Paul Bartel, director, 61

["Deathwatch Central" <cdw@slick.org>]

Friday May 19 5:33 AM ET

'Raoul' Director Bartel Dies
By Todd McCarthy

CANNES (Variety) - Paul Bartel, the maverick independent director, writer
and actor who made such darkly comic films as ''Eating Raoul'' and ``Death
Race 2000,'' has died in New York of an apparent heart attack. He was 61.

Bartel, a cosmopolitan figure who for years was a regular at Cannes and
other film festivals, had contracted a rare form of liver cancer. After
surgery in Boston two weeks ago to remove half of his liver, he was given a
hopeful prognosis and felt good, even leaving the hospital early to return
to his New York apartment. He died Saturday in his sleep.

Born in 1938 in Brooklyn, Bartel developed an interest in films as a
teenager and learned his craft while serving in the U.S. Army Signal Corps
and then at the Centro Sperimentale in Rome. In the late 1960s, he made two
highly influential shorts, ''Secret Cinema'' and ``Naughty Nurse.'' The
former was one of the first works to play with the idea of a person whose
actual life is being filmed.

After making his risque first feature, ``Private Parts,'' for producer Gene
Corman in 1972, he joined forces with the latter's brother Roger during the
heyday of B-movie powerhouse New World Pictures, where he directed the
low-budget sci-fi classic ``Death Race 2000'' and car-race film
``Cannonball,'' both starring David Carradine.

The portly, bearded and avuncular Bartel also acted in numerous features at
New World and elsewhere, notably in such indies as ``Hollywood Boulevard''
and ``Rock 'n' Roll High School.''

But his signature film was the 1982 black comedy ``Eating Raoul,'' in which
he and Mary Woronov starred as a square couple who murder sexual swingers.
Bartel shot the feature over weekends and whenever money was available.

He later directed ``Scenes From the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills'' (1989)
and ``Shelf Life'' (1993). Other notable titles that he shot were ``Not for
Publications'' (1984), ``Lust in the Dust'' (1985) and ``Long Shot'' (1986).

He continued to act and appeared in some 70 films, including ``Basquiat''
and as Osric in ``Hamlet,'' currently in release. At the time of his death,
he was beginning to set up a 20-years-later sequel to ``Eating Raoul.''

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