (1989) • Presumed Innocent (1990) • Consenting Adults (1992) • The Pelican Brief (1993) • The Devil's Own (1997)