# John Frankenheimer John Frankenheimer (1930-2002) was an American film and television director regarded as a pioneer of the modern political thriller. As director of [[Seven Days in May]] (1964) -- and *The Manchurian Candidate* (1962) -- he is the cinematic architect of the coup-and-hidden-control vocabulary that [[The Octopus]] frame draws on. ## Career Frankenheimer began in 1950s live television (CBS, *Playhouse 90*) before moving to features. His Cold War political thrillers *The Manchurian Candidate* and *Seven Days in May* became touchstones of the paranoid/coup genre; other notable films include *Birdman of Alcatraz* (1962), *Seconds* (1966), *Black Sunday* (1977), and *Ronin* (1998). He won multiple Emmy Awards in the 1990s for television movies including *Andersonville* and *George Wallace*. ## Epistemic status Frankenheimer's filmography and reputation are documented. His relevance here is purely cultural: he directed the film ([[Seven Days in May]]) that the civilian-control strand of the frame uses as its reference point. ## See also - [[The Octopus]] - [[Seven Days in May]] - [[John F. Kennedy]]