Even though it was only the wondrous neo noir L.A. Confidential, based on the pulp genius James Ellroy’s novel secured him a spot in the author Pantheon, it is less of a known fact that the beginning of Curtis Hanson’s career was connected to the Hollywood B-production. Namely, he was a film critic and edited the film magazine Cinema, and hung out with Don Siegel and Sam Fuller. Then Fuller hired him as a screenwriter for his master piece White Dog, the cult anti-racist drama about a dog trained to attack blacks. Urban legends say that the veteran Fuller and at the time completely anonymous Hanson co-wrote the screenplay in 18 days in Fuller’s cold garage.

In early 1960’s Hanson started to write his own screenplays and was hired by the American International Pictures (AIP), which was connected to the legendary Roger Corman. Even though the glory days of AIP were in the 1960’s, Hanson joined the production company in the 1970’s as one of the screenwriters for the supernatural film The Dunwich Horror (1970) starring Dean Stockwell and produced by the great Corman. Two years later he directed the insane low-budget B –horror debut Sweet Kill starring Tab Hunter as the psychopathic killer with voyeuristic tendencies. In the same decade he directed one of the episodes of the zombie omnibus Evil Town, although he was credited under his pseudonym Edward Collins. The peak of his career in the 1970’s was the screenplays for the raw thriller The Silent Partner directed by Daryl Duke starring Eliot Gould, which was allegedly adored by Hitchcock.

In the 1980’s as well as early 1990’s, Hanson followed in Hitchcock’s footsteps, He directed and wrote the screenplay for the film The Bedroom Window based on Anne Holden’s short story 'The Witnesses' Anne Holden, which evokes Hitchcock’s classics Rear Window and The Man Who Knew Too Much. In addition, he directed Bad Influence and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. Afterwards he directed an action film The River Wild starring Meryl Streep in an atypical role of a rafter who gets stuck in the rapids reminiscent of John Boorman. Even though the formulaic plot of the film The Bedroom Window is miles away from the master piece that inspired Hanson, it was a perfect setting for Steve Guttenberg who proved to be up to delivering some more serious performances instead of merely clowning around in comedies such as the Police Academy. Nevertheless, a year later, Guttenberg returned to the famous franchise. His partners were Isabelle Huppert, in one of her rare roles that she would probably like to forget, and at the time young and cherubically androgynous Elizabeth McGovern, who is now starring in elegant outfits as countess of Grantham (Downton Abbey). Even though this film was made at in the end of the horrible 1980’s, Hanson did not want to be a slave to the esthetics of musical videos and rather concentrated on some other old Hollywood.

After L.A. Confidential, which made a great turning point in Hanson’s career, he continued with the equally well-done Wonder Boys, based on the great novel by Michael Chabon with the same title. After the Hollywood noir, with this film he returned to Hollywood screwball comedy. Even though he proved that words can have thousands of eyes, since most of his opus, which was not immune to grey zones, included screenplays and lateral adaptations (Holden, Ellroy, Chabon), his filmography was in a constant conflict, torn between strict genre rules and pulsing freedom. Wonder Boys are a proof of this freedom, starring the excellent Michael Douglas tormented by existential crisis as sort of an alter ego of the author himself. Moreover, he is a cineaste from the generation of 1945, just as other great directors Bogdanovich, Coppola, Scorsese, Demme and Dante.

Hanson’s author nerve did not get tired even in his most recent films, such as the TV film  produced by HBO Too Big to Fail and Chasing Mavericks co-directed with Michael Apted, yet another typical product of Hollywood neoclassicism that marked most of Hanson’s career.  (Dragan Rubeša)