Joe Buck (Jon Voight) with Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman) in John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy
In the second instalment with Nancy Buirski on Desperate Souls, Dark City And The Legend Of Midnight Cowboy (special advisor Martin Scorsese) we discuss Jon Voight as Joe Buck with the little girl reading a Wonder Woman comic, Jennifer Salt’s Crazy Annie and Sylvia Miles’s Cass in Midnight Cowboy. John Schlesinger with Dp Adam Holender showing New York the way it really was, a Roberta Flack song and William Wyler’s adaption of Lilian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour, starring Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn, Nancy’s longtime cinematographer Rex Miller, Far From The Madding Crowd and Vietnam, Brian De Palma on Dennis Hopper and the “international invasion”, and screenwriter Waldo Salt also came up.
Nancy Buirski on Crazy Annie (Jennifer Salt) with Joe Buck (Jon Voight): “Many of the women in...
In the second instalment with Nancy Buirski on Desperate Souls, Dark City And The Legend Of Midnight Cowboy (special advisor Martin Scorsese) we discuss Jon Voight as Joe Buck with the little girl reading a Wonder Woman comic, Jennifer Salt’s Crazy Annie and Sylvia Miles’s Cass in Midnight Cowboy. John Schlesinger with Dp Adam Holender showing New York the way it really was, a Roberta Flack song and William Wyler’s adaption of Lilian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour, starring Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn, Nancy’s longtime cinematographer Rex Miller, Far From The Madding Crowd and Vietnam, Brian De Palma on Dennis Hopper and the “international invasion”, and screenwriter Waldo Salt also came up.
Nancy Buirski on Crazy Annie (Jennifer Salt) with Joe Buck (Jon Voight): “Many of the women in...
- 7/13/2023
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Footage of late Sixties New York City seamlessly sways into Dustin Hoffman’s Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy stealing a handful of plum tomatoes and a coconut from a fruit stand with help from his new sidekick Joe Buck (Jon Voight). “These Eyes” sing Guess Who, and Lucy Sante comments that the film “could be an advertisement for anti-glamour and yet by doing this it manages to express the zeitgeist.”
Nancy Buirski’s masterful Desperate Souls, Dark City And The Legend Of Midnight Cowboy, edited with Anthony Ripoli is much more than a documentary on John Schlesinger’s multiple Oscar-winning film. Based on James Leo Herlihy’s novel, adapted by Waldo Salt, shot by Adam Holender, with costumes by Ann Roth, Midnight Cowboy features an impressive supporting cast, including Sylvia Miles, Brenda Vaccaro, Jennifer Salt, and...
Nancy Buirski’s masterful Desperate Souls, Dark City And The Legend Of Midnight Cowboy, edited with Anthony Ripoli is much more than a documentary on John Schlesinger’s multiple Oscar-winning film. Based on James Leo Herlihy’s novel, adapted by Waldo Salt, shot by Adam Holender, with costumes by Ann Roth, Midnight Cowboy features an impressive supporting cast, including Sylvia Miles, Brenda Vaccaro, Jennifer Salt, and...
- 6/29/2023
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Desperate Souls, Dark City and The Legend Of Midnight Cowboy director Nancy Buirski on Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo: “They become appealing because of these wonderful performances by Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman.”
Nancy Buirski’s masterpiece is much more than a documentary on John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy, screenplay by Waldo Salt, shot by Adam Holender, costumes by Ann Roth, and starring Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman with Sylvia Miles, Brenda Vaccaro, Jennifer Salt, and Bob Balaban. Desperate Souls, Dark City And The Legend Of Midnight Cowboy, edited by Anthony Ripoli, features on-camera interviews shot by Rex Miller with Lucy Sante, Brian De Palma, Edmund White, Michael Childers, Charles Kaiser, Jim Hoberman, Ian Buruma, Voight, Vaccaro, Balaban, Holender, and Jennifer Salt.
Brenda Vaccaro with John Schlesinger: “Ann Roth saved my life,” says Vaccaro, “by putting me in that fur coat.”
The evocative, wide-ranging, and evermore timely documentary drops us...
Nancy Buirski’s masterpiece is much more than a documentary on John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy, screenplay by Waldo Salt, shot by Adam Holender, costumes by Ann Roth, and starring Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman with Sylvia Miles, Brenda Vaccaro, Jennifer Salt, and Bob Balaban. Desperate Souls, Dark City And The Legend Of Midnight Cowboy, edited by Anthony Ripoli, features on-camera interviews shot by Rex Miller with Lucy Sante, Brian De Palma, Edmund White, Michael Childers, Charles Kaiser, Jim Hoberman, Ian Buruma, Voight, Vaccaro, Balaban, Holender, and Jennifer Salt.
Brenda Vaccaro with John Schlesinger: “Ann Roth saved my life,” says Vaccaro, “by putting me in that fur coat.”
The evocative, wide-ranging, and evermore timely documentary drops us...
- 6/26/2023
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy professes to be something more than just a documentary about the making of Midnight Cowboy: an extremely ambitious film attempting to navigate the impact and cultural presence of John Schlesinger’s masterpiece while also exploring the history of American queer cinema, the death of the Western in the mainstream, and the counter-culture of the ’60s transforming into the nihilism of the 1970s. Packing so much information and so many perspectives into 101 minutes occasionally comes across as overstuffed. But Desperate Souls’ sheer enthusiasm for Midnight Cowboy and the cultural period is infectious, a vibe that compensates for certain faults holding it back from becoming a truly great documentary.
While structurally ambitious in its approach to montage, the precise cutting is flawed and fragmented. Transitions between interviews and archival footage are often awkward and lackluster, and editing plays slightly rushed during...
While structurally ambitious in its approach to montage, the precise cutting is flawed and fragmented. Transitions between interviews and archival footage are often awkward and lackluster, and editing plays slightly rushed during...
