Adam Somner, an assistant director and producer who worked with such luminaries as Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese, died Wednesday at 57.
The award-winning Brit lost his battle with anaplastic thyroid cancer, according to a press release shared with TheWrap by his PR agency. His other notable film collaborations included Paul Thomas Anderson on “Licorice Pizza” and “Phantom Thread,” and Ridley Scott on “Gladiator,” “Hannibal” and “Black Hawk Down.”
Spielberg, who worked with Somner on 12 films, including “War of the Worlds,” “Lincoln” and “West Side Story,” remembered him fondly as “an icon in his field” and said, “Going back to work without Adam will never be the same.”
He added, “The job title ‘assistant director’ is insufficient to describe what Adam Somner was to me and the contribution he made to my films — just as my left arm is more than just an assistant to my right. He worked as AD, and producer and he performed both of those tasks with equal measures of devotion. He loved making movies. He loved being on the set. It was his gridiron. He was a cheerleader and ball carrier and at times I couldn’t tell if he was following my lead or I was following his.”
Scorsese wrote that although Somner was credited as an AD and a producer on three of his films, “his presence meant more to me and to the films than any credits could really even indicate.”
The director praised Somner’s “discipline of a general on the battlefield” and “a unique ability to work as closely with me or with any director as two dancers doing a routine or two musicians bouncing off each other.”
Added Scorsese, “I would never have been able to make ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ or Killers of the Flower Moon’ without him, and we were in the middle of planning another project. He passed away far too early, and I will miss him terribly. He loved ‘making pictures,’ as he put it. He was one of the finest collaborators I could ask for, and I know that my fellow directors would say the same.”
Anderson wrote, “Adam loved making films more than anyone else ever in the history of the movie business. It was food and drink to him. He made everyone who worked with him feel safe. He saw everything from all sides at once and had a back up plan to the back up plan to the back up plan.”
The “Phantom Thread” director added, “He moved mountains and trucks and people like he was moving a salt shaker across a table. It was glorious to watch him work. He knew how to make a film better than anyone else. His intuition and talent was second only to how deeply funny and loving he was. Most of all and above everything, he was generous. “
Anderson continued, “I would rank him in the Kobe Bryant, Mick Jagger, Winston Churchill category of Legends. And that would be under-selling it.”
Somner was Oscar-nominated for “Licorice Pizza” and won the DGA Feature Film Award for his work with Alenandro Inarritu on “The Revenant.”
He is survived by his wife, Carmen Ruiz de Huidobro, his children, Olivia and Bosco and his brother, Mark Somner.
A DGA scholarship in Somner’s name will be established with donation details forthcoming.
