ALAN PARKER (1944 - 2020)

The acclaimed British filmmaker, Alan Parker passed away on July 31st at the age of seventy-six following a lengthy illness. He was one of cinema’s most versatile directors as he successfully covered several genres throughout his career with an emphasis on music oriented films. 

Born into a working-class family in North London, Parker never displayed any interest of ever pursuing a career in cinema growing up. He actually gravitated towards science while in school and got a job in advertising after graduation, thinking that the field might be a good way to meet girls. Parker started in the mail room before eventually moving on to writing copy which he loved. Parker went on to direct television commercials and this lead to him working for an agency where he would meet David Puttnam and Alan Marshall, a team that would later produce many of his early feature films.

By 1970, Parker joined Marshall to start a company to make commercials and would become one of Britain's most successful ad agencies. Parker had his first screenplay, "Melody" produced in 1971 and directed several short films before he was asked to direct an episode of a BBC anthology series, "Play for Today" in 1975. This lead to Parker making his feature film debut the following year with "Bugsy Malone", a decidedly odd American gangster musical-comedy that featured an all-child cast playing adults. The film starred Jodie Foster and Scott Baio and was met, not surprisingly, with mixed reviews.

But there was no denying Parker's potential talent and he would go on to get the opportunity to direct a film that would completely change the course of his career. "Midnight Express" was based on an American, Billy Hayes and his real-life account of being sentenced to thirty years in a Turkish prison for trying to smuggle out hashish and how he managed to escape. Parker would receive one of the film's six Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and "Midnight Express" won two: Oliver Stone would win for Best Adapted Screenplay (which was his first script) and "the Father of Disco", Giorgio Moroder took home the Best Original Score Oscar. 

Other highlights from Parker's filmography include "Shoot The Moon", a box-office failure when released in 1982 but this family drama starring Albert Finney and Diane Keaton has gone on to become a revered classic; "Pink Floyd: The Wall", a musical based on the rock band's 1979 album; the 1987 psychological horror film, "Angel Heart" that featured Mickey Rourke, Lisa Bonet and Robert De Niro; "Mississippi Burning", the controversial 1988 crime thriller loosely based on the 1964 murders of three civil rights' workers in Mississippi that went on to receive seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director and won for it's cinematography; "The Commitments" a 1991 feel-good, musical comedy about a group of Dublin working-class youth who form a soul band; a big-screen adaption of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's stage musical, "Evita" which starred Madonna (who won a Golden Globe for her performance) and one of my all-time favorite movies, "Fame" from 1980, a musical-drama about students attending the High School of Performing Arts in New York City.

The last feature Parker directed was in 2003 with "The Life of David Gale" which starred Kevin Spacey as a college professor and activist against capital punishment who ends up on death row after being convicted for the murder of a fellow activist. The drama (that also features Kate Winslet and Laura Linney) received harsh reviews and was a box-office flop. Parker would officially retire from film making in 2015.

Parker did not really direct that many movies over his almost thirty year career yet looking over all of the fourteen feature films he had directed, it was quite clear that he was far more interested in quality than quantity. He was a natural storyteller who put a lot of time and thought in to each film he made. And even if they didn't always turn out as well as he may have planned, the work of Alan Parker was reliably introspective, heartfelt and entertaining.