Walter Hill (director)
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Walter Hill (born California 1942) is a prominent American film director, who is known in particular for his revival of the Western. Hill, along with Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, John Milius, Brian DePalma, Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, and Francis Ford Coppola, can be regarded as part of a 1970s generation of directors who modernised American cinema.
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[edit] Background
Hill broke into the film industry after working on The Getaway for Sam Peckinpah. His passion had been the Western and he is an admirer of the work of John Ford, though many of his successes have been with thrillers and comedies.
The films of Walter Hill often involve situations in which the main characters are under a lot of stress. Life is difficult for Hill’s protagonists and seems to have always been so. Hill’s characters are often people (usually men) who prefer to get through life on their own because they do not have a lot of faith in humanity.
He is also a screenwriter and producer, and has produced such hits as Alien.
[edit] Early films
Hill's 1975 breakthrough film was Hard Times, featuring standout performances from James Coburn as a fast-talking promoter of illegal street fights in 30's New Orleans and Charles Bronson (in what many consider to be his finest performance) as his noble, but pragmatic boxer protagonist. Hill's second film was The Driver, starring Ryan O'Neal as a laconic getaway driver and Bruce Dern as the driven cop hot on O'Neal's tail.
In 1979, Hill directed The Warriors - arguably his most popular film to date due to its immense cult following that has spawned a spin off video game, action figures and talk of a Tony Scott remake.
[edit] 1980s
Hill continued his pace of 1 film a year into the 1980s with The Long Riders, Brewster's Millions, Crossroads, Streets of Fire and Southern Comfort.
Hill also enjoyed major box office success with the Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte film 48 Hours. However the sequel, Another 48 Hours was thought by many critics to be merely a retread of the original and it fared poorly at the box office.
In addition, he was the co-producer and one of the originators of the Alien series of films and co-wrote the story for Aliens, the second film in the series.
In 1987, he directed Extreme Prejudice, a contemporary Western based on a story by John Milius and Fred Rexer, with Nick Nolte, Powers Boothe, Michael Ironside and Clancy Brown. This tale of childhood friends who are on both sides of the law includes a showdown that lovingly pays homage to Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch.
[edit] 1990s
The 1990s found Hill's brand of action and narrative on the wane, and his output began to become less and less frequent. Johnny Handsome, starring Mickey Rourke and Lance Henriksen was a muted tale of redemption, harking back to the stylised crime-world of Streets Of Fire and The Warriors, but without the spark or driven narrative of those other films.
Likewise, his film biography of Geronimo, with a screenplay written by John Milius, was well received by the critics but fared poorly at the box office. A second biopic - this time of the titular Wild Bill- had little critical or commercial success, although Hill would return to the same themes the next decade with the TV series Deadwood. His 1996 effort - Last Man Standing with Bruce Willis - a Prohibition-era Western update of Yojimbo (and thus reminiscent of that film's inspiration, Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest, and its western incarnation, A Fistful of Dollars) saw him return to his earlier style to some extent; with a gruff antihero a heavy focus on stylised action.
Hill then directed the 2000 film Supernova - although a re-edit by Francis Ford Coppola later took place and caused Hill to credit himself with the pseudonym Thomas Lee (a variation of Alan Smithee), which clearly showed he was disappointed with Coppola’s work and chose not to be associated with the finished product.
The 1990s also saw him retain a producer credit for Alien³ and Alien: Resurrection.
[edit] Recent Work
Recently, Hill’s directional work for the pilot episode of the TV series Deadwood has seen him return to favour in critical circles to some extent, earning him an Emmy in 2004 and a DGA award in 2005. He continued his work with westerns by directing the mini series Broken Trail, which achieved remarkably good ratings when it premiered on AMC.
