The death of American director Richard Rush has been announced - he died on April 8th, and leaves behind him a legacy of some of the most idiosyncratic films on a variety of resources of any filmmaker. He will be best known for the Oscar-nominated The Stunt Man, a highly eccentric musing about his profession and God, packed with action and weird humour, with a terrific performance by Peter O'Toole.
But while that was his favourite of his work, Rush had more than that in his filmography, starting out with a teen movie, Too Soon to Love, then a "daring" incest romance, Of Love and Desire, before finding his groove with counterculture flicks like the Jack Nicholson-starring Hell's Angels on Wheels and Psych-Out, biker effort The Savage Seven and studio student pic Getting Straight with Elliott Gould. Freebie and the Bean was an outrageously over the top cop comedy now reviled for its lack of taste (and embraced too, in some quarters), then The Stunt Man should have opened up new opportunities, but did not - his last was erotic thriller The Color of Night, which was generally considered ludicrous, but like most of his output became a cult movie. While Rush never had quite the career he deserved, we should be glad he was able to have any career at all, and treasure it.
