Renowned producer and champion of filmmaking Edward Pressman has died. The producer was known for his work on dozens of movies, including American Psycho, Hoffa, and Paterno. Pressman’s career spanned over three decades and included nearly 100 films across various genres. Pressman’s major contributions to the film industry include producing Oliver Stone’s Wall Street in 1987, considered a defining movie of the 1980s.
He also produced The Hand in 1981, where he met his future wife, Annie McEncroe. He was known for his dedication to highly literate and quirky movie projects.
Pressman told the New York Times about film producing that,
Pressman began his career in the film industry after studying for a year at the London School of Economics, where he met Paul Williams. Together, they jointly produced a short film called Girl in 1967 and a feature film called Out of It in 1969. Pressman went on to have a successful career as a producer.
“The hardest thing I’ve learned over the years is that I’m getting paid a lot of money to produce a movie, but sometimes the best thing to do is nothing. I don’t need to impose myself.”
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Pressman will be remembered for his contributions to the film industry and his ability to bring powerful and influential stories to the big screen.
Producer Edward Pressman Championed for Directors, Genres, and Actors Careers
Pressman guided the early works of iconic directors such as Brian De Palma, Terrence Malick, Oliver Stone, and Kathryn Bigelow. He was a producer on Blue Steel, Kathryn Bigelow’s feature film debut, and 30 years later, she became the first woman to win the Oscar for Best Director for The Hurt Locker. Although Mr. Pressman and his company, Pressman Film, worked with major studios, he was partial to independent films such as those by Malick, especially early in his career.
He was known for his pioneering work bringing pulp magazine and comic book characters to the big screen, a move that was truly ahead of its time in the early 1980s. Conan the Destroyer (1984) was based on a pulp character created in the 1930s. Mr. Pressman’s comics-inspired films included The Crow as well as Judge Dredd.
Pressman viewed his job as bringing together the right director, writer, and actor, as with Hoffa — he persuaded David Mamet to write a screenplay, recruited Mr. Nicholson to star, and, after a few other candidates proved not to be a good fit, made an unconventional choice for the director: the comic actor Danny DeVito.
