Elon Dershowitz Dies: ‘Reversal Of Fortune’ & ‘Fallen’ Producer Was 64
Elon Dershowitz, a producer on such films as Reversal of Fortune, Fallen and The Whole Truth and son of prominent attorney Alan Dershowitz, died August 17 of a stroke, his family said. He was 64.
The younger Dershowitz was a co-producer on Reversal of Fortune, the 1990 film based on the nonfiction book by his father and scripted by Nicholas Kazan. Jeremy Irons won his only Oscar for playing the lead role of Claus von Bülow, the real-life British lawyer who was convicted in 1982 of trying to kill his wife Sunny and leaving her in a permanent vegetative state. Von Bülow hired Alan Dershowitz to work on an appeal, and his convictions were overturned. He was found not guilty in a second trial.
Ron Silver played Alan Dershowitz in the movie, which also earned Oscar noms for Kazan and director Barbet Schroeder.
“He brought it to Hollywood,” Alan Dershowitz told news syndicator JNS, saying it was his son’s . “He went around shopping it. He persuaded the company to do it. He helped pick the stars. He was a very important part of that film.”
Elon Dershowitz was an executive producer on Fallen, the 1998 serial-killer thriller starring Denzel Washington, John Goodman and Donald Sutherland. His producing credits also include two other Kazan-penned features — The Whole Truth (2016) and Dream Lover (1994), which Kazan also directed — along with Martians Go Home (1989). He also served as an assistant on Oliver Stone’s Wall Street (1987) and Talk Radio (1988).
Born on June 23, 1961, in Cambridge, MA, the younger Dershowitz also was a producer on the Kazan-scripted telefilm The Advocate’s Devil, based on the Alan Dershowitz book, and ESPN’ telepic’s Pete Rose on Trial, Whose Curse Is Worse: Red Sox and Cubs on Trial and Break Up the Bombers: Yankees on Trial (2004). He also was producing his father podcast The Dershow and had a bit role in Steven Soderbergh’s 2009 film The Girlfriend Experience.
Alan Dershowitz also told JNS that his son was diagnosed with a brain tumor at age 10, and doctors said he wouldn’t live to see his Bar Mitzvah at 13.
The elder Dershowitz made his name defending celebrities in high-profile cases including Patty Hearts, Mike Tyson, Julian Assange and more recently Harvey Weinstein. He was served as an adviser to the “Dream Team” that defended O.J. Simpson in “the trial of the century,” worked on Jeffrey Epstein’s defense in the mid-2000s and represented President Donald Trump in his first impeachment trial. He also wrote dozens of books.
Along with his father, Dershowitz is survived by his stepmother, Carolyn; brother Jamin and sister Ella and their families; and other extended family. His mother, Sue, died in 1983.
