James Bridges Attore, sceneggiatore e regista americano

James Bridges, (nato il 3 febbraio 1936 a Parigi, nell'Arkansas, negli Stati Uniti, è morto il 6 giugno 1993, Los Angeles, California), attore, sceneggiatore e regista americano noto per The China Syndrome (1979) e Urban Cowboy (1980).

Quiz

Scuola di cinema: realtà o finzione?

Nessun film muto ha mai vinto un Oscar.

Bridges ha iniziato la sua carriera nel mondo dell'intrattenimento come attore, e nei suoi primi crediti ha fatto parte di alcuni spettacoli televisivi e un ruolo da protagonista come Tarzan nel film underground di Andy Warhol Tarzan e Jane Regained

Sorta di (1964). Tuttavia, alla fine si è concentrato sul lavoro dietro la telecamera. Ha scritto il ben accolto veicolo Marlon Brando The Appaloosa (1966), oltre a numerosi episodi di The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Nel 1970 Bridges ha sia sceneggiato che diretto The Baby Maker, un dramma a basso budget su una coppia senza figli che assume un hippie (interpretato da Barbara Hershey) per fare da madre surrogata, con risultati inaspettati.

Più ampiamente visto è stato The Paper Chase (1973), un dramma su una matricola della Harvard Law School (Timothy Bottoms) che lotta per sopravvivere ai rigori del suo corso di studi con l'esigente professor Kingsfield (John Houseman, che ha vinto un Oscar per il suo ruolo) mentre corteggiava la figlia dallo spirito libero del professore (Lindsay Wagner). Anche l'adattamento di Bridges del romanzo originale è stato nominato all'Oscar, e il film popolare è stato successivamente adattato in una serie televisiva di successo.

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.