Ted Kotcheff, a versatile Canadian filmmaker known for creating iconic characters like the troubled Vietnam veteran John Rambo, the deceased Bernie, and the ambitious Duddy Kravitz, passed away on April 10 in Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico, where he had resided for over ten years. He was 94 years old.
His son, Thomas Kotcheff, confirmed his passing, which occurred in a hospital.
In his memoir, “Director’s Cut: My Life in Film” (2017, with Josh Young), Mr. Kotcheff noted, “My filmography is a gumbo.” He emphasized that avoiding being boxed into a single genre enabled him to explore various styles of filmmaking.
Mr. Kotcheff began his career directing dramas in British television, where he met fellow Canadian novelist Mordecai Richler in the 1950s. They became close friends and shared an apartment in London, where Richler worked on “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz” (1959), a novel about a shrewd Jewish entrepreneur aiming for success in Montreal. Kotcheff promised Richler he would one day adapt it into a film.
And he fulfilled that promise. The movie, featuring Richard Dreyfuss, was completed 15 years later.
Vincent Canby, writing for The New York Times, lauded “Duddy Kravitz” for its “rich visual and narrative depth,” crediting the strong collaboration between Richler and Kotcheff.
In 1982, Kotcheff directed “First Blood,” the film that introduced Sylvester Stallone as Rambo, a troubled ex-Green Beret and Vietnam veteran who, while searching for a friend in a small Washington town, is mistaken for a drifter, leading to his harassment, arrest, and subsequent escape into the woods with local authorities in pursuit.
After shooting a scene in which Rambo dies, Stallone cautioned Kotcheff that it would upset audiences, given the character’s intense struggles throughout the film.
In a 2017 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Kotcheff remembered Stallone questioning, “After everything, we’re going to kill him?”
Test screenings revealed that while audiences enjoyed the film, they were not fond of the ending. Kotcheff recalled one viewer declaring, “If the director is in this theater, let’s hang him from a lamppost!”
Fortunately, Kotcheff had already filmed an alternate ending where Rambo exits a police station, injured but alive. The movie became a massive success, earning over $125 million (equivalent to about $407 million today).
Its popularity led to four sequels, none of which Kotcheff directed. He declined the opportunity to direct the first sequel, “Rambo: First Blood Part II” (1985), due to its increased violence.
“I read the script and noticed that in the first film, he didn’t kill anyone; in this one, he kills 74,” he shared with Filmmaker magazine in 2016.
Kotcheff’s film “Weekend at Bernie’s” (1989) initially had modest earnings but later developed into a cult classic. The story revolves around two young insurance company employees (Jonathan Silverman and Andrew McCarthy) who desperately try to keep their murdered boss, Bernie (Terry Kiser), appearing alive through various antics.
He chose not to direct the sequel, stating in his memoir that he had “exhausted the potential for dead man gags, or just lost interest in them.”
William Theodore Kotcheff was born on April 7, 1931, in Toronto. His father, Theodore, was a Bulgarian immigrant and restaurateur, while his mother, Diana, was an ethnic Macedonian who kept the household.
Both parents were active in a leftist theatre group, performing plays in a Bulgarian-Macedonian hall. Watching them and his relatives perform ignited Ted’s passion for acting; at just five years old, he played a village child in one of their productions, “The Macedonian Blood Wedding.”
After earning a bachelor’s degree in English literature from the University of Toronto in 1952, he spent two years working as a stagehand at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation before becoming a writer of documentaries and directing live dramas. Seeking broader prospects, he moved to Britain, where he directed television plays, films, and stage productions.
Mr. Kotcheff faced restrictions in the U.S. for 21 years. In 1953, U.S. immigration officials denied him entry into Vermont because he had briefly joined a leftist book club in his youth. In 1968, during a charity event against apartheid that he directed at Royal Albert Hall in London, an incident involving a member of the rock band the Nice, who burned an American flag, compounded his troubles.
His 1971 film “Wake in Fright,” about a schoolteacher (Gary Bond) experiencing a harrowing decline in an Australian outback town, was Australia’s entry at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival. In 2009, Martin Scorsese praised it as “deeply unsettling and disturbing” after endorsing it as a Cannes Classic.
He was finally granted entry into the United States in 1974. His subsequent films included “Fun With Dick and Jane” (1977), which portrays a down-and-out couple (George Segal and Jane Fonda) who resort to robbery; “North Dallas Forty” (1979), a gritty comedy-drama about a professional football team featuring Nick Nolte and Mac Davis; and “Uncommon Valor” (1983), which follows a retired Marine colonel (Gene Hackman) who forms a team to rescue American soldiers still imprisoned long after the Vietnam War.
Mr. Kotcheff is survived by his son Thomas and his daughter Alexandra from his marriage to Laifun Chung, as well as two sons, Aaron and Joshua, and daughter Katrina from his marriage to British actress Sylvia Kay, which ended in divorce. He also leaves behind four grandchildren and a brother named Tim.
After directing several TV films in the 1990s, Mr. Kotcheff had a significant role as an executive producer for “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” from 1999 to 2012. In this capacity, he was responsible for casting the lead roles of Mariska Hargitay and Christopher Meloni, as well as overseeing the directors of the series.
He directed seven episodes, including one that concentrated almost entirely on Ms. Hargitay’s character, Detective Olivia Benson, as she manages a phone call with a young girl who claims to be a hostage. Neal Baer, a previous showrunner, noted that this episode drew inspiration from “The Human Voice,” a 1966 TV movie directed by Kotcheff featuring Ingrid Bergman. Hargitay won her only Primetime Emmy for that role.
Despite years of effort, one of Kotcheff’s projects about King Boris III of Bulgaria never materialized.
“He would say, ‘I need funding for King Boris!’” reminisced Mr. Baer.
