James Bridges, (născut la 3 februarie 1936, Paris, Arkansas, SUA - a murit la 6 iunie 1993, Los Angeles, California), actor american, scenarist și regizor, cel mai cunoscut pentru The China Syndrome (1979) și Urban Cowboy (1980).
chestionare
Școala de film: fapt sau ficțiune?
Niciun film mut nu a câștigat vreodată un premiu Oscar.
Bridges și-a început cariera în divertisment ca actor, iar creditele timpurii au inclus piese de biți pentru o serie de emisiuni de televiziune și un rol principal ca Tarzan în filmul subteran al lui Andy Warhol, Tarzan și Jane Regined
Un fel de (1964). Cu toate acestea, în cele din urmă s-a concentrat pe lucrul din spatele camerei. A scris bine-primit vehiculul Marlon Brando The Appaloosa (1966), precum și numeroase episoade din The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. În 1970, Bridges a scenizat și regizat The Baby Maker, o dramă cu buget redus despre un cuplu fără copii care angajează un hippie (interpretat de Barbara Hershey) pentru a servi drept mamă surogat, cu rezultate neașteptate.
Mai văzută a fost The Paper Chase (1973), o dramă despre un boboc de la Harvard Law School (Timothy Bottoms) care se luptă să supraviețuiască rigorilor activității sale de curs cu solicitantul profesor Kingsfield (John Houseman, care a câștigat un premiu Oscar pentru rolul său) în timp ce curtea fiicei sale cu spirit liber (Lindsay Wagner). Adaptarea lui Bridges a romanului sursă a fost, de asemenea, nominalizată la Oscar, iar filmul popular a fost ulterior adaptat într-un serial de televiziune de succes.
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.
