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Marvin J. Chomsky, the Emmy-winning director and producer who helmed episodes of beloved TV shows like “Roots” and “Star Trek,” died Monday, his son Peter Chomsky confirmed to Variety. He was 92.

A prolific director of the small-screen with a career spanning four decades, Chomsky won four Emmys over the course of his career, all for his work on various miniseries or television films: “Holocaust” in 1978, “Attica” in 1980,” “Inside the Third Reich” in 1982 and “Peter the Great” in 1986. He was additionally nominated for four other Emmys, and won two Director’s Guild of America awards out of four nominations.

Born in 1929 in New York City, Chomsky got his start in television as an art director and set director, before scoring his first directing credits in 1964, helming three episodes of medical drama “The Doctors and the Nurses.” Over the course of the 60s and early 70s, he directed episodes of numerous well-known and popular television series,...

Marvin J. Chomsky, a four-time Emmy-winning director whose credits include the seminal 1977 miniseries Roots, Holocaust and dozens of TV series including the original Star Trek and Hawaii Five-o, died Monday. He was 92.

His son, producer Peter Chomsky, told Deadline that his father died in his sleep but gave no other details.

Hollywood & Media Deaths In 2022: Photo Gallery

The elder Chomsky already was a veteran TV director when he scored an Emmy nomination for helming two episodes of the groundbreaking slavery saga Roots. He went on to win Emmys for directing the harrowing 1978 miniseries Holocaust, telefilms Attica (1980) and Inside the Third Reich (1982) and the Maximilian Schell-led miniseries Peter the Great (1986). He earned nominations for helming Evita Peron (1981), Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna (1986) and Billionaire Boys Club (1987), also scoring an Outstanding Miniseries nom as the latter’s supervising producer.

When he accepted his Emmy for Inside the Third Reich, Chomsky...

Marvin J. Chomsky, a four-time Emmy award winning director of iconic miniseries including “Roots” and “Attica,” as well as shows like “Star Trek,” has died. He was 92.

“Marvin Chomsky made a difference in our world using the medium of motion pictures to both entertain and educate viewers,” his son Peter Chomsky told TheWrap, adding that Chomsky died in his sleep on Monday.

Chomsky famously said upon accepting his third Emmy that his awards had come for directing projects about events that “never should have happened.” And though he was only nominated for 1977’s “Roots,” despite the series winning a historic nine Emmys, he later won directing awards for “Holocaust” (1978), “Attica,” (1980) “Inside the Third Reich” (1982) and “Peter The Great” (1986).

And while he won acclaim for his long career directing projects and miniseries about historical events, Chomsky also did extensive work on series including “Star Trek,” “Hawaii Five-o,” “The Wild, Wild West,...

Editor’s Note: On Nov. 14, 2005, Variety published the following interview with Mort Sahl. The revolutionary comedian, who died on Oct. 26, provided an unfiltered view on the entertainment industry, from Depression-era cinema and the Hollywood blacklist to how current films tackle race, politics and culture.

For half of the last century and on into the next one, Mort Sahl, 78, has been the comedic conscience of America. Since 1968, when he debuted at San Francisco’s legendary Hungry i nightclub, he’s been walking onstage in his trademark V-neck sweater, a newspaper tucked under his arm, serving notice to every pundit and politician from Eisenhower through Bush that there was nowhere to hide.

He was the original truth-teller, pioneering a new kind of stand-up — barbed bipartisan political humor — paving the way for everyone from Lenny Bruce to Woody Allen to Chris Rock.

In 1958, he co-hosted the Oscars. In 1960, Time magazine put him on the cover,...

Mort Sahl, a trailblazing political satirist whose biting wit and uncompromising intellect broadened the world of conventional standup comedy, died Tuesday in Mill Valley, Calif. He was 94.

The New York Times confirmed his death with his friend, Lucy Mercer.

In 1953, when Sahl first appeared at the Hungry i, a San Francisco folk singer’s hangout, he was an unknown with little stage experience. But his rapid-fire monologues about politics, social trends and fads quickly earned him the nickname “Rebel Without a Pause.”

“The three great geniuses of the period were Nichols and May, Jonathan Winters and Mort Sahl,” Woody Allen told New York magazine in 2008. Allen credited Sahl’s intellectual brand of humor for getting him into comedy. “He was the best thing I ever saw,” Allen said in another interview. “He totally restructured comedy. He changed the rhythm of the jokes.”

In 2011, his live 1955 recording “Mort Sahl at Sunset...

A rather pedestrian presentation of a potentially fascinating story, Vanessa Lapa’s “Speer Goes to Hollywood” expands on a little-known footnote to the Hydra-headed history of the post-war fates of top Nazi lieutenants. It is based on the 1972 recordings of conversations between Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect, friend and wartime munitions minister, and screenwriter Andrew Birkin (the Kubrick protegé who co-wrote “The Name of the Rose” and directed “The Cement Garden”) as they collaborate on a screenplay based on Speer’s memoir “Inside the Third Reich.” But Lapa’s embellished archival doc falls some way short of the cinephile/history lover’s catnip that tantalizing summation promises.

For one thing, here Speer does not, in fact, go to Hollywood. The conversations were recorded in the Heidelberg home where he lived following his release from prison after serving the 20-year sentence handed down at the Nuremberg trials. That Speer did not...

Rutger Hauer, the versatile Dutch leading man of the ’70s who went on star in the 1982 “Blade Runner” as Roy Batty, died July 19 at his home in the Netherlands after a short illness. He was 75.

Hauer’s agent, Steve Kenis, confirmed the news and said that Hauer’s funeral was held Wednesday.

His most cherished performance came in a film that was a resounding flop on its original release. In 1982, he portrayed the murderous yet soulful Roy Batty, leader of a gang of outlaw replicants, opposite Harrison Ford in Ridley Scott’s sci-fi noir opus “Blade Runner.” The picture became a widely influential cult favorite, and Batty proved to be Hauer’s most indelible role.

More recently, he appeared in a pair of 2005 films: as Cardinal Roark in “Sin City,” and as the corporate villain who Bruce Wayne discovers is running the Wayne Corp. in Christopher Nolan’s “Batman Begins.

Tom Steyer, the liberal billionaire who has gotten more than 6 million Americans to sign a petition calling for the impeachment of President Trump, was a target of the alleged MAGABomber, Cesar Sayoc. Last Friday, postal authorities intercepted an improvised explosive device mailed to Steyer, similar to those sent to more than a dozen prominent Trump critics.

Far from taking the presidential high road, Trump blasted Steyer on Twitter on Sunday after seeing the Democrat interviewed on CNN. “He comes off as a crazed & stumbling lunatic,” Trump tweeted, “who should be...

Cinematographer who honed his style on Ken Loach's innovative TV dramas

The cinematographer Tony Imi, who has died aged 72, was instrumental in pioneering a new style of filming television drama in the 1960s, before he moved on to feature films. Few could forget the misfortunes that befell a homeless young couple and their children in Cathy Come Home, a programme that shocked the nation and was instrumental in the formation of the charity Shelter.

Imi's handheld camera, on the move and close up to the action, made the story chillingly real, in the vein of a current affairs programme, rather than fiction. Cathy Come Home, screened as part of the groundbreaking Wednesday Play series by the BBC in 1966, proved that TV drama could be relevant to the lives of people in Britain.

The director, Ken Loach, was in the early days of establishing his method of social-realist film-making – shooting...