Off The Record
The Miami Blues And Grosse Pointe Blank Director, George Armitage, Died At The Age Of 82
The groundbreaking director of Miami Blues and Grosse Pointe Blank, George Armitage, has away at the age of 82.
Surrounded by his wife, son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren, his niece confirmed to TMZ that Armitage died last Saturday.
The cause of death is yet unknown.
With the 1997 cult smash Grosse Pointe Blank, which starred John Cusack as a hitman navigating a high school reunion, Armitage solidified his reputation as a filmmaker and screenwriter who had a talent for fusing comedy and crime.
Alec Baldwin played one of his most famous early performances in the 1990 dark comedy Miami Blues, which he also directed.
Armitage was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and moved to Beverly Hills when he was a youngster.
“Yeah, I got into everything. I surfed, and we did some street racing, a lot of cruising, listening to music, it was a great time, an amazing time to be a teenager,” he told Film Comment.
He met Sharon, his future wife, there when he was only fifteen.
Throughout their remarkable 62-year marriage, the two stayed together.
The 1970s film Gas-s-s-s, a counterculture parody that attracted the attention of renowned producer Roger Corman, marked the beginning of his filmmaking career.
Their partnership influenced Armitage’s career by enabling him to work on a number of daring, nontraditional projects that solidified his standing as a fearless, genre-bending author.
Before delving into the blaxploitation genre with Hit Man (1972), starring Pam Grier and Bernie Casey, Armitage made his directing debut in 1971 with Private Duty Nurses, a movie he also created.
He developed a varied résumé over the years, directing action-packed thrillers such as Vigilante Force (1976), Hot Rod (1979), and later The Big Bounce (2004).
Early in his tenure at Fox, he started working with renowned independent filmmaker Corman, which resulted in a number of movies that influenced his Hollywood career.
The first movie that Armitage directed without receiving screenplay credit was Grosse Pointe Blank.
“I probably could have, but I didn’t want to, because I was afraid… There was an initial writer who did a great job, then John Cusack and Steve Pink, who now directs, and because the Writers Guild is insane with the way they handle the credits, I decided that if I threw my name into the mix, the percentage would drop for everybody and they’d get screwed out of it,” he told the outlet.
“But I did as much as anyone did in terms of writing.”
He continued, “The script, when I met with John [Cusack] and the writers, was 132 pages.” I said: “Look, I’m not doing anything over 100 pages.”
“Okay,” they replied, and after rewriting it, it was 150 pages long.
After saying, “Okay, you guys are fired,” I rewrote the screenplay for the majority of pre-production, reducing its length to 102 pages.
“Then we would improvise, and I noticed that some of the stuff I’d cut out was in the improvs, they were bringing back stuff that I’d cut out, but we had a good time with it.”
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