Alan Trustman, who wrote the screenplays Thomas Crown case and PauletteThe 1968 film sequel starring Steve McQueen in two of his most memorable roles has died. He was 95 years old.
Trustman died on February 5 at a nursing home in Miami, his son, John Trustman, said New York Times.
Trustman also co-wrote They call me Mr. Tibbs! (1970), crime drama directed by Gordon Douglas and starring Sidney Poitier as police detective Virgil Tibbs in the sequel to the Academy Award-winning Best Picture film. In the heat of the night (1967).
Trustman was working as a Harvard-trained corporate lawyer at a large Boston law firm in 1967 when he worked on the idea of writing a film about a bank robbery. “I knew I could never write a book,” he told author John Spooner years ago. “But maybe I could write a movie.”
Through his university connections, Trustman found the name of a literary agent in New York and pitched his story to him, and it ended up becoming Thomas Crown case. The film was filmed primarily in Boston, directed by Norman Jewison and produced by Walter Mirisch, and starred McQueen as the dashing millionaire character and Faye Dunaway as insurance investigator Vicki Anderson.
Five months later Thomas Crown case was shown for the first time, Paulette It was a hit in theaters, with Trustman and Harry Kleiner receiving a screenplay credit for their adaptation of the 1963 novel by Robert L. Fish.
It was Trustman who suggested that Englishman Peter Yates make his US directorial debut with the thriller in which McQueen plays San Francisco cop Frank Bullitt and one of cinema’s greatest car chases. (Trestman admired Yates’ work in the chase scene in the 1967 film theft.)
Born Alan Robert Trustman on December 16, 1930 in Brookline, Massachusetts, he attended Boston Latin School and Phillips Exeter Academy and took a summer job at the First National Bank of Boston at the age of fifteen.
He graduated from Harvard in 1952 and Harvard Law School in 1955 and eventually went to work for the Boston law firm Nutter McClennen & Fish, where his father, Benjamin A. Trustman, Partner. (His father would serve as director of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.)
Trustman told Spooner that he pursued a career in films out of boredom with the retirement of his favorite NFL player, New York Giants quarterback O’Title. “Suddenly, I had nothing to do on Sunday afternoon,” he said. “But I’ve had an idea for a long time about how to rob the First National Bank of Boston.”
He convinced Jewison to direct the film after taking him on a tour of the bank and showing him how the robbery would be done.
In a 2014 interview, Trustman said he was “originally writing Paulette For New York City. But when producers Philip D’Antoni, Robert Relyea and McQueen wanted to move it to San Francisco, I was thrilled. I told them that in the summer of 1954, I was working there at the law firm of Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro and was familiar with the city.
“I learned that when you drive a light car like a Ford down a ramp in San Francisco, as we often do at 2 a.m., it takes off and flies into the air as you cross some intersection. When we were discussing PauletteI suggested the Mustang, which was still a completely new model of car in 1968. Steve was ecstatic. He couldn’t wait to try it.”
Trustman subsequently retired from law Paulette And Mirisch chose him to write They call me Mr. Tibbs. It is also set to star McQueen Le Mans (1971) but he had a falling out with the actor and Kleiner replaced him.
Then he participated in writing the film’s scripts Ice Lady (1973), starring Donald Sutherland and Jennifer O’Neill He hits! (1973), starring Billy Dee Williams and Richard Pryor; He wrote in two films in 1976, Crime and passion and Next guy; He was an executive producer on Tracker (1988); He adapted Raymond Chandler’s story for a 1995 episode of the Showtime anthology series Fallen angels.
He also wrote novels, taught screenwriting at Harvard University, New York University, and the University of Miami, and did currency trading.
In addition to his son, survivors include his fourth wife, Barbara, a psychiatrist whom he married in 2008; His daughter, Lori. His sister, Patty. And 11 grandchildren. She was his third wife Playboy Cartoon Magazine Editor Michelle Urey; They were married from 1989 until her death in 2006.
