Saul Zaentz, a music producer whose second career as a filmmaker brought him best-picture Academy Awards for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus and The English Patient, has died at the age of 92.
Zaentz died on Friday at his San Francisco apartment after suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, Paul Zaentz, the producer’s nephew and longtime business partner told the Associated Press.
Zaentz was never a prolific movie producer, but he took on classy productions, specialising in complex literary adaptations that Hollywood studios generally find too intricate to put on film.
Since moving into film at age 50 with 1972’s low-budget country-music drama Payday, Zaentz made just 10 movies, giving him a remarkable three-for-10 batting average on best-picture wins at the Oscars.
Among Zaentz’s other films were the 1978 animated version of The Lord of the Rings, which later paved the way for the blockbuster live action trilogy. He also brought out the 1986 Harrison Ford drama The Mosquito Coast; 1998’s acclaimed The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which co-starred English Patient supporting actress Oscar winner Juliette Binoche; and 1991’s At Play in the Fields of the Lord, a critical and commercial flop despite a cast that included Kathy Bates, Tom Berenger and John Lithgow.
Zaentz was a throwback to old Hollywood, a producer who cared tremendously about his films and would go to extremes to get them right, often putting his own money up to help finance them. He appreciated unique personal vision in directors, taking chances on relatively untested filmmakers.
Anthony Minghella had made just two small films when Zaentz picked him to direct The English Patient, whose awards included the best-director Oscar. Czech director Milos Forman had worked on films mostly in his home country when producers Zaentz and Michael Douglas chose him to make One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Forman also directed Amadeus.
With Lord of the Rings, whose film rights he acquired in the mid-1970s, Zaentz rejected all suitors interested in doing a live-action version until he saw New Zealand director Peter Jackson’s visually striking Heavenly Creatures.
Though Zaentz’s involvement was limited and he did not share in the producing credits, he gave full blessing to Jackson’s mammoth, three-film Lord of the Rings production.
He later sued over royalties, however; the dispute was settled out of court in 2005.
A lavish theatrical version of the tale was mounted in Toronto in March 2006, but closed six months later.
