Director of cult classic Vanishing Point
Richard Sarafian, a Hollywood director best known for the speed-addled saga of squealing brakes and existential angst chronicled in the 1971 cult film Vanishing Point, died Wednesday. He was 83.
Sarafian was recovering from a broken back when he contracted pneumonia, family members said.
He directed numerous films and, earlier in his career, TV shows that included episodes of Gunsmoke, The Twilight Zone and Batman. He also acted, appearing as hit man Vinnie in the Warren Beatty satire Bulworth and gangster Jack Dragna in Beatty’s Bugsy.
But it was Vanishing Point, the story of a tough guy named Kowalski and his frenzied road trip from Denver to San Francisco, that proved to be Sarafian’s most enduring work.
In Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, the director gave Sarafian a “special thanks” credit, a bow to the influence of Vanishing Point.
Born April 28, 1930, in New York City, Richard Caspar Sarafian was the son of Armenian immigrants. He attended New York University but “was a rotten student, drinking and carousing,” he told the Armenian Reporter in 2008. “To make life easier, I took a two-point course in writing and directing pictures. I got an A!”
Serving during the Korean War as a reporter for an Army news service, he was stationed for a time in Kansas City, Mo., where he met future Hollywood director Robert Altman.
He later married Altman’s sister and had five children. Helen Joan Altman died two years ago, after divorcing Sarafian and later remarrying him.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 10 on 09/21/2013