Los mejores actores de la historia del cine (Mayo 2024)
James Bridges, (nacido el 3 de febrero de 1936 en París, Arkansas, EE. UU., Falleció el 6 de junio de 1993 en Los Ángeles, California), actor, guionista y director estadounidense mejor conocido por el Síndrome de China (1979) y Urban Cowboy (1980).
Examen
Escuela de cine: ¿realidad o ficción?
Ninguna película muda ha ganado un Premio de la Academia.
Bridges comenzó su carrera en el entretenimiento como actor, y los primeros créditos incluyeron partes de bits en varios programas de televisión y un papel protagónico como Tarzán en la película underground de Andy Warhol Tarzán y Jane recuperados
Una especie de (1964). Sin embargo, finalmente se centró en trabajar detrás de la cámara. Escribió el bien recibido vehículo de Marlon Brando The Appaloosa (1966), así como numerosos episodios de The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. En 1970, Bridges guionó y dirigió The Baby Maker, un drama de bajo presupuesto sobre una pareja sin hijos que contrata a un hippie (interpretado por Barbara Hershey) para servir como madre sustituta, con resultados inesperados.
Más ampliamente visto fue The Paper Chase (1973), un drama sobre un estudiante de primer año de la Facultad de Derecho de Harvard (Timothy Bottoms) que lucha por sobrevivir a los rigores de su curso con el exigente profesor Kingsfield (John Houseman, quien ganó un Premio de la Academia por su papel) mientras corteja a la hija de espíritu libre del profesor (Lindsay Wagner). La adaptación de Bridges de la novela fuente también fue nominada al Oscar, y la popular película fue adaptada posteriormente a una exitosa serie de televisión.
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.
