The NEW YORK TIMES finally reported about the death of Debra Hill.. Their paper has a series called OVERLOOKED, and it is about people of true impact that had their end of life moments go unreported by the old Gray Lady..
Debra Hill, you may recall is an amazing woman who was involved with the creation of the Halloween films and their mainstay as a horror cult classic..
She died in March of 2005..
The 1978 film, also directed by Mr. Carpenter and produced by Ms. Hill, starred Jamie Lee Curtis, 20 years old at the time, as a baby sitter terrorized by a murderous psychopath. Made on a modest $300,000 budget, it grossed $60 million worldwide, then a record for an independent movie, and began a seemingly endless chain of sequels.
Ms. Hill, Mr. Carpenter and Ms. Curtis returned for “Halloween II,” and Ms. Hill and Mr. Carpenter were involved in the writing of several later sequels, including “Halloween: Resurrection,” “Halloween 5” and “Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers.”
And now on May 22, 2019, the NEW YORK TIMES finally printed her obituary.. Long, long overdue.
Once a babysitter herself, with a taste for 1950s B-horror flicks, Hill wrote and produced “Halloween” with the director John Carpenter. Laurie endured as a symbol of female resolve, fending off her attacker and rebuilding her life.
“Here was a woman who didn’t run from danger, but stepped up to it,” Hill later told the author David Konow for his book “Reel Terror.”
Hill, those who knew her said, was equally audacious.
“Being a woman in show business is a scary situation,” Jamie Lee Curtis, who starred as Laurie and befriended Hill, said in a phone interview. “It’s a boys’ club, and she established herself, very early on, as a very thorough and capable producer.”
And more:
She was an exacting producer. As she told The Los Angeles Times in 1982: “I discovered very early that there are two ways for a woman producer to go. You could be aggressive, or you can be very nice. So I arrive on the set, in my tight jeans, and people wonder. Then they see I’m nice. Then, finally, they see I mean business.”
Curtis recalled that Hill scrutinized every receipt, keeping track of how many spools of thread and rolls of gaffer tape were used — and yet, said Curtis, Hill was “beloved” by her overwhelmingly male crews.
“She brought the proof that a woman can do anything in successful filmmaking that men do,” said Jeanine Basinger, a film historian. “They can make top box office blockbusters, they can make action films and genre films and horror films. She brought originality.”
