‘8 Mile’ and ‘LA Confidential’ director Curtis Hanson has died

The film revolved around corruption, intrigue and murder amoung cops and Hollywood figures in 1950s Los Angeles. Police say he died of natural causes.

Hanson had retired from directing in recent years, and had reportedly been suffering from Alzheimer’s.

With a writers strike looming, Hanson holed up with Fuller in the writer-director’s garage, and they pulled together the adapted screenplay for White Dog (1982) in less than three weeks.

Hanson received a DGA honor in 2003, after serving as the guild’s Creative Rights Committee, Film Foundation board and the President’s Committee on Film Preservation.

Curtis Hanson, the Oscar-winning director of films including L.A.

According to the L.A. Times, Hanson “fell gravely ill” in November 2011 while directing “Chasing Mavericks” with Jonny Weston, Gerard Butler and Elisabeth Shue; director Michael Apted reportedly finished the last 15 days of principal photography.

“I knew going into it that he had experience performing and also adopting a character, Slim Shady”, Hanson said. In 2002, Hanson was tasked with building a movie around Marshall “Eminem” Mathers and 8 Mile wasn’t just a hit – it was a legitimately fantastic movie about the American dream in the crumbling heart of Detroit (and its theme song, “Lose Yourself”, would become the unlikely recipient of an Oscar). “I’m lucky I got to know him”, Eminem said in a statement to Billboard. Eminem has been offered numerous acting roles since then, only taking a few and focusing instead on other ventures, but undoubtedly Hanson left an impact on him by choosing to create 8 Mile while others perhaps didn’t see the value in such a film. He said that the rapper is an extraordinarily gifted artist.

“I had always wanted to tell a story that was set in Los Angeles in the ’50s, because that’s where I grew up, and it was the city of my childhood memories”, he said in a 2001 interview.

Hanson dropped out of high school and worked as a gofer for Cinema magazine, which was in dire financial straights.

It was “L.A. Confidential” though that propelled him into Hollywood’s elite.

He is survived by a son, born in 2004, with companion Rebecca Yeldham.