Celebrity Biographies
Irvin kershner
He was not considered a cult filmmaker, far from it. But he was a fairly competent filmmaker who has given moviegoers of several generations a good time. Curiously, he stood out as a director of sequels, some of which were not detracting from the original, such as The Empire Strikes Back . Irvin Kershner died on November 29, 2010 in Los Angeles, after a long illness, at age 87. May the force be with you!
Born on April 29, 1923, in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), Irvin Kershner was passionate about art in general. He first studied music, at Temple University, he learned to play the violin and viola, and later moved to New York to become a student of the German-born abstract painter Hans Hofmann. In Los Angeles he studied photography and film editing.
In this way, when he began directing, he had in-depth knowledge of various artistic areas –music, painting, editing, photography– which came in handy for cinema, conceived as the sum of different disciplines. He debuted with the crime drama Stakeout on Dope Street , followed by various works, both on film and on television. His first major job was Crazy Wonderful , where Sean Connery tried to break out of his role as James Bond, playing a misogynistic poet.
His first film belonging to a saga was The Revenge of a Man Called Horse , a worthy sequel to one of the greatest hits of the 70s, with Richard Harris . Kershner was also responsible for the terrifying The Eyes of Laura Mars , scripted by scare specialist John Carpenter .
This last film would call the attention of George Lucas , who was looking for a director for The Empire Strikes Back , since he had had a bad time when he filmed the first part, and he did not want to repeat it. Kershner had a very brilliant script by Leigh Brackett and Laurence Kasdan, with brilliant twists from the predecessor film, and managed to give the film a flawless aesthetic that has survived better than the first part. For this reason, his film is considered by a large part of the fans as the best of the saga.
Kershner re-teamed with Sean Connery in Never Say Never , an unofficial James Bond film revisiting Thunderball . It was the last time that Connery played the famous character – the title joked that he had sworn that he would never play him again – and certainly one of the best in the franchise.
Despite the success of his films, Kershner did not lavish himself too much. In 1990 he directed Robocop 2 , the unsuccessful sequel to Paul Verhoeven ‘s film with an incomparable script by Frank Miller . His last job as a director was an episode of the SeaQuest series . He also appeared on occasion as an actor, in small roles in films such as The Last Temptation of Christ or El gran peque se va de ligue .