The passing of Donald Sutherland hit me hard the morning.
He surely couldn’t pick me out in a line-up, but his life is a bit “6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon” for me, all the more ironic as he was the lead in Six Degrees of Separation, the movie of the stage play that brought Will Smith to the movies… for the third time, but the first serious time.
M*A*S*H was Sutherland’s worldwide breakout and the introduction to the world, after a long TV career, of Robert Altman, whose work was singular enough to truly deserve the too frequently used twist of a director’s work, “esque” ad in “Altman-esque.” When the movie came out, I was 5… and the TV series came along when I was 7. It wasn’t until cable landed that I would know and appreciate the movie above and beyond the series.
My best friend in high school was obsessed with Kelly’s Heroes, though in those pre-VHS days, so aside from occasional plays on local TV in Miami, all we had was the soundtrack album. How many times was I woken up to “Burning Bridges” in my teen years? It would be one of the first illegal VHSes I ever purchased on the bus to school and of course, Oddball was instantly my favorite character.
I didn’t know Alex in Wonderland existed until I became friends with Paul Mazursky 20-someodd years later. Sutherland played a version of Paul, essentially, and Paul told tales of shutting down Hollywood Blvd for shooting often. He desperately wanted a re-release of the film on DVD and eventually, Warner Archives made it available. (We never talked much about The Pickle, in which Danny Aiello played an older version of Paul. Both films suffered a similar commercial fate amongst Paul’s hits.)
Sutherland had a small role in Little Murders, a film adaptation of a Jules Feiffer play, which starred Elliot Gould. As it turned out, I dug deep into Feiffer for a 10th grade English project and held/hold his work in the greatest esteem.
Klute, Don’t Look Now, and Casanova would become part of my HBO-built pre-NYU film education. Eventually they would play The Day of the Locust. I wouldn’t see 1900 until its 1991 re-release.
But 1977 was my coming of age as a teen old enough to use a fake ID to buy a ticket to R-rated movies. My first was Kentucky Fried Movie, in which Sutherland turns up in a cameo. A year later, there was Sutherland… a surprise to me in Animal House and as the star of Phil Kaufman’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Ordinary People in 1980 had Sutherland as the dad struggling to hold his broken family members together… a story all too personal for me. But he was great in what I consider still to be the most difficult role.
He had a bit of a bad run after that, with GAS, and Eye of the Needle, and Max Dugan Returns, and Hugh Hudson’s self-implosive Revolution, the painful-for-me Louis Malle Crackers (a remake of one of my beloveds, Big Deal on Madonna St, which was also converted to a musical soon after by Fosse, “Big Deal,” with one of the greatest 2nd acts ever… and one of the worst 1st acts to keep people from caring.)
In 1989, I had moved to Los Angeles and Sutherland started what I see as his next run of greatness. A Dry White Season got a lot of attention for Brando, but it was Sutherland who held the movie together. A couple years later, he was great in a small, but key role in Backdraft. Then, he gives one of the greatest cameo performances ever in JFK.
He trained Buffy The Vampire Slayer, brought along Will Smith, worked as a General, a lawyer, a rich old man, and got to be an astronaut in his 60s. He worked a lot.
And then, The Hunger Games gave him his last big run of celebrity.
His last work was on Lawman: Bass Reeves, back on TV, where he has started, after the stage, in the first 5 years of his filmed entertainment career.
Lots of bad movies, but seeing Donald Sutherland was always the sweet spot.
The loss of this epic performer with over 60 years of filmed credits got me thinking. Who’s left?
A lifetime of movie memories comes through each movie-lover’s journey. Donald Sutherland as a dominant film actor represents the era of the 70s into the late 80s, mostly. A generation. The generation before him is already gone. And that group from the 70s is getting thinner and thinner.
Using The Oscars as the easiest way of measuring, the earliest Best Actor winner who is still alive is Gene Hackman, who won in 1971 for The French Connection. The list starts really expanding with Jack Nicholson in 1975 for One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. Dreyfus, Voight, and Hoffman are still with us from wins in the 1970s. Only 3 of the winners from the 1980s have passed. Everyone who won in the 1990s is still alive.
In Supporting Actor, the earliest winner still alive is Joel Grey from 1972’s Cabaret. Robert DeNiro won in 1974 for The Godfather II. Walken’s 1978 Oscar for The Deer Hunter rounds out the list of the 1970s. The 1980s are 50/50. Four of the 1990s winners are gone. The 2000s are now short one great Alan Arkin, as the 2010s miss Christopher Plummer.
