‘Still Alice’ Writer-Director Richard Glatzer Dead At 63
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Richard Glatzer, who co-wrote and destined a Alzheimer’s play “Still Alice” alongside his husband, Wash Westmoreland, while battling ALS, died Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 63.
Diagnosed in 2011 with ALS, also famous as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, a span took on a plan of “Still Alice” in a unequivocally early theatre of Glatzer’s disease.
During a 23-day shoot, Glatzer communicated with one finger regulating a text-to-speech app on his iPad. By a time of a press debate for a film in late 2014, Glatzer was usually means to promulgate by typing on a device with his large toe.
Their film warranted star Julianne Moore her initial Oscar for her description of an educational pang from early conflict Alzheimer’s. Unable to attend a ceremony, Glatzer watched Moore’s win Feb. 22 from a hospital, where he had been taken dual days before for respiratory problems. Westmoreland watched by his side.
“I am devastated. Rich was my essence mate, my collaborator, my best crony and my life,” Westmoreland pronounced in a matter Wednesday. He combined that he takes satisfaction in a fact that Glatzer saw “Still Alice” delivered to a world.
“Richard was a singular guy— opinionated, funny, caring, gregarious, generous, and so, so smart. A loyal artist and a shining man. we value each day of a brief twenty years we had together,” he said. “I can't trust he has gone. But in my heart and a hearts of those who desired him he will always be alive.”
A New York native, Glatzer started out his career in academia, earning a doctorate in English from a University of Virginia before branch his attentions wholly to film and television.
He met Westmoreland in 1995. The integrate collaborated on 4 films as co-writers and directors, including a 2006 Sundance Grand Jury Prize and Audience leader “Quinceañera.”
Glatzer also worked on a series of radio shows including “Road Rules,” ”Divorce Court” and “America’s Next Top Model.”
But it was “Still Alice” that seemed to be Glatzer’s crowning achievement.
“It’s mocking that in my run-down state I’d be means to make a film that was creatively all I’d ever wished for,” Glatzer reflected to The Associated Press in late 2014 while compelling a film.
The parallels between Glatzer and their lead character’s degenerative diseases helped to surprise a instrumentation of author Lisa Genova’s best-seller.
“Many of a neurological appointments that Alice had in a book echoed appointments that Richard had had when they were contrast to see if he’d had a cadence — like what’s today’s date, where are we, all that stuff. It was eerily similar,” Westmoreland pronounced during a same interview.
“Rich is an impossibly clever person, and never let a illness get him down. He always wanted to keep life as normal as possible,” he added.
Moore was quite changed by a similarities and how Glatzer’s condition done a story most some-more personal and emotional.
“It’s about a wholeness of a possess knowledge and what we caring about and that we all live and we all adore and we all are going to go divided some day. To demeanour during that and to unequivocally inspect that, though to also be benefaction in it, is kind of an unusual thing to do. we consider that’s what Wash and Rich are doing with this movie,” she said.
While a logistics of co-directing a film while pang from ALS valid challenging, a whole prolongation was committed to ancillary Glatzer throughout.
“We had a small personal agreement that Richard has to be heard, even if it’s inconvenient, even if it’s longer to wait,” Westmoreland said.
Glatzer, who was in good spirits sitting subsequent to Westmoreland, also weighed in.
“I felt unequivocally most listened by everyone, each day. And it’s so unequivocally critical if you’re struggling with a illness like this to feel we still matter,” Glatzer said.
In further to Westmoreland, Glatzer is survived by his daughter, Ruby Smith; his sister, Joan Kodner, and her husband, David; and his nieces and nephews.
Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/11/richard-glatzer-dead-still-alice-writer-director_n_6852128.html?utm_hp_ref=los-angeles&ir=Los+Angeles