Dragnet: Eric Kelby / Sullivan Kidnapping: The Wolf / James Vickers (Kan 2024)
James Bridges, (født 3. februar 1936, Paris, Arkansas, USA - døde 6. juni 1993, Los Angeles, Californien), amerikansk skuespiller, manusforfatter og instruktør, der var bedst kendt for The China Syndrome (1979) og Urban Cowboy (1980).
Quiz
Filmskole: Fakta eller fiktion?
Ingen stille film har nogensinde vundet en Oscar-pris.
Bridges begyndte sin karriere inden for underholdning som skuespiller, og tidlige kreditter omfattede bitdele på en række tv-shows og en hovedrolle som Tarzan i Andy Warhols underjordiske film Tarzan og Jane Regained
Sorter af (1964). Dog fokuserede han til sidst på at arbejde bag kameraet. Han skrev det velmodtagede Marlon Brando-køretøj The Appaloosa (1966), samt adskillige episoder af The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. I 1970 skrev både og instruerede Bridges The Baby Maker, et lavbudget-drama om et barnløst par, der ansætter en hippie (spillet af Barbara Hershey) til at tjene som surrogatmor med uventede resultater.
Mere udbredt var The Paper Chase (1973), et drama om en nybegynder fra Harvard Law School (Timothy Bottoms), der kæmper for at overleve rigoriteten i sit kursusarbejde med den krævende professor Kingsfield (John Houseman, der vandt en Oscar for sin rolle) mens man går efter professorens frisinnede datter (Lindsay Wagner). Bridges tilpasning af kilderomanen blev også Oscar-nomineret, og den populære film blev senere tilpasset til en vellykket tv-serie.
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.
