site.btaDirector Ted Kotcheff Ready with Script for Film about King Boris III and Bulgarian Jews' Rescue from Holocaust

Sofia, August 12 (BTA) - Bulgarian-Canadian film and television director and producer Ted Kotcheff is ready with a script for a film about Bulgarian King Boris III and the saving of the Bulgarian Jews from deportation to the Nazi death camps during WW II. "Half of the work is done, what remains is to find the money," Kotcheff said here on Friday evening at the press launch of the Bulgarian translation of his autobiography (written with Josh Young) "Director's Cut: My Life in Film."

He will try to recruit some great British actor for the part of Boris. "I want a big star for this project, and I hope to find the rest of the cast here, in Bulgaria. Boris was aware that this battle would cost him his life, and it did, but he nevertheless did it, and I wish we had more people like him. This is a story about ethics and courage," the prominent film director said.

Born in Toronto to the family of immigrants from Bulgaria, Kotcheff, 86, said that in Canada his father built a house that was an exact replica of his previous house in Plovdiv. It was furnished with Bulgarian things, and his mother cooked Bulgarian meals, he said. "Everybody in my family sung Bulgarian songs, danced horos and often cried because they wanted to go back to Bulgaria," Kotcheff recalled.

Asked about his movie "First Blood" (1982, the first in the Rambo series), the director said he was inspired by the pointlessness of the Vietnam War and the veterans' fate. "When they returned from the war, unlike other veterans, they were often ostracized: the Left said they were a gang of baby killers, and the Right that they were a bunch of cowards who had bungled it up," Kotcheff pointed out. "When statistics were published showing that 1,000 of these veterans attempted suicide every year and 350 of them succeeded, I decided it was high time to make a movie about those men who were sent to fight but, back home, they were treated like trash," the filmmaker commented.

"When I was six years old, i.e. 80 years ago, my father told me: 'I want you to write a book and, when you publish it, to put our family name on the cover.' Dad, wherever you are, I hope you're happy," Kotcheff said, referring to his autobiography.

Sofia International Film Festival Director Stefan Kitanov said that the book has been published in four countries only: the US, Canada, Britain and Bulgaria, i.e. in the languages spoken by Ted Kotcheff's family. Kitanov recalled that the director became a Bulgarian citizen last year and noted that this book is actually his ID card: "You can simply show it and everybody will know who you are".

Kotcheff takes credit for some of the most prominent films made in the 1970s and 80s ("Wake in Fright", "First Blood", "Uncommon Valor", "Weekend at Bernie's", "Fun with Dick and Jane", "North Dallas Forty"). "Director's Cut" is not just a memoir but tells about his life and trade, his work with stars of the magnitude of Gregory Peck, Ingrid Bergman, Gene Heckman, Sylvester Stallone and Jane Fonda, and about the snares of fame.