Ruud van Hemert was a Dutch film director known especially for comedy. In the 1970s he helped produce and direct TV shows on VPRO before starting a career as a film director.
Biography
Ruud van Hemert was the son of television producerWilly van Hemert, and followed in his father's footsteps, making two television films for the VPRO, TV-Eiland, and Pepijn op wieletjes documentary Oranje Vrijstaat, which had controversial politician Roel van Duijn as a central figure. His career took off when he cooperated with Wim T. Schippers, Gied Jaspars, and Wim van der Linden on such shows as De Fred Hachéshow, Barend is weer bezig, and Van Oekel's Discohoek, a series of TV shows that are credited with changing Dutch television forever by destroying it as a medium for serious and proper programming. Van Hemert was already 46 when he made his debut as a film director in 1984 with the film Schatjes!, one of the biggest box-office hits in Dutch cinema. In Schatjes!, a dark family comedy, guerrilla warfare between disturbed parents and their disruptive children leads to chaos and mayhem ; the film drew 1.5 million visitors, making it one of the most successful Dutch films ever. Van Hemert followed up with a sequel in 1986, ', another commercial success with 2 million tickets sold. Variety noted that while the anti-bourgeois mentality of the TV shows he did for the VPRO was maintained in the films, van Hemert himself said he was influenced more strongly by Hollywood cinema. Dutch films of the period were generally influenced by Hollywood; other "Hollands Hollywood" productions were Dick Maas's De Lift and Flodder. 1988's Honneponnetje, a follow-up to Schatjes! and Mama is boos, was not well received by critics—it was "no more than a thousandfold-retold wet dream from a frustrated teenager". His career did not fare well during the 1990s, when he was unable to get financing for his scripts. He built a house in Spain and taught acting. He returned, with some success, in 2001 with I Love You Too, based on a novel by Ronald Giphart, and in 2004 his last film, '. His career, however, went downhill. He wrote about his frustrations with the film industry in a book called Bruut, and retired to Spain. In 2008 he survived prostate cancer, but in 2011 he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of throat cancer and he died the year after, at the house of friends in Wapserveen.
