Screenwriter, director, and actor Scott Spiegel, 67, has died, it was announced on Sept. 2. A long-time friend of director Sam Raimi, Spiegel cowrote the script of Evil Dead II with him. Spiegel was friends with so many up-and-comers in the 1970s and ’80s, and helped hook them up with each other for various films: Joel and Ethan Coen, Holly Hunter, Frances McDormand, Kathy Bates, Quentin Tarantino. Spiegel wrote and directed many films himself, though most of them were shorts or indies (and Three Stooges tributes): Curse of the Werewolf, The James Hoffa Story, Six Months to Live, The Blind Waiter, Intruder, Spring Break ’83. He also acted, in Uncivil War Birds, It’s Murder!, The Final Round, The Evil Dead, Lionheart, Darkman, The Quick and the Dead, Spider-Man, Drag Me to Hell. Director Bruce Campbell posted that “Scott Spiegel was a huge part of my formative years back in Michigan. From Sunday School to being stock boys together, to Evil Dead II, which Scott co-wrote, I can’t look in the rear-view mirror without seeing this unique guy doing cheap gags.”
