One of the biggest Hollywood directors – Ted Kotcheff is once again in Sofia. He was born in Canada in the family of Bulgarian emigrants. After graduating in English Literature from the University of Toronto, at the age of twenty-four he became the youngest director on the staff of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He is the director of emblematic movies like The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz that won the Golden Bear Award at the Berlin International Film Festival and brought Kotcheff an Oscar nomination for screenplay. Ted Kotcheff has been nominated for a Golden Palm Award twice for Wake in Fright (1971) and Joshua Then and Now (1985).

The director is in Bulgaria for a second time at the invitation of the Sofia Film Festival. He says Sofia has changed a lot since the times of communism and also told us about his friendship with great Bulgarian erudite Petar Ouvaliev aka Pierre Rouve – film producer, critic, writer, translator and lecturer.

Ouvaliev was the producer of the movie Blow-up by Antonioni. The movie was too long and Kotcheff was offered to make it shorter. The great Michelangelo Antonioni used all suggestion made by then 28-year-old Kotcheff, who still remembers Antonioni saying: “In Italy we do not consider dialogue in movies to be so important like you do in Hollywood. For us movies are pictures, images and dialogue should be left for theater.” Today Kotcheff admits that when writing his scripts he always strives to draw pictures.

Among the movies shown during the Sofia Film Festival is First Blood, starring Sylvester Stallone. It is curious that the cult movie has two endings. The producer did not want to leave Rambo alive and the movie crew decided to test the audience in Las Vegas. After Rambo’s suicide somebody in the cinema shouted: “If the director of this movie is here he should go hang himself.” People were saying the action movie was brilliant but killing the main character at the end was not tolerable. The producer panicked but Kotcheff showed him a paper with an alternative ending for Rambo. The DVD version actually contains both endings. But which one is Kotcheff’s favorite?

“The happy ending is the popular one but the sad one is the more intelligent. I have made both and that is why I like both of them.”

For decades Ted Kotcheff has been dreaming about shooting a film about saving the Bulgarian Jews during the time of ruling of Tsar Boris III.

“For forty years I have wanted to create such a film but when I speak in Hollywood about this story nobody believes me,” the director says. “They say that if it was true, everyone would have known about it. But it is true. Actually, when I started writing the script I had talks with the royal family, with Simeon II, and his sister Maria-Louisa." The screenplay is almost ready now and the director is looking for financing.

The director counts on subsidies from Canada but when he receives his new Bulgarian passport he would be also able to apply for European financing. At the opening of the cinema festival Ted Kotcheff received the Sofia Award for his contribution to the art of cinema. A day later he also received the Golden Age order of the Ministry of Culture.

English: Alexander Markov