Ted Kotcheff, pictured here in 1975, adapted Mordecai Richler’s The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz for the big screen.
Ted Kotcheff, the prolific Toronto-born filmmaker behind classics from both sides of the Canada-Hollywood divide — from a beloved adaptation of Mordecai Richler’s The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz to First Blood, which introduced moviegoers to Sylvester Stallone’s John Rambo — died Thursday at the age of 94, his family confirmed to The Globe and Mail.
Kotcheff was born in Toronto’s Cabbagetown neighbourhood, the son of two impoverished Bulgarian immigrants. In his 2017 memoir, Director’s Cut: My Life in Film, Kotcheff recalled a formative moment growing up when he witnessed his next-door neighbours get evicted because they could not afford the monthly $2 rent. “I remember thinking, at four, ‘What sort of world would do that? It shaped me, made me compassionate about other people’s stories.”
After graduating from the University of Toronto with a degree in English literature, Kotcheff joined the CBC in the early ‘50s, going on to direct live television dramas (General Motors Theatre, First Performance) as the broadcaster was in its infancy. But frustrated with Canada’s lack of a film and television infrastructure, Kotcheff moved to the U.K., which is where he first met a young Richler, the two sharing a London flat whose style boiled down to “décor by Charles Dickens, furniture by Sally Ann.”
While balancing television gigs for the BBC with stage work on the West End, Kotcheff made his feature directorial debut with the 1962 British comedy Tiara Tahiti, starring James Mason. A string of dramas followed, including 1965′s Life at the Top, an adaptation of the novel by John Braine whose screenplay was written by Richler.
“Mordecai had a corrugated surface, but underneath he was a wonderful, sensitive man,” Kotcheff once said. “No one has ever loved me the way Mordecai loved me.”
It wasn’t until the early ‘70s when Kotcheff returned home to Canada, collaborating with Richler for an adaptation of his coming-of-age novel The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz starring Richard Dreyfuss. The film was not only an immediate hit with critics — winning the prestigious Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and scoring an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay — but also became the most successful English-language Canadian film at the domestic box office.
After spending a few more years working in Canadian television, Kocheff gained serious traction inside the U.S. studio system, quickly becoming one of Hollywood’s most reliable hit-makers, regardless of genre. His 1977 comedy Fun with Dick and Jane, starring George Segal and Jane Fonda, was one of Columbia Pictures’ highest-grossing films of the year, while his gritty 1979 Nick Nolte football drama North Dallas Forty earned raves from the likes of The New York Times, if some sharp criticism from the NFL.
Kotcheff pictured at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto on March 28, 2017.JENNIFER ROBERTS/The Globe and Mail
Eventually, Kotcheff made his way to Stallone, with the pair delivering 1982′s First Blood, a massive box-office hit which would go on to spawn four sequels whose pyrotechnics and increasingly high body counts feel divorced from Kotcheff’s original vision of Rambo as a traumatized man trying to outrun his combat past.
“The statistics were horrifying,” the director later said of the inspiration for First Blood’s script, which he and Stallone worked on together, adapting David Morrell’s novel. “In 1980, 1,000 Vietnam vets per month tried to kill themselves, and over 300 succeeded. Per month. That was our starting point.”
Across the ‘80s and ‘90s, Kotcheff directed everything from high-gloss comedies (1988′s Burt Reynolds vehicle Switching Channels, 1989′s surprise hit Weekend at Bernie’s) to sentimental romantic dramas (1989′s Kurt Russell/Kelly McGillis pairing Winter People). He would also reunite with Richler for a 1985 adaptation of the author’s Joshua Then and Now, starring James Woods.
In the late ‘90s, Kotcheff returned to television, directing a number of made-for-TV movies and executive producing NBC’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit for a dozen years.
For all his stateside success, Kotcheff never forgot his home, and in 2011 was awarded the Director Guild of Canada’s Lifetime Achievement Award, an honour followed three years later by a special Tribute Award from the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television.
While reflecting on his career with The Globe and Mail’s Johanna Schneller in 2017, Kotcheff said that he had always been attracted to characters who didn’t understand their own motivations: “The pictures were voyages of discovery. I said to myself, ‘Ted, you must be uncertain about who you are.’”
Asked whether he had by that point figured out what his own motivations might be, the director replied with a smile: “I may have. But I’m not going to tell you.”
