Rush spent his childhood fascinated by Marcel Proust and Batman comics.[citation needed] He was one of the first students of UCLA's film program,[citation needed] and after graduation worked to create television programs for the United States military[clarify] showcasing the nation's involvement in the Korean War. While he agreed with the military's involvement in the region, Rush's participation in this conflict can be seen as a defining event for the director who later explained:
There's a recurring theme that I keep getting attracted to in film. . . . Being unable to accept truth, we have a tendency to accept systems, and to believe in a series of learned homilies and arbitrary rituals of good and evil, right and wrong. Magic, king, country, mother, God, all those burning truths we got from our early bathroom training from bumper stickers and from crocheted pillow cases. When it's right to kill. When it's not right to kill. Under what circumstances. Arbitrary rules invented for the occasion. And we really dedicate ourselves to them ferociously. And they tend to obscure any real human feeling or any real morality that might emerge to substitute for it.[citation needed]
After his military-related work, Rush opened a production company to produce commercials and industrial films.
Early Features
At the age of thirty, inspired by the neo-realism of French director François Truffaut's The 400 Blows, Rush sold his production business to finance his first feature Too Soon to Love (1960), which he produced on a shoestring budget of $50,000 and sold to Universal Pictures for distribution for $250,000. It featured an early film appearance by Jack Nicholson (who starred in two later Rush films, Hells Angels on Wheels and Psych-Out).
Rush's next movie, in 1974, was Freebie and the Bean. For the most part, Freebie was critically panned; however, it was enormously popular with audiences, grossing $12.5 million at the box office[4][5] on a $3 million budget[6] in the two years following its release.
In 1981, Truffaut was asked "Who is your favorite American director?" He answered, "I don’t know his name, but I saw his film last night and it was called The Stunt Man."[9] The film, which took Rush nine years to put together,[citation needed] was a slapstick comedy, a thriller, a romance, an action-adventure, and a commentary on America's dismissal of veterans, as well as a deconstruction of Hollywood cinema. The film also features Rush's typical protagonist, an emotionally traumatized male who has escaped the traditional frameworks of society only to find his new world (biker gangs in Hells Angels on Wheels, hippies in Psych-Out) corrupted by the same influences. The Stunt Man won Rush Oscar nominations for best director and best script (co-nominated with Lawrence B. Marcus).[10]
Later career
Rush originally wanted to direct the horror comedy Love at First Bite (1979) as his first film after The Stunt Man, but was replaced by Stan Dragoti.[11] In 1985, Rush was hired by Carolco Pictures to direct Air America (1990) with Sean Connery and Kevin Costner starring. When the film was delayed to avoid competition with Good Morning, Vietnam (1987) and when Connery and Costner's salaries became too expensive, Rush was paid full salary to walk away from the project by Daniel Melnick.[12] This allowed the studio to cast Mel Gibson and Robert Downey, Jr. and turn the film into a success, grossing nearly double its budget.[13]
Rush did not direct another film for four years, until Color of Night. Conflicts with Andrew G. Vajna over the final cut were so turbulent that Rush suffered a near-fatal heart attack. Eventually they compromised, where Vajna's suggestions for the film were released onto theaters while Rush's "director's cut" (which was 18 minutes longer) would be released onto home video. The film was a financial failure with audiences, but it found a second life on video; the film also won "Best Sex Scene in film history" award from Maxim magazine;[1] Rush was very proud of the award, and he kept the award in his bathroom.[14]
Afterward, Rush retreated from the world of commercial cinema. As Kenneth Turan of The Los Angeles Times wrote, Rush's career seems to be "followed by the kind of miserable luck that never seems to afflict the untalented."[15]
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