Curtis Hanson 8 Mile L.A. Confidential Director Curtis Hanson Dies at 71 He directed L.A. Confidential, almost universally regarded as one of the best American films of the 1990s. He made a popular thriller inThe Hand That Rocks the Cradle, one of the better chick-lit adaptations ever in In Her Shoes, and introduced Eminem while humanizing him for a mass audience in 8 Mile. Curtis Hanson enjoyed a directing career that spanned five decades, from the early 1970s to the 2010s, and included 13 feature films and an Academy Award in 1997 for co-writing L.A.