George Clooney Seltene Interview-Sammlung (Kann 2024)
James Bridges (* 3. Februar 1936 in Paris, Arkansas, USA; * 6. Juni 1993 in Los Angeles, Kalifornien), US-amerikanischer Schauspieler, Drehbuchautor und Regisseur, der am besten für das China-Syndrom (1979) und Urban Cowboy (1979) bekannt war 1980).
Quiz
Filmschule: Fakt oder Fiktion?
Kein Stummfilm hat jemals einen Oscar gewonnen.
Bridges begann seine Karriere in der Unterhaltungsbranche als Schauspieler. Zu den frühen Credits gehörten Teile einer Reihe von Fernsehshows und eine Hauptrolle als Tarzan in Andy Warhols Underground-Film Tarzan and Jane Regained
Art von (1964). Schließlich konzentrierte er sich jedoch darauf, hinter der Kamera zu arbeiten. Er schrieb das gut aufgenommene Marlon Brando-Fahrzeug The Appaloosa (1966) sowie zahlreiche Folgen der Alfred Hitchcock Hour. 1970 schrieb Bridges sowohl Drehbuch als auch Regie bei The Baby Maker, einem Low-Budget-Drama über ein kinderloses Paar, das einen Hippie (gespielt von Barbara Hershey) als Ersatzmutter engagiert, mit unerwarteten Ergebnissen.
Weiter verbreitet war The Paper Chase (1973), ein Drama über einen Neuling der Harvard Law School (Timothy Bottoms), der mit dem anspruchsvollen Professor Kingsfield (John Houseman, der für seine Rolle einen Oscar gewann) um die Strapazen seiner Kursarbeit kämpft), während er die freigeistige Tochter des Professors (Lindsay Wagner) umwirbt. Bridges 'Adaption des Quellenromanes wurde ebenfalls von einem Oscar nominiert, und der beliebte Film wurde später in eine erfolgreiche Fernsehserie umgewandelt.
Bridges next wrote and directed 9/30/55 (1978; also known as September 30, 1955), a dramatization of a fan (Richard Thomas) struggling to come to grips with the death of idol James Dean in 1955. However, it was the suspenseful The China Syndrome (1979) that became Bridges’s first breakout hit. Jane Fonda played a television reporter who stumbles onto a cover-up at a nuclear power plant that nearly suffered a meltdown, and Jack Lemmon portrayed the engineer who blows the whistle on his criminally negligent superiors. Both actors were Oscar-nominated, as was Bridges for cowriting the prescient original screenplay. The film received an enormous boost when, a few weeks after it opened, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident occurred in Pennsylvania.
Bridges also scored big with Urban Cowboy (1980), a formulaic but entertaining story about a young Texas construction worker (John Travolta) who lets his marriage to independent Sissy (Debra Winger) disintegrate while he struggles to be accepted in the world of Gilley’s, the famed Houston honky-tonk, with its mechanical bull and competitive dance floors. Cowritten by Bridges, Urban Cowboy was a box office hit and spawned a best-selling sound track. Bridges next wrote the existential murder mystery Mike’s Murder for his longtime friend Winger, but the studio rejected the cut he delivered in 1982, and the film remained on the shelf until 1984, when a much-edited version was released to critical and commercial failure.
Bridges’s next film, Perfect (1985), centred on the new subculture of health clubs. It starred Travolta as a bright but unscrupulous Rolling Stone reporter on the trail of a story and Jamie Lee Curtis as the club instructor he first exploits, then falls in love with. Perfect, which was coscripted by Bridges, was widely panned and failed to find an audience. In 1988 he helmed his last film, Bright Lights, Big City, an intelligent but curiously flat adaptation of the Jay McInerney best seller about the club-and-cocaine scene in 1980s New York City. Two years later Clint Eastwood directed White Hunter, Black Heart, which was based on a script cowritten by Bridges. Diagnosed with cancer, Bridges died in 1993. In 1999 the main screening venue of the UCLA Department of Film, Television and Digital Media was renamed the James Bridges Theater.
