the list of 9 for july 9, 2007:
NINE FILMMAKERS WHO WERE MURDERED
By and large, "filmmaker" is a pretty safe career choice. Most live long, healthy lives, remainingboth creative and well-respected into old age. But cinema history is still peppered with theoccasional violent death of a prominent director. Most of these people you've probably never heardof, but as they say, behind every murder is a great story.
- Theo van Gogh. This Dutch filmmaker would have onlybeen known for being a descendant of the famous painter's brother, had it not been for adocumentary he made called Submission about the mistreatment of women in Islam. A Muslimextremist didn't think highly of this film and shot - then stabbed - van Gogh on the streets ofAmsterdam.
- Adrienne Shelley. Currently the best-known - and perhapsthe most senseless - murder of a film director, the indie actress was killed in her editing suitein 2006, while working on her first feature as director, Waitress, after an altercationwith a construction worker who was making too much noise working on the apartment below. Theworker, an illegal immigrant, struck Shelley in the head, knocking her unconscious. If he hadwalked away then, Shelley would still be alive and well today. But, mistakenly believing that hekilled her, he tried to cover his tracks by staging a suicide, hanging Shelley from a shower rod.And that's what caused her death.
- William Desmond Taylor. It still pains people to talkabout the murders of Theo van Gogh and Adrienne Shelley because they're still such recent news,and still so topical (Muslim extremism, illegal immigrants). But Taylor's death has sunken sodeeply into the murk of Hollywood lore that all tragedy has faded and the story now reads like anAgatha Christie novel. Whodunnit? And why? What we know is that the successful director was founddead in his apartment, shot in the back. The year was 1922. His murder has never been solved,though it's long been suspected that teenage starlet Mary Miles Minter and her mother were behindit.
- Thomas Ince. Two years after Taylor's death, another greatHollywood mystery was born when director-turned-producer Thomas Ince was declared dead. Ince was aguest on a weekend boat trip hosted by newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst. According tolegend, another guest, one Charlie Chaplin, was having an affair at the time withHearst's mistress, actress Marion Davies. Hearst, insane with jealousy, loaded his pistol andattempted to kill Chaplin - only he accidentally shot Ince instead. However, the official storyremains that Ince took ill on the boat and then died of a heart attack after being taken ashore.The world will never know what really happened.
- Pier Paolo Pasolini. Pasolini was one of the great Italiandirectors of the 60's and 70's. He was also an accomplished novelist, playwright and poet. In1975, shortly after the release of his controversial last feature Salo, Pasolini was run overseveral times by his own car. His killer has never been found, though he had made so many enemiesbecause of his political views and his connections to the Rome demi-monde that nearly everybodywas a suspect.
- Francis Boggs. Nobody knows the name Francis Boggs today,but he is credited with having brought the movies to Los Angeles, back in 1909, by establishingthe first permanent studio here. Two years later, the actor-director, who made over 200 one-reelfilms during his short career, was shot by "a mentally disturbed employee" and soon forgotten.
- Helen Hill. No less tragic than Adrienne Shelley's death,but much less reported, experimental animator Helen Hill was shot in her New Orleans home by anintruder in early 2007. Here, too, the person who murdered her has not been found. Hill hadattended my program at CalArts shortly after I graduated. I never knew her, but we share manyfriends. She was 36.
- James Miller. This Welsh journalist, cameraman andfilmmaker was shooting a documentary in Palestine in 2003 when an Israeli soldier ignored Miller'swhite flag and his colleague's cry ("We are British journalists!") and opened fire, killingMiller. British courts ruled that this was technically murder, and Miller's family is stillpushing to have the Israeli soldier prosecuted. The documentary was later released with the titleDeath in Gaza and covers the death of Miller, credited as its director.
- Joan Root. It is rather disturbing that, of the only tenfilmmakers I could find who were murdered (the tenth, Russian documentarian Yevgeny Zorin, is tooobscure even for this list - all that is known is that he was cut up and found in a toiletpipe in Moscow), three of them are women. Root was a white, Kenyan-born conservationist who hadmade a number of wildlife documentaries with her husband Alan. (One was nominated for an Oscar.)After joining a controversial anti-poaching group in Kenya, she made some enemies in this hostileregion, and as many as four men invaded her home in 1996 and shot the 69-year-old filmmaker todeath. (Two were arrested.) As of this writing, Hollywood is trying to turn this story into a Julia Roberts vehicle.And so it goes.
|