Neal Jimenez, the award-winning screenwriter and director whose movies included the gritty cult traditional River’s Edge and the semi-autobiographical drama The Waterdance, died of coronary heart failure Dec. 11. He was 62.
Jimenez’s household confirmed his loss of life in a information launch offered to EW on Friday.
A local of Sacramento, Calif., Jimenez started his writing profession at 17 with a weekly column in an area newspaper, and he contributed to retailers together with L.A. Weekly and California Journal whereas learning at Santa Clara College. He later transferred to the UCLA Faculty of Theater, Movie and Tv, the place he wrote the script for River’s Edge as a part of a movie class.
Directed by Tim Hunter and starring Keanu Reeves, Ione Skye, and Crispin Glover, the movie gained Greatest Image and Greatest Screenplay on the 1988 Impartial Spirit Awards and launched Jimenez’s screenwriting profession. It has come to be thought to be a traditional portrait of disaffected youth.
Courtesy Valhalla Leisure Neal Jimenez
Jimenez’s shut pal and collaborator Michael Steinberg mentioned in a press release, “His writing voice is seductive, highly effective, and wholly distinctive. Like a posh minor chord with a spread that would transfer in any path. Darkish, hilarious, romantic, political, gritty, fantastical, poetic. Within the 40 years since assembly Neal, I’ve labored with dozens of huge names and large abilities. However solely a handful of true, genius-level artists. Jimenez, like Tarantino, and the Farrelly Brothers, had a voice sturdy sufficient to bend cinema.”
After sustaining a spinal cord injury throughout a hike in 1984, Jimenez used a wheelchair for the remainder of his life. He drew on his private expertise because the inspiration for the 1992 drama The Waterdance, which he co-directed with Steinberg. The critically acclaimed movie tells the story of a younger author who turns into paraplegic after a climbing accident, detailing his tough and emotional restoration course of. It gained Greatest First Function and Greatest Screenplay on the 1993 Spirit Awards, in addition to the Viewers Award and Screenwriting Award on the Sundance Movie Pageant.
In an e mail to EW, Steinberg regarded again on making The Waterdance with Jimenez. “It took years to get the movie going however by the point we lastly did, we would been over all the things one million instances, so it was only a peak expertise making it,” he mentioned. “Greatest mates, UCLA movie geeks, in whole sync, making a film that was, clearly, an vital piece, and extremely private. What made it work, although, is we felt protected as a result of the mighty Gale Anne Hurd was backing us, with the identical imaginative and prescient, refusing to let something cease The Waterdance from getting made in precisely the best way we needed to make it.”
In line with Steinberg, Jimenez was one of the vital sought-after script docs in Hollywood for greater than a decade. He additionally wrote the movies The place the River Runs Black, For the Boys, The Darkish Wind, Sleep With Me, and Hideaway.
Eric Stoltz, who performed the lead position in The Waterdance, mentioned in a press release, “Neal Jimenez was a humorous, gifted, and sophisticated (‘however lovely!’, I can hear him say) author and director, and I’ll miss his distinctive voice.” He added, “It goes with out saying — although Neal would require I do — that our business has misplaced one of the vital deeply gifted and unconventional voices of the impartial movie motion.”
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