George Armitage, who co-wrote and directed the Alec Baldwin-starring Miami Blues and helmed another 1990s black comedy, Grosse Pointe Blank, starring John Cusack, has died. He was 83.
Armitage died Feb. 15 in Playa del Rey, California, his son, Brent Armitage, announced.
As was the case with many others, Armitage got a big career boost in the early 1970s from legendary B-movie producer Roger Corman at New World Pictures.
Armitage also wrote and directed MGM’s Hit Man (1972), starring Bernie Casey and Pam Grier, and United Artists’ Vigilante Force (1976), starring Kris Kristofferson and Jan-Michael Vincent. Both those films were produced by Roger’s brother, Gene Corman.
Miami Blues (1990), based on the series of Hoke Moseley books by author Charles Willeford, featured Baldwin as Frederick J. Frenger Jr., who steals the badge and gun of a veteran cop (Fred Ward as Moseley) and embarks on an outrageous crime spree with a hooker (Jennifer Jason Leigh).
He scored again with Grosse Pointe Blank (1997), in which Cusack portrayed a professional assassin who attends his 10-year high school reunion in the Detroit suburb.
The youngest of two sons, George Brendan Armitage was born in 1942 in Hartford, Connecticut. He moved to Los Angeles with his family in 1957 and majored in political science and immersed himself in film school at UCLA.
While in college, he landed a job in the mailroom at 20th Century Fox and within 18 months was working as an associate producer on ABC’s Peyton Place under the guidance of producer Everett Chambers in 1967.
His first screenplay, the renegade youth comedy Gas-s-s-s or It Became Necessary to Destroy the World in Order to Save It (1970), caught the attention of Roger Corman.
In the summer of 1970, Corman was heading to Ireland to direct the war film Von Richthofen and Brown (1971) and offered Armitage a role in the film while he worked on his script. He met the movie’s publicist, future director Jonathan Demme, and the two would become lifelong friends.
For Corman, Armitage also wrote and/or directed Private Duty Nurses (1971), Night Call Nurses (1972), Caged Heat (1974), Darktown Strutters (1975) and Fighting Mad (1976).
Much later, he directed and produced The Big Bounce (2004), based on a novel by Elmore Leonard and starring Owen Wilson.
In addition to his son, survivors include his wife of 63 years, Sharon; daughter-in-law Rhonda Sena; grandchildren Caroline and Nick Armitage; niece Wendy Svehlak-Thorlakson, a producer; and nephew Dennis Thorlakson, an editor.
“I have a very personal relationship to film,” Armitage once said. “I’ve gone to films all the time since I was a kid. I thought I could have some fun trying to make them. I always thought I was pretty close to what people were thinking.
“There’s lots of tricks to be played, things to be done in film. Film is so close to the way the mind works — the way the mind communicates with itself. Film is a dream, an emotional coda.”
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