60 Facts About Walter Hill

Walter Hill has directed such films as The Driver, The Warriors, Southern Comfort, 48 Hrs.

Walter Hill has directed several episodes of television series such as Tales from the Crypt and Deadwood and produced the Alien films.

Walter Hill was born in Long Beach, California, the younger of two sons.

Walter Hill's paternal grandfather was a wildcat oil driller; his father worked at Douglas Aircraft as a supervisor on the assembly line.

Walter Hill has said that his father and grandfather were "smart, physical men who worked with their heads and their hands" and had "great mechanical ability".

Walter Hill's family had originally come from Tennessee and Mississippi, "one of those fallen Southern families, shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations".

Walter Hill became a film fan at an early age, and the first film he remembers seeing was Song of the South.

Walter Hill worked in the oil fields as a roustabout on Signal Hill, California, during high school and several more years while in college.

Walter Hill then transferred and majored in history at Michigan State University.

Walter Hill said that, during this period, he was a particular fan of Ernest Hemingway's writing and came to believe that "the hardest thing to do is write clearly and simply, and make your point in an elegant way".

Walter Hill began seeing more and more scripts, writing scripts and developed the urge to direct.

Walter Hill then got into the training program of the Directors Guild of America, which enabled him to work in television as an apprentice.

Walter Hill observed and worked for over a year on such shows as Gunsmoke, Wild Wild West, Bonanza and Warning Shot.

Walter Hill worked as a first assistant director on some television advertisement.

Walter Hill's first completed screenplay, a Western called Lloyd Williams and His Brother, was optioned by Joe Wizan.

Sam Peckinpah came on to direct; Walter Hill started from scratch and wrote his own script in six weeks.

Walter Hill went on to write a pair of Paul Newman films, The Mackintosh Man and The Drowning Pool.

Walter Hill says he never saw the final product, but was told it was "a real bomb".

Producers Larry Turman and David Foster asked Walter Hill to adapt Ross Macdonald's novel The Drowning Pool for Robert Mulligan to direct as a sequel to a previous Newman film, Harper.

Walter Hill decided not to direct the film, which became a massive hit.

Walter Hill agreed to let Hill direct a film if he wrote a screenplay for him.

Walter Hill made a deal to write and direct for scale and in turn got a shot at directing.

Walter Hill read Alexander Jacobs' screenplay for the John Boorman film Point Blank and considered it a "revelation" in terms of style and format.

Walter Hill wrote Hard Times, The Driver, The Warriors, and the uncredited rewrite of Alien in this style.

Walter Hill created the TV series Dog and Cat which premiered in 1977 starring a young Kim Basinger as a police officer.

Walter Hill originally had wanted to cast Steve McQueen, but he turned down the role because he did not want to do another car film.

Walter Hill was going to make The Last Gun with Larry Gordon but when the financing on the project failed to materialize, Gordon showed Walter Hill a copy of the novel The Warriors by Sol Yurick.

Walter Hill was approached and eagerly agreed to film his first Western.

The film was seen by many as an allegory for America's involvement in the Vietnam War, although Walter Hill denies this is the case.

Walter Hill tried to make Lone Star, from the play by James McLure to star Powers Boothe and Sigourney Weaver.

All of that meant that Walter Hill hadn't worked in a while.

Walter Hill almost set this up at Paramount but they changed their mind; Universal decided to finance instead.

Walter Hill intended to make the film directly after Streets of Fire but eventually left the project after a dispute over budget with Universal and with star Warren Beatty; the project would be made several years later with Beatty directing.

Walter Hill says he purposefully made the film "to improve his bank account and success quotient", and admitted it was "an aberration in the career line".

Walter Hill followed Brewster's Millions with Crossroads, a music-themed drama from an original script by John Fusco inspired by the life and music of Robert Johnson.

Walter Hill co-wrote and executive produced Blue City from a 1947 novel by Ross Macdonald.

Walter Hill developed this project intended to star a leading man in his mid-30s but by the mid-1980s a number of popular young male actors had emerged, so the script was rewritten to accommodate one of them.

Walter Hill handed over directing duties to Michelle Manning, who made her debut as director.

Walter Hill had a story and executive producer credit on the film which was a massive hit.

Walter Hill returned to the buddy-cop genre with Red Heat, a sort of Glasnost-era reworking of 48 Hrs.

Around this time, Walter Hill was mentioned as wanting to make an adaptation of Jim Thompson's Pop.

Walter Hill ended the 1980s with Johnny Handsome starring Mickey Rourke.

Walter Hill had a number of projects in the late 1980s that were never made.

Walter Hill began the 1990s with the only sequel he has directed to date, Another 48 Hrs.

Walter Hill was considered to replace John McTiernan as the director of Patriot Games, another film in which Baldwin was recast with Ford.

In 1992, Walter Hill directed a film originally called Looters about two firemen who cross paths with criminals while searching for stolen loot in an abandoned East St Louis, Illinois, tenement building.

Walter Hill planned to direct Alec Baldwin in a new version of The Getaway based on Walter Hill's original script.

Walter Hill admitted his style of films were becoming less fashionable:.

Walter Hill continued as one of the three original producers on Alien Resurrection, although he has stated in several interviews since, that he has had nothing to do with the franchise since Alien 3.

Walter Hill's 1996 effort Last Man Standing with Bruce Willis, a Prohibition-era Western update of Yojimbo saw him return to his earlier style to some extent: a gruff antihero and a heavy focus on stylized action.

Walter Hill called his original version a much darker take than the final product.

In 2002, Walter Hill directed the prison boxing film Undisputed starring Wesley Snipes, Ving Rhames and Peter Falk.

In 2003, Quentin Tarantino said Walter Hill was still worthy of admiration.

Walter Hill served as a director and consulting producer for the pilot episode of the HBO Western drama television series Deadwood in 2004.

However Walter Hill had a falling out with Milch during the editing of the pilot and did not work on any other episodes of the show.

Walter Hill continued his work with westerns by directing the mini series Broken Trail, which became the highest-rated film made by a cable network when it premiered on AMC.

Walter Hill wrote the original story for a graphic novel, Bailes Perdues, which was adapted by Matz with art by Jef, which was published in France, and later translated as Triggerman by Edward Gauvin and published by the Titan Comics imprint Hard Case Crime.

In 2019 Walter Hill made his recording debut at age 77 with The Cowboy Iliad: A Legend Told In The Spoken Word.

The film premiered at 2022 Venice Film Festival where Walter Hill received the Glory to the Filmmaker award.

Walter Hill married Hildy Gottlieb, a talent agent at International Creative Management, in New York City at Tavern on the Green on September 7,1986.