‘Midnight Express’,’ Mississippi Burning, ‘Evita’ Director – Deadline

Filmmaker Alan Parker, a leading figure in the UK industry, passed away this morning after a long illness, the British Film Institute confirmed. He was 76 years old.

The two-time Oscar nominee Parker was best known for directing classic films including Malone Bugsy, The Midnight Express, Mississippi Burning and The compromisesas well as the big budget Madonna movie Avoid. Throughout a brilliant career, her feature films won 19 BAFTA awards, ten Golden Globes and ten Oscars among them.

Parker was a passionate advocate of UK industry and a founding member of the Directors Guild of Great Britain. He was the founding president of the UK Film Council in 2000, a position he held for five years, and before that he was president of the BFI. He received a CBE in 1995 and a knighthood in 2002. He was also a Officier des Arts et Letters (France).

Alan Parker was born in Islington, London, on February 14, 1944. He began his advertising career as a copywriter, but quickly graduated to write and direct commercials. In the late 1960s, it was one of the small but enormously influential groups of British directors (including Ridley Scott and Hugh Hudson and Adrian Lyne) who revolutionized the look, quality, and reputation of television advertising by combining sophisticated storytelling and witty with a cinematic aesthetic. for the first time. In 1980 he received the D&AD Gold President’s Award.

In 1974, he moved into the full-length drama when he directed the BBC film, Evacuees, written by Jack Rosenthal, who won the International Emmy Award and a BAFTA for directing; the first of Parker’s seven BAFTA Awards.

Parker wrote and directed his first feature film, Malone Bugsy, in 1975. It was a unique musical pastiche from the 1930s Hollywood gangster movies with a cast made up entirely of children, including a rookie performance by Jodie Foster. The film received eight BAFTA film nominations and five awards.

Parker’s second film was the successful and controversial The Midnight Express (1977), which won two Oscars and six Academy Award nominations, including for Parker as Best Director. The film received six Golden Globe Awards and four BAFTA awards.

This was followed, in 1979, by Fame, a joyous and diverse celebration of youthful ambition in the arts, which won two Academy Awards, six nominations, four Golden Globe nominations and was later adapted into a long-running television series.

In 1981 Parker directed the powerful family drama, Shoot the moon, starring Diane Keaton and Albert Finney. That same year she also directed the seminal. Pink Floyd the wall, the film adaptation of the phenomenally successful rock album.

In 1984 Parker directed Birdy based on the William Wharton novel, starring Nicolas Cage and Matthew Modine, which won the Du Jury Special Grand Prix at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival.

Parker’s next movie, the hidden thriller Angel Heart, made in 1986 and starring Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro, and Lisa Bonet, opened in the United States amid a storm of controversy caused by the ‘X’ rating imposed on the film by the MPAA.

In 1988 Parker directed the civil rights drama, Mississippi Burning, starring Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe, who was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Director for Parker and winner of Best Cinematography. Parker also received the DW Griffith Award for chairing by the National Board of Review. The film was nominated for five BAFTA Film Awards, winning three. She also won the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival.

In 1989 Parker wrote and directed Come see paradise, a poignant family story about the treatment of internally forced Japanese-Americans during World War II, starring Dennis Quaid and Tamlyn Tomita. A year later, he would The compromises, the story of a young Irish working-class Irish band, who received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Picture and won the Best Director Award for Parker at the Tokyo Film Festival, as well as BAFTA Film Awards for Editing , Script, Director and best film.

In 1993 Parker wrote and directed dramatic comedy, The road to Wellville, based on the novel by T. Coraghessan Boyle, and starring Anthony Hopkins, Bridget Fonda, Matthew Broderick, John Cusack and Dana Carvey.

In 1996, he made many world headlines when he directed, wrote, and produced Avoid, based on the Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice musical, and starring Madonna, Antonio Banderas and Jonathan Pryce. The much-discussed film won three Golden Globe Awards, including Best Picture.

In 1999 Parker wrote and directed Angela’s ashes based on the best-selling Pulitzer Prize winning memoirs by Frank McCourt, starring Emily Watson and Robert Carlyle. Parker’s last movie was David Gale’s life, the 2003 thriller on the cruel politics of capital punishment in the United States, starring Kate Winslet, Kevin Spacey and Laura Linney.

Parker was also the author of the best-selling novel written from his own screenplay by Malone Bugsy, published by HarperCollins. In addition, he wrote two other published novels, Puddles on the rail, (1977) and The Fool’s Kiss (2003) He was also an expert draftsman and painter.

In 1984 Parker was honored by the British Academy with the prestigious Michael Balcon Award for his outstanding contribution to British cinema. In 1998 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Directors Guild of Great Britain and the Lumiere Medal from the Royal Photographic Society. He was awarded the Bafta 2013 scholarship.

Parker is survived by his wife Lisa Moran-Parker, their children Lucy, Alexander, Jake, Nathan and Henry and seven grandchildren.