Bruce Kessler, ‘Knight Rider’ director, dead at 88
Bruce Kessler, best known for directing episodes of popular television shows such as The Monkees and Knight Rider, has died at the age of 88.
The director was also an avid racing driver in his youth, even becoming the last person to speak to James Dean before he was killed in a car crash. Kessler himself narrowly avoided death multiple times during his racing career before eventually stepping away from the wheel.
However, he soon merged his love for racing with cinema, making his first short film, The Sound of Speed, in 1962. The documentary short saw Lance Reventlow driving a Scarab around a racetrack, and it ended up competing at the Cannes Film Festival.
Kessler would quickly turn his attention to television instead of film despite this early glimpse of critical cinematic praise. During the mid-1960s, he began directing episodes of shows like The Monkees, created by Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, which became hugely successful and impactful on the landscape of popular music.
He also sat in the director’s chair for episodes of Mission: Impossible, which starred actors like Steven Hill, Barbara Bain and Sam Elliott. The show would go on to inspire one of the biggest movie franchises of all time.
Other television credits included The A-Team, The Flying Nun and Marcus Welby, MD. Clearly, Kessler didn’t limit himself to any one genre, although he seemed to lean towards detective and crime dramas the most, such as The Rockford Files and Barnaby Jones, among others.
Kessler did try his hand at directing a few feature films, ranging from the magic-themed exploitation film Simon, King of the Witches to a comedy about two men who pretend to be gay to avoid getting drafted into the army, The Gay Deceivers.
In an article for Santa Cruz Sentinel, the filmmaker’s brother, Stephen Kessler, wrote about his sibling’s deteriorating health shortly before he passed away from an unspecified illness.
He described him as being “on last laps of his extraordinary life,” adding, “By the time I got there [the hospice] he was starting to slip, partly due to pain meds, and while he seemed to know who I was and was pleased to see me, he was not coherent and appeared to be close to the end.”
Kessler died a few days later, on April 4th, 2023, just over a week after turning 88.
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