Hal Needham - Living, Loving, Thinking, Again

『読売』の記事；

キャノンボール…米映画監督ニーダムさん死去

　ＡＰ通信によると、米映画監督のハル・ニーダムさんが２５日、ロサンゼルスで死去した。
　８２歳だった。
　１９６０年代にスタントマンとして活躍。監督としては、映画「トランザム７０００」（７７年）、「キャノンボール」（８１年）などのヒット作で知られる。
　２０１２年に米アカデミー賞名誉賞を受賞した。
（2013年10月27日10時48分読売新聞）
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/entertainment/news/20131027-OYT1T00301.htm

また、LA Timesの記事；

Hal Needham, veteran Hollywood stuntman and director, dies at 82

By Steve Chawkins This post has been corrected. See note below for details.
October 25, 2013, 3:39 p.m.
Hal Needham, a highly regarded Hollywood stuntman and director of frothy, adrenaline-pumped films like "Smokey and the Bandit" and "Cannonball Run," has died. He was 82.
Needham died Friday in Los Angeles, according to his business managers at Laura Lizer and Associates. No other details were immediately available.
Born in Memphis, Tenn., Needham spoke with a down-home twang.
He was a fixture in the movie business for most of his working life. In a stunt career that spanned hundreds of TV episodes and feature films, he tumbled down cliffs, leaped off boulders, jumped from planes, tottered off balconies and plunged from towers. He was rattled in blasts and blistered in fires. He broke 56 bones, including, twice, his back. He punctured a lung, damaged his hearing, lost a few teeth and was knocked out countless times but maintained a sunny outlook even after swooping into the unknown territory of directing.
If it doesn’t work out, he told an interviewer in 1979, "I can go back and fall on my head any time."
The son of sharecroppers, Needham spent most of his childhood so deep in the Ozarks, as he liked to joke, that "you had to pump the sunshine in." Dropping out of school after eighth grade, he worked as a tree trimmer in St. Louis before joining the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division in 1951. Three years and many jumps later, he left the service and headed west with three pairs of jeans, six T-shirts, a buddy and no particular plan.
"I knew I wasn’t qualified to be a brain surgeon and I figured I would have to do something dangerous to make money," he wrote in his 2011 memoir, "Stuntman! My Car-Crashing, Plane-Jumping, Bone-Breaking, Death-Defying Hollywood Life."
In 2012, Needham received a Governors Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The academy, which gives no Oscars for stunt work, cited Needham as "an innovator, mentor and master technician who elevated his craft to an art and made the impossible look easy."
A full obituary will follow at latimes.com/obits.
[For the Record, 4:35 p.m. Oct. 25: This post originally said that Needham was given a Motion Picture Academy Governors Award this year. The award was given in 2012.]
http://www.latimes.com/obituaries/la-et-mn-hal-needham-director-stuntman-dies-20131025,0,5895908.story#axzz2iswg0UqQ

『トランザム7000』や『キャノンボール』のシリーズはまさに映画そのものであった。車（人）が走る（移動する）、そして障壁が現れ、その障壁を乗り越えてまた走る（移動する）。Moving picture（活動写真）そのものだ。ところで、『キャノンボール』って香港資本だったんだね*1。だからジャッキー･チェンや許冠文（Michael Hui）が出ているわけだ（しかも日本人役で）。