Benedict Fitzgerald, finest often known as the screenwriter of The Passion of the Christ, died at residence in Marsala, Sicily after an extended sickness on January 17, 2024. He was 74 and no trigger of dying was given by his household.
He first gained popularity of his screenplay adaptation of Flannery O’Connor’s novel Wise Blood, cowritten together with his brother, Michael. The movie, produced in 1979 by Michael and Kathy Fitzgerald and directed by John Huston, starred Brad Dourif, Harry Dean Stanton, and Ned Beatty.
Fitzgerald specialised in literary adaptions, amongst them Zelda, (starring Natasha Richardson and Timothy Hutton) in 1993; Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in 1993 (starring John Malkovich); a tv mini-series of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood in 1996 (starring Eric Roberts, Anthony Edwards and nominated for two primetime Emmy Awards, together with Outstanding Miniseries) and Moby Dicok in 1998 (starring Patrick Stewart as Ahab and nominated for five primetime Emmy awards).
The Passion Of The Christ (2004), the fruit of a two-year collaboration with Mel Gibson, turned the largest-grossing unbiased movie of all-time.
Fitzgerald was born March 9, 1949, in New York. He was the second baby of Sally Fitzgerald (The Habit of Being, letters of Flannery O’Connor) and poet and translator Robert Fitzgerald, whose translations of Homer, Virgil, and Sophocles are thought of definitive to this present day. He was raised in (*74*), attended boarding college in Rhode Island and graduated from Harvard University in 1972.
He married Karen Mason in 1991. He is survived by his spouse, daughters Eugenie, Helena, and Olimpia, and three grandchildren, in addition to siblings Ughetta, Maria, Michael, Barnaby, and Caterina.
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