Nick Redman, Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker, award-winning soundtrack producer and co-founder of the Twilight Time video label, died Thursday afternoon, Jan. 17, at a Santa Monica Hospital, after a two-year battle with cancer. He was 63.
He was nominated for an Academy Award as producer of the 1996 documentary “The Wild Bunch: An Album in Montage,” a look back at Sam Peckinpah’s controversial film. He also produced and directed the 1998 “A Turning of the Earth: John Ford, John Wayne and The Searchers,” about the making of the Western classic, a prizewinner at multiple film festivals.
In 2007 he produced and directed the feature documentary “Becoming John Ford,” which debuted at the Venice International Film Festival and detailed the long and complex relationship between the famous director and 20th Century-Fox studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck.
He made numerous other short films including profiles of actress Stella Stevens and film composers Basil Poledouris and Jerry Fielding.
In 2011, Redman co-founded the independent home-video label Twilight Time, which has released hundreds of classic films on DVD and Blu-Ray. His was a familiar voice for his dozens of well-informed commentary tracks, both for Twilight Time and other labels.
As a consultant to the Fox Music Group since 1993, he supervised one of Hollywood’s first and most comprehensive film-music restoration programs, restoring hundreds of 20th Century-Fox film and television scores. In 1994, The Film Music Society recognized him with its Film Music Preservation Award for his pioneering work at Fox.
Prior to his association with Fox, he spent three years as projects director for Culver City-based Bay Cities Records.
Redman produced several hundred albums featuring the music of dozens of major Hollywood composers including Alfred Newman, Bernard Herrmann, Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Alex North, Hans Zimmer, James Horner, Michael Kamen and many others. He particularly championed the work of Lalo Schifrin and Jerry Fielding, premiering on disc such film-score classics as Schifrin’s original “Dirty Harry” and Fielding’s complete “The Wild Bunch.”
He earned gold-certification plaques for his production of the “Star Wars Trilogy” box for Arista Records in 1996, and “Star Wars: A New Hope” for RCA Victor in 1997.
A longtime member of BAFTA, he conducted many video interviews for its Heritage Archive including those of actors Malcolm McDowell, Sir Ben Kingsley, Ian McShane, Tilda Swinton, Millicent Martin, director Michael Apted and producer Kevin Brownlow. A respected film historian, he also wrote for “DGA Magazine” and “Film Score Monthly.”
Redman was born in Wimbledon, South West London, in 1955. He worked for the U.K. Ministry of Defense in the early 1970s, studied drama at Kingston College and, as he often said, “played Neanderthal thugs” on British television series. He became an assistant producer on various projects, worked at the BBC and moved to the U.S. in 1988.
Survivors include his wife, writer Julie Kirgo of Santa Monica; his daughter Rebecca Redman of Louisville, Ky.; a brother, Jonathan Redman of England; and stepchildren Anna Kaufman and Daniel Kaufman. A memorial service has not yet been scheduled.
