Walter Hill (director) Totally Explained

Everything about Walter Hill Director totally explained

Walter Wesley Hill (born January 10, 1942 in Long Beach, California) is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer known, in particular, for his male-dominated action films and revival of the Western. He said in an interview, "Every film I've done has been a Western", and elaborated in another, "the Western is ultimately a stripped down moral universe that is, whatever the dramatic problems are, beyond the normal avenues of social control and social alleviation of the problem, and I like to do that even within contemporary things."

Biography

Early life

Growing up in southern California, Walter Hill was asthmatic as a child and, as a result, missed several years of school. He spent much of his time daydreaming, reading comic books, and listening to radio serials. Hill said his father and grandfather were "smart, physical men who worked with their heads and their hands" and had "great mechanical ability." He went on to work as the uncredited second assistant director on Bullitt in the same year. James Coburn played a fast-talking promoter of illegal street fights in 1930s New Orleans and Charles Bronson played the boxer protagonist.
   Hill's second film as a director was The Driver starring Ryan O'Neal as a laconic getaway driver for hire and Bruce Dern as a driven cop pursuing him. No character in the film has a name; they're merely The Driver, The Detective, and so forth. Hill originally had wanted to cast McQueen, but he turned down the role because he didn't want to do another car movie.
   Hill began to focus his energies on Western-themed tales. His film biography of Geronimo, entitled,, with a screenplay written by John Milius, was well received by the critics, but fared poorly at the box office. A second biopic - this time of the titular Wild Bill - had little critical or commercial success, although Hill would return to the same themes and same characters, Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane, the next decade with the TV series Deadwood.
   His 1996 effort Last Man Standing with Bruce Willis, a Prohibition-era Western update of Yojimbo (and thus reminiscent of that film's inspiration, Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest, and its western incarnation, A Fistful of Dollars) saw him return to his earlier style to some extent: a gruff antihero and a heavy focus on stylized action.
   Hill then directed the 2000 film Supernova. When the studio didn't agree with his vision, they brought in Francis Ford Coppola to re-cut the film. This caused Hill to credit himself with the pseudonym "Thomas Lee" (a variation of Alan Smithee), and chose not to be associated with the finished product. Hill called his original version a much darker take than the final product. In 2002, Hill directed the prison boxing film Undisputed starring Wesley Snipes, Ving Rhames and Peter Falk.
   The 1990s also saw him retain a producer credit for Alien³ and .

Recent work

Recently, Hill's directional work for the pilot episode of the TV series Deadwood has seen him return to favour in critical circles to some extent, earning him an Emmy in 2004 and a DGA award in 2005. He continued his work with westerns by directing the mini series Broken Trail, which became the highest-rated movie made by a cable network when it premiered on AMC.

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