James Foley, a journeyman director best known for “Glengarry Glen Ross,” has died. He was 71.
He died earlier this week after a yearlong battle with brain cancer, his representative, Taylor Lomax, said Friday (May 9).
In his long and varied career, Foley directed Madonna music videos, 12 episodes of House of Cards and the two Fifty Shades of Grey sequels, but it was his 1992 adaptation of David Mamet’s foulmouthed Pulitzer Prize winning play that stood above the rest. Although it wasn’t a hit at the time, “Glengarry Glen Ross” wormed its way into the culture and grew into an oft-quoted cult favorite, especially Alec Baldwin’s made-for-the-film “always be closing” monologue.
Critic Tim Grierson wrote 20 years after its release that it remains “one of the quintessential modern movies about masculinity.” He added, “while there are many fine Mamet movies, it’s interesting that the best of them was this one – the one he didn’t direct.”
Born on Dec 28, 1953, in Brooklyn, Foley studied film in graduate school at the University of Southern California. Legend has it that Hal Ashby once wandered into a film school party where his short happened to be playing at the time and he took a liking to him. Foley would later attribute his ability to make his first feature, Reckless, a 1984 romantic drama about mismatched teenagers in love starring Daryl Hannah, Aidan Quinn and Adam Baldwin, to the Ashby stamp of approval. It was also the first screenplay credited to Chris Columbus, though there were reports of creative differences.
He followed it with the Sean Penn crime drama At Close Range, the Madonna and Griffin Dunne screwball comedy Who’s That Girl and the neo-noir thriller After Dark, My Sweet, with Jason Patric. Critic Roger Ebert included After Dark, My Sweet in his great movies list, calling it “one of the purest and most uncompromising of modern film noir” despite having been “almost forgotten.”
He also directed several music videos for Madonna including Papa Don’t Preach, Live to Tell, and Who’s That Girl, and an episode of Twin Peaks.
Foley adapted John Grisham and worked with Gene Hackman on The Chamber and made the Reese Witherspoon and Mark Wahlberg teenage love-gone-scary thriller Fear, as well as the largely derided Halle Berry and Bruce Willis psychological thriller Perfect Stranger, which was released in 2007.
It would be a decade before his next film was released, when he was given the reigns to the Fifty Shades of Grey sequels, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed.
“For me, what’s most challenging is stuff that doesn’t involve the actors, oddly enough – in three, there’s a big car chase and there’s different stunts and stuff and that stuff really bores me,” he told The Associated Press at the UK premiere of Fifty Shades Darker. “So when the actors aren’t around, that’s difficult because the actors give me so much energy and kind of engagement and a car driving by doesn’t do the same thing.”
Foley was not an easily definable director, but that was by design. In 2017, he told The Hollywood Reporter that he had no interest in repeating himself.
“I’ve always just followed my nose, for better or for worse, sometimes for worse,” Foley said. “What’s best and what’s worst (about the industry) are almost the same to me. What’s worst is you get pigeonholed and what’s best is I haven’t been. It means that I’m still making movies, despite hopping all over the place.”
Foley is survived by his brother, Kevin Foley, and sisters Eileen and Jo Ann.
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