Tony Scott, director of such features as Top Gun, True Romance, and Days of Thunder, jumped to his death off of the Vincent Thomas Bridge in San Pedro, Los Angeles, CA, according to The Wrap. He was 68. [See updates below.]

A suicide note was found in Scott’s car, which was parked on one of the eastbound lanes of the bridge. Reports state that Scott climbed a fence on the south side of the bridge’s apex and leapt off around 12:30pm. The director jumped “without hesitation,” according to The Breeze.

Ron Palillo, best remembered for his role as the geeky and gawky, yet loveable Arnold Horshack who made up part of the quartet of Sweathogs on the ABC sitcom Welcome Back Kotter, died of a heart attack today at his home in West Palm Beach Florida. He was 63.

Palillo’s death marks the second death of an actor who portrayed a Sweathog on Welcome Back Kotter. Robert Hegyes, who played Juan Epstein, died in late January of this year. The surviving members of those fun-loving high school juvenile delinquents who helped make the show such a success during its original run from 1975-1979 are Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs (who played Freddie “Boom Boom” Washington) and of course, John Travolta, who played Vinnie Barbarino.

Comics legend Joe Kubert, who was one of the most important artists and writers in comics history, helping to create Sgt. Rock for DC comics, as well as working for long periods on Hawkman, Tarzan, and many other books, has passed away today at the age of 85.

Later in his career, Kubert worked on a number of non-fiction works, such as Fax from Sarajevo, Dong Xoai, Vietnam 1965, and more personal works such as Jew Gangster and Yossel. Kubert still remained active in the comics field, providing inks for his sons Adam and Andy’s comics work.

Kubert was born September 18, 1926 in southeast Poland. His family emigrated to Brooklyn, New York, when he was two months old. Kubert began working in comics at a very early age, and went on to attend Manhattan’s High School of Music and Art. From there, he began work at many different companies during the early days of the industry, before reaching DC where he had his greatest success in the 50’s and 60’s.

Today marks the birthday of one of cinema’s most influential actors, the late John Cazale, who, although he passed away almost 35 years ago, is still fondly remembered by his peers and moviegoers alike for having the distinction of appearing in some of the best remembered and well known movies of the 1970s, including The Godfather.

Cazale’s resume, although short, spanning only five films, still remains one of the most well rounded pedigrees of any actor before or since. Each of the films he appeared in either won or was nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award: The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, The Conversation, Dog Day Afternoon, and The Deer Hunter. Cazale played the slow, strangely confident, yet ultimately tragic “runt of the litter” Corleone brother Fredo in the first two Godfather films (also appearing posthumously in more ways than one in the third Godfather installment); he played Gene Hackman’s assistant who helped with the paranoid, sly surveillance company that Hackman ran by the seat of his pants in The Conversation (all three aforementioned films were written or co-written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola); he was the dim-witted yet ruthless bank cohort to Al Pacino’s main protagonist/antagonist in Dog Day Afternoon (directed by Sidney Lumet), and finally, was the third wheel to the group of tight friends in the intense and memorable Vietnam production The Deer Hunter (directed by Michael Cimino). In The Deer Hunter, released shortly after his death from bone cancer in 1978 at the young age of 42, Cazale clearly looks rather emaciated, but still gives the type of performance and characterization he was best remembered for in his brief career.

Carlo Rambaldi, the three-time Academy Award-winning Italian-born visual effects artist responsible for creating the alien E.T. in Steven Spielberg’s E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, died today in Lamezia Terme, Italy after a long illness, according to the Washington Post. He was 86 years old.

Born on September 15, 1925 in Vigarano Mainarda, Emilia-Romagna, Italy, Rambaldi got his start in the Italian film industry providing visual effects for films such as Bloody Pit of Horror and Mario Bava’s highly influential sci-fi chiller Planet of the Vampires. He would later reunite with Bava to execute the gory murder sequences for one of the acclaimed filmmaker’s finest films, Twitch of the Death Nerve (a.k.a. A Bay of Blood). In 1971, Rambaldi’s mutilated dog effects for Lucio Fulci’s psychedelic giallo Lizard in a Woman’s Skin were deemed so realistic that the director was prosecuted in Italian court on charges of animal cruelty. Only after Rambaldi presented the fake dog effects in court was Fulci exonerated.