From Weekend at Bernie's to First Blood and Law & Order: SVU,
the legendary director recounts his journey and wide-ranging career in
this intimate memoir . . . with a foreword by Emmy Award and Golden
Globe Award-winning actress Mariska Hargitay
Publishers Weekly Starred Review
"It is a fascinating, startling thing to look over the films Ted has
made and realize that he never met a genre he couldn't conquer." --
Richard Dreyfuss, Academy Award-winning actor
"It is for such insights into the director's craft that Ted Kotcheff's
digressive, sometimes salty Director's Cut: My Life in Film is a book
to be valued . . . a bounty of no-nonsense homiletics on the duty of the
director and regular injections of salacious gossip." -- Film
Comment
Born to immigrant parents and raised in the slums of Toronto during the
Depression, Ted Kotcheff learned storytelling on the streets before
taking a stagehand job at CBC Television. Kotcheff went on to direct
some of the greatest films of the freewheeling 1970s, including The
Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Wake in Fright, and North Dallas
Forty.
After directing the 1980s blockbusters First Blood and Weekend at
Bernie's, Kotcheff helped produce the groundbreaking TV show Law &
Order: Special Victims Unit. During his career, he was declared a
communist by the U.S. government, banned from the Royal Albert Hall in
London, and coped with assassination threats on one of his lead actors.
With his seminal films enjoying a critical renaissance, including praise
from Martin Scorsese and Nick Cave, Kotcheff now turns the lens on
himself. Director's Cut is not just a memoir, but a close-up on life
and craft, with stories of his long friendship with Mordecai Richler and
working with stars like Sylvester Stallone, James Mason, Gregory Peck,
Ingrid Bergman, Gene Hackman, Jane Fonda, and Richard Dreyfuss, as well
as advice on how to survive the slings and arrows of Hollywood.
