Canadian director Ted Kotcheff, best known for the 1989 cult classic Weekend at Bernie’s, has died at the age of 94.
The filmmaker’s death was confirmed by his family to the Canadian outlet Globe and Mail. A cause of death is unknown.
Born William Theodore Kotcheff in 1931 in Toronto, Ontario, he is also famed for having directed Sylvester Stallone in his first outing as Vietnam veteran John Rambo in 1982’s action thriller First Blood.
An English literature graduate from University College, University of Toronto, Kotcheff started his 60-year career in television. At 24, he joined the staff of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, where he would later become the network’s youngest director during his two years there, working on several shows, including Encounter and On Camera.
By 1958, he moved across the pond to pursue a life and career in the U.K. There, he worked as a director on ITV’s anthology series Armchair Theatre before going on to work with the BBC.
In between working at the BBC and directing shows on the West End, Kotcheff somehow managed to make his feature directorial debut with the 1962 British comedy Tiara Tahiti. The film starred James Mason as high-class smooth operator Brett Aimsley.
It wasn’t until two decades later that Kotcheff came out with First Blood, widely considered to be his breakout movie. While the film was a box office hit, having raked in $125 million worldwide at the time, Kotcheff turned down the offer to direct the film’s first sequel, First Blood 2.
“They offered me the first sequel, and after I read the script I said, ‘In the first film he doesn’t kill anybody. In this film he kills 75 people,’” Kotcheff recalled in a 2016 interview with Filmmaker Magazine. “It seemed to be celebrating the Vietnam War, which I thought was one of the stupidest wars in history.”
He added: “Fifty-five-thousand young Americans died and so many veterans committed suicide. I couldn’t turn myself inside out like that and make that kind of picture. Of course, I could have been a rich man today — that sequel made $300 million.”
Kotcheff instead went on to direct the late Gene Hackman in Uncommon Valor (1983), a war action about a retired Marine officer, who’s holding out hope that his son, a prisoner of war, is still alive.
Other well-known movies of his include 1974’s The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, starring Richard Dreyfuss; 1977’s Fun With Dick and Jane, starring Jane Fonda and George Segal; and 1979’s North Dallas Forty, starring Nick Nolte.
He eventually returned to the world of TV in the 1990s. He served as an executive producer on the long-running police procedural Law & Order: SVU for more than a decade and even directed seven episodes across the first seven seasons.
Kotcheff was preceded in death by his wife, actor Sylvia Kay, who died in January 2019 at the age of 82. She had previously starred in Kotcheff’s 1971 psychological thriller Wake in Fright.
Currently, a documentary about his life — The Apprenticeship of Ted Kotcheff — is in production with Antonio Saillant directing. It will be narrated by Dreyfuss.
