Richard Glatzer, co-writer and co-director of Still Alice, has died. The filmmaker had been battling the ravages of ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, since his diagnosis in 2011. He was 63.
Glatzer, who married his long-time co-filmmaker and partner Walsh Westmoreland in 2013, had planned to watch his star, Julianne Moore, at the Academy Awards from his hospital bed, when he was taken into an LA hospital just two days before the ceremony.
He'd defied his ailing health by playing an active role in the making of Still Alice, not only in working with Westmoreland to adapt Lisa Genova's novel of a successful academic's spiral into the hell of early-onset Alzheimer’s, but never missing a day of the film's shoot. By the time of his death he was able to communicate only by tapping a specially-modified iPad with his big toe.
Born in New York in 1952, Glatzer segued from University Of Virginia English PhD student to screenwriting tutor in his home town and from there into Los Angeles' television industry. He produced daytime show Divorce Court, parlaying that experience into his first film project, Grief (1993), a drama based around a corrosive daytime TV studio.
Teaming up with his life partner, Glatzer made the Sundance-acclaimed Quinceañera (2006), a movie set in LA's Echo Park where the pair lived, before moving on to Kevin Kline drama The Last Of Robin Hood (2013) and 2001's The Fluffer.
“I am devastated,” Westmoreland said in a statement. “Rich was my soulmate, my collaborator, my best friend and my life. Seeing him battle ALS for four years with such grace and courage inspired me and all who knew him.
"In this dark time, I take some consolation in the fact that he got to see Still Alice go out into the world. He put his heart and soul into that film, and the fact that it touched so many people was a constant joy to him."