HALL PASS
Forman dies, won 2 Oscars for directing Cars, Bon Jovi among rockers hitting milestone
LOS ANGELES — Czech filmmaker Milos Forman, whose American movies “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Amadeus” won a deluge of Academy Awards, including best director Oscars, died Saturday. He was 86. Forman died about 2 a.m. Saturday at Danbury Hospital, near his home in Warren, Conn., according to a statement released by the former director’s agent, Dennis Aspland. Aspland said Forman’s wife, Martina, notified him of the death.
When Forman arrived in Hollywood in the late 1960s, he was lacking in both money and English skills, but carried a portfolio of Czechoslovakian films much admired internationally for their quirky, lighthearted spirit. Among them were “Black Peter,” “Loves of a Blonde” and “The Fireman’s Ball.”
After his first U.S. film, 1971’s “Taking Off,” flopped, Forman (photo) didn’t get a chance to direct a major feature again for years. Actor Michael Douglas gave Forman a second chance, hiring him to direct “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.”
The 1975 film, based on Ken Kesey’s novel about a misfit who leads mental institution inmates in a revolt against authority, captured every major Oscar at that year’s Academy Awards.