Filmmaker ranged widely across genres
LONDON— Alan Parker, a successful and sometimes surprising filmmaker whose diverse output includes “Bugsy Malone,” “Midnight Express” and “Evita,” has died at 76 after a long illness, his family said.
A Briton who became a Hollywood heavyweight, Parker also directed “Fame,” “The Commitments” and “Mississippi Burning.” Together, his movies won 10 Academy Awards and 19 British Academy Film Awards.
Parker was born in London in 1944 and, like many other aspiring British directors of his generation, including Ridley Scott and Adrian Lyne, began his career in advertising as a copywriter and director of commercials.
He moved into television with the critically acclaimed 1974 drama “The Evacuees,” which won an international Emmy Award.
The next year, he wrote and directed his first feature, “Bugsy Malone,” an unusual, exuberant musical pastiche of gangster films with a cast of children, including a young Jodie Foster.
He followed that with 1978 feature “Midnight Express,” the reality-based story of an American’s harrowing incarceration in a Turkish prison for alleged drug offences. It won two Oscars — including one for Oliver Stone’s script — and gained Parker the first of two best director nominations.
Parker ranged widely across subjects and genres. While “Shoot the Moon” (1982) and “Angela’s Ashes” (1999) were family dramas, “Angel Heart” (1987) was an occult thriller and “Mississippi Burning” (1988) was a powerful civil-rights drama that was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including best director.
Parker was also a notable director of musicals, including “Fame” (1980), a gritty but celebratory story of life at a performing arts high school; surreal rock opera “Pink Floyd — the Wall” (1982), “The Commitments” (1991), about a ramshackle Dublin soul band; and “Evita” (1996), starring Madonna as Argentine first lady Eva Peron. His final film was death-row drama “The Life of David Gale” in 2003.
Parker also championed Britain’s film industry, serving as chairman of the British Film Institute and the U.K. Film Council.
He was knighted by the Queen in 2002 and, in 2013, received the British film academy’s highest honour, the BAFTA Fellowship.