The Women are made of a bit sturdier stuff. Sophia Loren won Best Actress in 1961 for Two Women. Julie Andrews won for Mary Poppins in 1964 and Julie Christie for Darling in 1965. Barbra Streisand won in 1968 (tied with Katherine Hepburn) for Funny Girl and Maggie Smith in 1969 for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. The 70s winners are Jane Fonda (twice), Liza Minnelli, Ellen Burstyn, Faye Dunaway, Diane Keaton, and Sally Field. And we just lost 2-timer Glenda Jackson a year ago. Club 80s has lost Katherine Hepburn, Geraldine Page, and Jessica Tandy. And there are no winners gone from 1990 until today.
In Supporting Actress, Shirley Jones won in 1960 for Elmer Gantry, Rita Moreno in 1961 for West Side Story, and Patty Duke in 1963 for The Miracle Worker. Closing out the 60s was Goldie Hawn in Cactus Flower in 1969. Tatum O’Neal (Paper Moon, ‘73), Lee Grant (Shampoo, ‘75), Vanessa Redgrave (Julia, ‘77), Maggie Smith (California Suite, ‘78), and Meryl Streep’s first Oscar win (Kramer vs Kramer, ‘79) leaves the 70s at .500. The 80s improved, with Maureen Stapleton, Dame Peggy Ashcroft, and Olympia Dukakis as the only 3 who have passed. And there are none of the Oscar winners gone who won from 1988 until today.
Until his recent death, William Friedkin was the earliest Best Director winner to still be alive… and was working until near the end. That early win was 1971’s The French Connection. Now that honor goes to Francis Coppola with his win for 1974’s The Godfather, Part II. He has a movie coming out in September. The only other 1970s Director winner was Woody Allen with Annie Hall in 1977. He has a movie that is trying to come out in the U.S. right now.
Maybe keeping at work is the key.
Of the 80s winners, we have lost Sir Richard Attenborough, Miloš Forman, Sydney Pollack, and Bernardo Bertolucci. The only one still working on the regular as a film director is Barry Levinson. Beloved, but not really making feature releases at this point are Robert Redford, Warren Beatty, James L. Brooks, and 2-time winner Oliver Stone.
The 90s winners lost 2 Directors at painfully young ages, still in their working primes, in Anthony Minghella and Jon Demme. But every one of the other 8 are still working: Costner, Eastwood, Spielberg (2x), Zemeckis, Gibson, Cameron, and Mendes, with half of them with films coming to theaters this year and the other half due for new films next year.
Every winning Director since 1997 is still with us and are very much a part of the discussion each year in cinema.
As revered as the films of the 1970s are, you can see that the list of surviving and working filmmakers who worked in that worked and thrived in that period is getting smaller and smaller. And so we hang onto those who did all the tighter.
If you want to know all the directors whose movies were Top 10 for any year of the 1970s and are still alive: Francis Coppola, Sidney J. Furie, George Lucas, Mel Brooks, Steven Spielberg, Jim Sharman (Rocky Horror Picture Show), Larry Peerce (The Other Side of the Mountain), James Fargo (The Enforcer), John Landis, Warren Beatty, John Carpenter, Sylvester Stallone, and Sir Ridley Scott.
13 men. 3 still actively making movies as director… Francis, Steven, and Ridley.
I love the emergence of new filmmakers. If we get a few solid new voices every year, we must count ourselves lucky and embrace their efforts. Cinema is a living thing and the future always matters.
But as we lose an acting icon who became an icon in the 1970s, I am reminded of the evolution of the Telluride Film Festival, which started with a heavy focus on silent film. In the first year of the festival, 1974, they honored Gloria Swanson and Leni Riefenstahl. Abel Gance came up the hill. But in time, they ran out of silent stars and filmmakers… and those who were alive ran out of breath in the high altitude. I believe the last big name who had started in silents was honored in 2005… Mickey Rooney (interviewed by the still-healthy Roger Ebert). And the festival had to evolve. And it has.
The 70s is almost all about the dead at this point… the exceptions are exulted. But we mostly have the films to keep the fire burning. And the 80s are not far behind, given drugs and AIDS in a hard-lived decade.
Long live the 70s in cinema! Long live Donald Sutherland! Long live the joy of experiencing and remembering and embracing the arts!
Until tomorrow…
Great memories - thank you - and to think that Donald Sutherland was never nominated for an Oscar, a shocking distinction shared with another legend, Edward G. Robinson.
Eye of the Needle--Great movie, fantastic performance
If you included foreign films, Claude Lelouche is still here