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Alan J. Pakula: New York
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Although Alan J. Pakula came from television, he was fond of the wider 'scope frame and knew what to do with it in the most TV-unfriendly of terms. A widescreen presentation is essential to Klute: the negative space in cinematographer Willis' compositions typically lost to panning-and-scanning is as vital to the film's visual language as are the grungy New York sets. The print used for the DVD master was digitally cleaned, resulting in a 2.42:1 anamorphic transfer of tremendous clarity, if unforgiving luminance (don't watch this in the daytime); colour and contrast are ... impeccable, while compression artifacts are minimal. As for the audio, the Dolby 2.0 mono sound has a consistently pleasant timbre. Extras include: an 8-minute non-synch-sound short from 1971--Klute in New York: A Background for Suspense--that plays like a hygiene short; cast/filmmaker "highlights" (filmographies); and the theatrical trailer, which is in good shape but nigh unwatchable.-Bill Chambers
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Born and raised in New York, Pakula dabbled in high school theater, but he didn't consider a show business career until he took a summer job at Leland Hayward's talent agency. Pakula majored in drama at Yale, graduating in 1948. While working at Warner Bros. in 1949, Pakula directed a Los Angeles stage production of Antigone that caught producer Don Hartman's eye. Hartman got Pakula a job reading scripts at MGM in 1950, and took Pakula with him to Paramount in 1951, where Pakula eventually got to produce his first film, Fear Strikes Out (1957). A docudrama about a baseball player's mental illness, Fear Strikes Out was a critical success for Pakula and his novice movie director Robert Mulligan.
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Pakula died in 1998 in a bizarre car accident on the Long Island Expressway in Melville, New York at the age of 70. A driver in front of him struck a metal pipe, which went through Pakula's windshield, striking him in the head and causing him to swerve off the road and into a fence, killing him instantly.
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Alan Jay Pakula ( April 7 , 1928 - November 19 , 1998 ) was an America n film producer, writer and director noted for his contributions to the conspiracy thriller genre. Pakula was born in New York to Polish Jewish parents and was educated at Yale University , where he majored in drama .
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