Canadian director Ted Kotcheff, known for First Blood and Weekend at Bernie's, dead at 94

Canadian Ted Kotcheff, whose six-decade career as film and television director included helming the first instalments of two hit movie franchises in the 1980s, died Thursday at age 94, his son confirmed to CBC News.

"He died of old age, peacefully, and surrounded by love ones," his son Thomas said in a statement Friday, adding his father had been living full time in Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico, with his wife Laifun Chung. 

During his career Kotcheff directed stars such as Jane Fonda, Burt Reynolds, Gregory Peck and Kathleen Turner, landing Hollywood jobs after years spent directing productions in Britain, Australia and Israel. In Canada, he directed two adaptations of novels by his former roommate Mordecai Richler — The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and Joshua Then and Now, both of which won domestic film awards.

But he was best known for his work in the 1980s. He directed 1982's First Blood, the first of what would be five motion pictures featuring troubled Vietnam vet John Rambo, and seven years later was behind the lens for the improbable hit Weekend at Bernie's, which saw two hapless underlings cart around the dead body of their boss as party guests carried on unawares.

"No matter what part of the world I travel to, there are two films of mine that seemingly everyone has seen: First Blood and Weekend at Bernie's," he wrote in his 2017 memoir, Director's Cut: My Life in Film.

But Kotcheff, preferring to explore new ideas, opted not to cash in by participating in subsequent movies featuring the Rambo and Weekend at Bernie's characters.  

"Sequels are not my thing, because I do not like to repeat myself," he wrote in Director's Cut.

In later years, Kotcheff served as executive producer for nearly 300 episodes of one of TV's longest-running shows, Law & Order: Special Victim's Unit, directing seven episodes of the NBC series.

SVU star Mariska Hargitay described Kotcheff in the foreword of his memoir as "a man whose charisma came from an unfettered appetite for life."

"Ted speaks the truth, directs the truth, pulls the truth out of all the actors he works with," said Hargitay. "You can see that in the performances he directed on our show and in all his films."

He was born William Theodore Kotcheff on April 7, 1931 in Toronto to a Macedonian mother and Bulgarian father whose family name had been Tchotseff. He recalled living in a rowhouse without a furnace in Toronto's Cabbagetown neighbourhood, with trips to the theatre a respite to a hardscrabbled upbringing.

"I was mesmerized by what I saw on the big screen," he wrote in Director's Cut.

After attending the University of Toronto, he landed a job as a stagehand at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, graduating to roles like scriptwriting, editing and ultimately directing on shows like General Motors Theatre and On Camera.

"Personally in 1952 I had no opinion on the future of television. I just wanted a job in storytelling," he would later say.