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TRIVIA
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Richard Franklin (1948 - ) Date of Birth: 15 July 1948 Richard Franklin first appeared on the international film-making map in the late 1970s when the Australian industry went through a renaissance. Like many of his contemporaries, he produced low budget genre fare that travelled remarkably well - Patrick (1978), though a barely disguised Carrie (1976) rip-off, was a big enough success in Europe to warrant an in-name-only Italian "sequel", Patrick vive ancora (1980). Film-making wasn't Franklin's first choice of creative outlet - in 1965, he helped form The Pink Finks, an Australian R&B band for which he played drums. The youthful band - all of the members were at school at the time - were a success, releasing four singles, one of which, a cover of Louie Louie, reached number 16 in the Melbourne pop charts in June 1965. His love of cinema began early and he was making 8mm home movies by the age of 10. When he was 12, he saw Psycho (1960) for the first time, beginning a life-long love for the works of Alfred Hitchcock. In 1967, while studying film at the famous Film School of the University of Southern California, Franklin arranged a three-week Hitchcock festival and wrote to the director asking his permission to screen Rope (1948). Franklin was astounded when Hitchcock called him on the phone and later agreed to visit USC for a special event where he chatted on stage with Franklin about his impressive body of work. Two years later, Franklin had a chance to see his hero at work when Hitchcock invited him to the set of Topaz (1967). After a series of undistinguished comedies that barely travelled from their homeland, Franklin scored a success with the award-winning Patrick, which brought him to the attention of Hollywood. He directed the terrible but popular The Blue Lagoon (1980) before making his most overtly Hitchcockian film thus far, the excellent Roadgames (1981) in which Jaime Lee Curtis plays a hitch-hiker aptly named Hitch. While Roadgames was making the rounds, producers Bernard Schwartz and Hilton Green were readying the potentially difficult task of making a sequel to Psycho. Knowing that Franklin was an acknowledged expert on Hitchcock's oeuvre and convinced of his abilities after Roadgames, they approached Franklin who eagerly accepted the chance to follow in his mentor's footsteps by directing Psycho II (1983). Though Franklin continued to make feature films - some of them genre
- his career led him inexorably into television where his skills were
largely wasted. Nothing he's done since the early 80s has made good
on the promise of his earlier works and it remains to be seen whether
he's left it too late now to make a lasting impression. His earlier
films are certainly worth tracking down, however, as another example
of the talent that sprang as if from nowehere in Australian during
the 1970s. * = television 1978 1981 1983 1984 1986 1987 Beauty and the Beast: Though Lovers Be Lost (director) * 1991 1994 1999 The Lost World: Salvation (director) * The Lost World: Blood Lust (director) * 2002 2003 Visitors (producer, director) 1973 1975 1976 1980 1989 1995 1996 1997 1978 Catalonian International Film Festival, Sitges, Spain 1979 1995 MAGAZINES Starlog no.165 (April 1991) (USA) |
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