Jeremy Thomas, Oscar-Winning Producer for Bertolucci, Cronenberg, and Herzog’s ‘Bucking Fastard,’ Dead at 77 — SkimNews
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- Jeremy Thomas died September 11 at age 77, confirmed by his family, at his country home in Oxfordshire, surrounded by family and loved ones
- Thomas won the Best Picture Oscar producing Bernardo Bertolucci's 1987 epic 'The Last Emperor,' an independently financed production that took three years to make
- Thomas produced David Cronenberg's 1996 'Crash' at Cannes — where jury president Francis Ford Coppola took particular offense — as well as Cronenberg's 'A Dangerous Method' and 'Naked Lunch'
- Thomas founded the Recorded Picture Company in the 1970s, launching with Jerzy Skolimowski's Cannes-winning 'The Shout' (1978), starring Alan Bates, Susannah York, and John Hurt, now headed to the Criterion Collection
- Thomas produced over 40 films across nearly 60 years, collaborating with Jonathan Glazer ('Sexy Beast'), Jim Jarmusch ('Only Lovers Left Alive'), Terry Gilliam ('Tideland'), Nicolas Roeg ('Bad Timing'), and Nagisa Oshima ('Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence')
- Thomas was born July 26, 1949; among his final producing credits were Werner Herzog's Venice competition title 'Bucking Fastard' (starring Rooney and Kate Mara) and Takashi Miike's 'Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo,' premiering this week at TIFF
Why it matters: Thomas's death closes a chapter on auteur-driven, independently financed cinema at a moment when his final two productions — Herzog's 'Bucking Fastard' and Miike's 'Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo' — are still working the festival circuit at Venice and TIFF. Across nearly 60 years and 40-plus films, he repeatedly bankrolled boundary-pushing, often controversial work (Cronenberg's 'Crash,' Gilliam's 'Tideland') that major studios refused to touch, giving directors final-cut latitude that has become rare.
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