Colin Higgins

Hollywood screenwriter, director, producer, Colin Patrick Higgins was born on July 28th, 1941 in Nemea, New Caledonia, a French territorial island in the South Pacific. His mother was Australian and his father American. Colin spent his childhood in a suburb of Sydney Australia. The Higgins family grew to six sons, including a set of twins. As Colin’s father, a purser on the Matson Steam Ship Lines, was at sea for months at a time, Colin’s mother had her hands full. She often took the boys to live musicals and American movies. Colin often said the seeds of his film career were planted then. In the late Fifties, the Higgins family moved to Redwood City, California. Colin won an English scholarship to attend nearby Stanford University.

In the fall of 1959, his freshmen year, Colin performed in a student written musical comedy show and was such a hit, he became a star on campus overnight. Being an English major, he had always thought writing would be a natural goal. But now he was drawn to acting as well. Colin dropped out of Stanford in his sophomore year. He hitchhiked across the country to New York and studied acting at the Actor’s Studio for a few months. With the Vietnam war heating up and facing the draft, Colin volunteered for service in the U.S. Army.

In 1967, Colin received his Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Stanford. Colin signed on for a six-month hitch as a merchant seaman on a freighter bound for the Orient. Fired in Guam for laughing at something while the Captain was speaking, Colin had to pay his own way back to the States. Broke, unsure of what he wanted to do with his life, he hitchhiked to Montreal, Canada for the Exposition/ World’s Fair. There the imaginative films presented at several of the pavilions inspired him. He decided to become a filmmaker.

In the fall of 1968, he entered U.C.L.A. Film School. Three years later, Colin’s Master’s thesis script was Harold and Maude. Over a weekend, it was sold to Paramount. Colin was supposed to have directed but ended up being one of the producers. With no stars, or advance publicity, Colin’s debut film bombed at the box office and was quickly yanked from distribution. Colin, however, wrote a novel version for Lippincott.

In August of 1988, shortly after his 47th birthday, Colin passed away from AIDS related illnesses. His legacies, however, will be lasting – the laughter of his films, plus his on-going charitable Foundation. These alone will insure that Colin Higgins will long be remembered, not just for his heart-warming films, but also for his extraordinary humanity.

http://www.colinhiggins.org/colin-hig...