Richard Glatzer, 'Still Alice' Writer and Director, Dies

By Mike Barnes

Richard Glatzer, who courageously battled the debilitating effects of ALS as he wrote and directed the Julianne Moore film Still Alice with his husband, Wash Westmoreland, has died, a source confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter. He was believed to be 62.

He passed away less than three weeks after the Oscars ceremony. Glatzer was taken by ambulance to a Los Angeles hospital two days before the ceremony with severe respiratory problems. He and Westmoreland planned to watch the Oscar telecast from the hospital.

“Not so glamorous, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. And Richard will be alive to see it,” Westmoreland wrote on his Facebook page.

Glatzer and Westmoreland adapted Still Alice from a novel by Lisa Genova. Shortly before they took on the project in 2011, Glatzer was diagnosed with ALS, and his condition rapidly deteriorated. Still, he never missed a day of filming.

At the end, Glatzer was able to “speak” only by tapping the big toe of his right foot on a specially designed iPad.

“My medical condition made reading the book quite difficult for me,” he told NPR in a recent interview. “It just cut too close to the bone. But once I’d finished it, I felt determined to make Still Alice into a movie. It really resonated with me.”

“From my point of view, the one thing the movie does is really look at the role of a caregiver,”Westmoreland said in a January interview with the WGA West. “That is certainly my own life now. I am primarily a caregiver.

Watch the trailer for Still Alice: 

“If we’ve shined any light on that, I would be very pleased and proud. I’ll say, also, that when you’re looking after someone who is ill day in and day out, looking after every need they have, it can be very, very tough, and making the film and now watching the film, I myself am inspired to do better, to serve better, to love better, to be more emotionally present — no matter how tough the days can be. It might sound silly that I draw inspiration from my own film, but I do.”

Glatzer and Westmoreland met in 1995 and married in 2013.

They made their first splash as filmmakers with Quinceanera (2006), a film about a pregnant 14-year-old Latina girl (Emily Rios) growing up in L.A.’s Echo Park neighborhood (the pair had moved into the area a few years earlier). The drama took the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival.

They also teamed on The Last of Robin Hood (2013), the drama that starred Kevin Kline as aging Hollywood swashbuckler Errol Flynn, and The Fluffer (2001), which was set in the porn industry.

A native of New York, Glatzer received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia and taught screenwriting in NYC at the School of Visual Arts and The New School.

He came to L.A. to produce TV’s Divorce Court, and using that experience, wrote and directed Grief(1993), which featured Illeana Douglas in a story about a sleazy daytime TV show.

Glatzer also produced the Tyra Banks reality show America’s Next Top Model.

Photo: Associated Press