Peter Hyams

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Peter Hyams (born July 26, 1943 in New York City ) is an American cameraman and film director .

Life

The son of Broadway agent Barry Hyams and his wife Ruth began studying art and music at Syracuse University at the age of 17 and made a name for himself as a jazz drummer. He played u. a. with Bill Evans and Maynard Ferguson in New York nightclubs. After completing his studies, he worked as a news anchor for the broadcaster CBS between 1964 and 1970 . This work was not particularly suited to him, so he went to Vietnam and made a war documentary there, which was followed by other documentaries for television.

In 1970 Hyams moved to Los Angeles, where he sold his screenplay for Tanja Baskin - a call is enough - to the film company Paramount Pictures the following year . He produced the film adaptation of a girl from the provinces who wants to make her fortune in Chicago, with Herbert Ross as director and Candice Bergen in the lead role. Further productions for television followed until he made his debut as a film director in 1974 with Trace of Violence . The film tells the story of a couple of police officers whose idealism fades in the course of the plot.

With the Capricorn company , he made a highly regarded and commercially successful science fiction film about the first manned Mars landing, which is only faked and is intended to dupe the public. This was followed by the action film The Deadly Triangle with Harrison Ford and the space western Outland - Planet of the Damned with Sean Connery . In 1983, A Judge Sees Red appeared with Michael Douglas .

The reactions to the film version from 2010 were extremely mixed : The year in which we made contact with Roy Scheider in the leading role of Dr. Floyd . The film was based on a model by Arthur C. Clarke , which he wrote as a sequel to his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey and against whose director Stanley Kubrick Hyams had to be measured. In other films, Hyams stayed true to the action genre. Presidio (also with Sean Connery), Narrow Margin - 12 hours of fear provided exciting entertainment without depth. Timecop and Sudden Death made Jean-Claude Van Damme famous . The social satire Stay Tuned, however, flopped . The productions Das Relikt and End of Days - Night Without Tomorrow primarily offered suspense and visual effects, which Hyams has been particularly keen to develop since 2010 .

Peter Hyams not only writes the script himself for many of his films, as the only top Hollywood director he is almost always his own cameraman.

In many of Peter Hyams' films, one of the supporting characters is called Spota - almost always a villain. The name goes back to the maiden name of his wife, with whom Hyams has been married since 1964 and lives in Los Angeles.

Their son, John Hyams , works as a director and producer in the film business. In his film Universal Soldier: Regeneration , Peter Hyams took over the role of cameraman. His son, in turn, was in charge of editing at Hyams' Enemies Closer in 2013 .

Filmography (selection)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Hyams, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American film director
DATE OF BIRTH July 26, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City , New York, United States