Curtis Hanson, the Oscar winning writer and director of LA Confidential, has died aged 71.
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Over the next two decades, Hanson turned to directing and helmed an array of films, from the early Tom Cruise comedy, Losin’ It, to the Rob Lowe and James Spader crime drama Bad Influence, to the revenge thriller, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.
Los Angeles police said paramedics found Mr Hanson at his Hollywood Hills home on Tuesday and he was pronounced dead at the scene.
Eminem remembers the Oscar victor fondly saying, “Curtis Hanson believed in me and our insane idea to make a rap battle movie set in Detroit”. Next up for Hanson was 8 Mile, starring rapper Eminem in a semi-autobiographical tale of a young white rapper from Detroit trying to launch his career. “I knew going into it that he had experience performing and also adopting a character, Slim Shady”. The Canadian film, on which he also served as an associate producer, starred Elliott Gould as a nebbish teller who engages in a battle of wits with a bank thief (Christopher Plummer).
Curtis Hanson, the Oscar-winning director of noir classic LA Confidential and the Eminem-starring 8 Mile, has died. In the past decade, Hanson directed In Her Shoes (2005) with Cameron Diaz, Toni Collette and Shirley MacLaine and the gambling romance Lucky You (2007) with Eric Bana and Drew Barrymoore as well as the HBO movie Too Big to Fail (2011).
Hanson as well said that he was conscious not to box the film in as a “rap movie”.
“RIP Curtis Hansen. Thank you for believing in me & standing your ground”, Crowe, 52, tweeted. “Riding that river with him was one of the greatest gigs of my life”. Hanson brought out the best in the hip-hop superstar, with the power of Eminem’s performance taking some critics by surprise.
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“While I was checking him out, he was certainly checking me out”, Hanson said in the Guardian interview. His final film was Chasing Mavericks but he had to leave it near the end of shooting which was allegedly due to complication following a recent heart surgery. Share with us in the comments section.
