[Deathwatch] John Schlesinger, director, 77

[Deathwatch Central <cdw@slick.org>]

"Midnight Cowboy" Director Dead
Fri Jul 25, 1:35 PM ET
	
By Joal Ryan

Director John Schlesinger, who Oscar'd for Midnight Cowboy, and scared
off potential dentistry patients with Marathon Man, died early Friday,
hours after being removed from life support. He was 77.

Schlesinger never recovered from a massive stroke suffered more than
two years ago.

The filmmaker was admitted to Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm
Springs, California, on Monday. On Thursday, life-support assistance
was ceased and he was listed in critical condition. The hospital
announced his passing Friday morning.

"I choose subjects which are character-driven, where the personal
relationships within the film are very important to get right,"
Schlesinger said, in summing up his career in 1998, to MovieMaker
magazine. "And I've fortunately been blessed with some wonderful
actors."

Through his five-decade film career, Schlesinger directed the likes of
Dustin Hoffman (Midnight Cowboy and Marathon Man), Richard Gere
(Yanks), Shirley MacLaine (Madame Sousatzka), Michael Keaton (Pacific
Heights), even Madonna.

"Shakespeare said it best in Hamlet, 'We will never see the likes of
him again,'" Hoffman said in a statement Friday to the Associated
Press.

2000's The Next Best Thing, a critically panned comedy starring Madonna
and Rupert Everett, proved to be Schlesinger's final film. According to
the Associated Press, he suffered the stroke in December 2000. His
condition was made public in January 2001.

Schlesinger leaves behind some 20 feature films, many of which featured
gay themes, perhaps not a noteworthy achievement in 2003, but something
quite out of the ordinary in the early 1960s.

Schlesinger, who was gay, once told the BBC that, starting with his
1965 breakthrough, Darling, he made a point to include gay characters
in his movies.

Darling, starring Julie Christie as a high-fashion model, earned
Schlesinger his first Oscar nomination. He scored another for 1971's
Sunday Bloody Sunday, a drama about a sculptor (Murray Head) torn
between a divorced woman (Glenda Jackson) and a male lawyer (Peter
Finch).

Schlesinger, who called the film autobiographical, recalled heated
discussions with his screenwriter, Penelope Gilliatt, over a scene in
which Head's character greeted Finch's with a kiss.

"There was a sort of fashion for doing everything--don't let's get too
involved, let's remove it from us," he told the BBC in 1993. "And I
said, no it's got to be done absolutely as if it's an everyday
occurrence with everything totally natural and normal about it. If we
had done it any other way it wouldn't have worked."

Schlesinger's greatest success, Midnight Cowboy, also featured a
strong, if platonic, bond between two men--male prostitute Joe Buck
(Jon Voight) and his sickly friend Ratso Rizzo (Hoffman).

Even without a physical relationship between Buck and Rizzo, the 1969
film was branded X by the movie ratings board. The adults-only label
did little to impede, and perhaps propelled, its success. At the 1970
Oscar ceremonies, Midnight Cowboy was named Best Picture (the first,
and only, X-rated film to claim the prize); Schlesinger, Best Director.
(With hindsight, the movie has since been rerated R.)

In the 1970s, Schlesinger went on to direct Hoffman again as a jogger
terrorized by a Nazi dentist (Laurence Olivier) in Marathon Man, and
Richard Gere as a U.S. soldier stationed in WWII England in Yanks. He
also helmed the big-screen adaptation of Nathanael West's gothic
Hollywood novel, The Day of the Locust.

Latter-day credits included: 1985's The Falcon and the Snowman, 1988's
Madame Sousatzka and 1990's Pacific Heights.

Born February 16, 1926, in London, Schlesinger followed a childhood
love of cameras first to acting, then to directing, with his first
credits coming in British television in the 1950s.

Survivors include celebrity photographer Michael Childers, his longtime
companion.

Even as Schlesinger approached his 70s, he spoke only of working, not
retiring.

"I'd like to keep working because it keeps one on one's toes," he told
MovieMaker magazine. "I mean, I'll be 70 next year and I've only got 10
more years--if I'm very lucky."