Richard Rush is an American film director, scriptwriter, and producer. He is known for the Oscar-nominated The Stunt Man. His film Color of Night won a Golden Raspberry Award as the worst film of 1994, but Maxim magazine also singled the film out as having the best sex scene in film history. Rush, whose directing career began in 1960, also directed Freebie and the Bean, a police buddy comedy/drama starring Alan Arkin and James Caan. He co-wrote the screenplay for the 1990 film Air America.
Biography
Early life
Rush spent his childhood fascinated by Marcel Proust and Batman comics. He was one of the first students of UCLA's film program, and, after graduation, Rush worked to create television programs for the United States military showcasing the nation's involvement in the Korean War. While he agreed with the military's involvement in the region, Rush's participation in this largely symbolic conflict can be seen as a defining event for the director who later explained: After his propaganda work, Rush opened a production company to produce commercials and industrial films.
Early Features
At the age of thirty, inspired by the neo-realism of French director François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, Rush sold his production business to finance his first feature Too Soon to Love, which he produced on a shoestring budget of $50,000 and sold to Universal Pictures for distribution for $250,000. Too Soon to Love is considered the first product of the "American New Wave." It also marked an early film appearance of Jack Nicholson.| Rush wanted to follow it with an adaptation of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? but did not end up making the film. He was also attached to Kitten with a Whip early on. Rush then directed Of Love and Desire with Merle Oberon.
Rush signed a deal with Columbia. His first studio effort was 1970's Getting Straight, starring Elliott Gould and Candice Bergen. The film did well commercially and was deemed by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman to be the "best American film of the decade." Rush's next movie, in 1974, was Freebie and the Bean. For the most part, Freebie was critically panned; however, it was enormously popular with audiences, grossing over $30 million at the box office.
''The Stunt Man''
In 1981, Truffaut was asked "Who is your favorite American director?" He answered, "I don’t know his name, but I saw his film last night and it was called The Stunt Man." The film, which took Rush nine years to put together, was a slapstick comedy, a thriller, a romance, an action-adventure, and a commentary on America's dismissal of veterans, as well as a deconstruction of Hollywood cinema. The film also features Rush's typical protagonist, an emotionally traumatized male who has escaped the traditional frameworks of society only to find his new world corrupted by the same influences. The Stunt Man won Rush Oscar nominations for best director and best script.
Later career
When Air America showed signs of trouble during development, Rush was paid full salary to walk away from the project. This allowed the studio to cast Mel Gibson and Robert Downey, Jr. Rush did not direct another film for four years, until the 1994's box office failureColor of Night. However, Color of Night also won "Best Sex Scene in film history" award from Maxim magazine; Rush was very proud of the award, and he kept the award in his bathroom. Afterward, Rush retreated from the world of commercial cinema. As Kenneth Turan of The Los Angeles Times wrote, Rush's career seems to be "followed by the kind of miserable luck that never seems to afflict the untalented." His most recent project is a DVD documentary on the making of The Stunt Man entitled The Sinister Saga of Making The Stunt Man. He currently resides in Bel Air with his wife Claudia. He has an older brother, Dr. Stephen Rush who also resides in Los Angeles.
