Richard Glatzer

Richard Glatzer was a gay American filmmaker born in Flushing, New York, in 1952, best known for the films he wrote and directed with his husband, Wash Westmoreland. Their breakthrough, Quinceañera (2006), about a pregnant teenager in East Los Angeles, won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at Sundance. The couple went on to make The Last of Robin Hood (2013) before directing Still Alice (2014), an adaptation of Lisa Genova's novel about a linguistics professor with early-onset Alzheimer's, which won Julianne Moore the Academy Award for Best Actress. Glatzer made the film after being diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS); as the disease progressed during production, he directed largely by typing instructions with one finger on an iPad. He and Westmoreland married in September 2013. Glatzer died of complications from ALS on March 10, 2015, having watched Moore win her Oscar from an intensive care unit weeks earlier.