- 6/23/2023
- by Logan Kenny
- The Film Stage
Click here to read the full article.
A hot trend in publishing these days is to write an entire book about the making of one seminal movie. In the last few years there have been books about West Side Story (the 1961 Oscar winner, not the Spielberg remake), The Wild Bunch, Chinatown and The Godfather, to name a few. Glenn Frankel, who wrote earlier books about the making of High Noon and The Searchers, followed up last year with Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic. Now that book has in turn inspired a new documentary by Nancy Buirski, which is playing in both Venice and Tellurida.
Although a 101-minute movie will never have the breadth or depth of a 340-page book, Buirski’s film does have the advantage of providing revealing on-camera interviews with several of the movie’s principals, including actors Jon Voight,...
A hot trend in publishing these days is to write an entire book about the making of one seminal movie. In the last few years there have been books about West Side Story (the 1961 Oscar winner, not the Spielberg remake), The Wild Bunch, Chinatown and The Godfather, to name a few. Glenn Frankel, who wrote earlier books about the making of High Noon and The Searchers, followed up last year with Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic. Now that book has in turn inspired a new documentary by Nancy Buirski, which is playing in both Venice and Tellurida.
Although a 101-minute movie will never have the breadth or depth of a 340-page book, Buirski’s film does have the advantage of providing revealing on-camera interviews with several of the movie’s principals, including actors Jon Voight,...
- 9/2/2022
- by Stephen Farber
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2022 Venice Film Festival. Zeitgeist Films and Kino Lorber releases the film in select theaters on Friday, June 23.
Perhaps the most explicit and emotionally intense film of the New Hollywood era — and yet in its “Odd Couple” theme and wistful sensibility a profoundly Old Hollywood film, too — “Midnight Cowboy” remains littered with contradictions. Gay and tender, its representation of sex is vile. It’s nostalgic and hopeless; a celebration of the counter-culture and, seemingly, an indictment of its decadence. All that makes Nancy Buirski’s new documentary about its production and legacy more interesting.
Not that “Midnight Cowboy” isn’t already fruitful subject matter. James Leo Herlihy’s radical 1965 novel was picked up by British kitchen sink filmmaker John Schlesinger, who related to its themes of repressed homosexuality, loneliness, victimhood and how our identities are, in truth, whatever we want them to be.
Perhaps the most explicit and emotionally intense film of the New Hollywood era — and yet in its “Odd Couple” theme and wistful sensibility a profoundly Old Hollywood film, too — “Midnight Cowboy” remains littered with contradictions. Gay and tender, its representation of sex is vile. It’s nostalgic and hopeless; a celebration of the counter-culture and, seemingly, an indictment of its decadence. All that makes Nancy Buirski’s new documentary about its production and legacy more interesting.
Not that “Midnight Cowboy” isn’t already fruitful subject matter. James Leo Herlihy’s radical 1965 novel was picked up by British kitchen sink filmmaker John Schlesinger, who related to its themes of repressed homosexuality, loneliness, victimhood and how our identities are, in truth, whatever we want them to be.
- 9/1/2022
- by Adam Solomons
- Indiewire
Pictures like Midnight Cowboy pulled everyone my age group into the movies, while the entire older generation likely stopped going to movies altogether. John Schlesinger’s masterpiece can boast a number of firsts, and deserves the high praise it receives from every angle — this was the epitome of progressive filmmaking circa 1969.
Midnight Cowboy
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 925
1969 / Color / 1:85 widescreen/ 113 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date May 29, 2018 / 39.95
Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Sylvia Miles, John McGiver, Brenda Vaccaro, Barnard Hughes, Ruth White, Jennifer Salt, Anthony Holland, Bob Balaban, Viva, Ultra Violet, Taylor Mead, Paul Morrissey, Pat Ast, Marlene Clark, Sandy Duncan, M. Emmet Walsh.
Cinematography: Adam Holender
Film Editor: Hugh A. Robertson
Production Design: John Robert Lloyd
Original Music: John Barry
Written by Waldo Salt, based on the novel by James Leo Herlihy
Produced by Jerome Hellman, Kenneth Utt
Directed by John Schlesigner
Midnight Cowboy is perhaps the...
Midnight Cowboy
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 925
1969 / Color / 1:85 widescreen/ 113 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date May 29, 2018 / 39.95
Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Sylvia Miles, John McGiver, Brenda Vaccaro, Barnard Hughes, Ruth White, Jennifer Salt, Anthony Holland, Bob Balaban, Viva, Ultra Violet, Taylor Mead, Paul Morrissey, Pat Ast, Marlene Clark, Sandy Duncan, M. Emmet Walsh.
Cinematography: Adam Holender
Film Editor: Hugh A. Robertson
Production Design: John Robert Lloyd
Original Music: John Barry
Written by Waldo Salt, based on the novel by James Leo Herlihy
Produced by Jerome Hellman, Kenneth Utt
Directed by John Schlesigner
Midnight Cowboy is perhaps the...
- 5/26/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Stars: Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Sylvia Miles, John McGiver, Georgann Johnson | Written by Waldo Salt | Directed by John Schlesinger
“Where’s that Joe Buck?” the Texan locals ask. Here he is: it’s Jon Voight, a New Yorker playing a Deep Southern wannabe gigolo in flamboyant cowboy getup. Voight looks as pretty as his daughter playing the doe-eyed Joe, who ditches his grimy cafe job and sets off for the Big Apple to make a living sleeping with wealthy older women, while Fred Neil’s insufferably catchy “Everybody’s Talkin’” hums on the soundtrack.
Joe is confident and fearless, simple and childlike, but NYC isn’t all he hoped. Nothing of what he hoped. He’s a fish out of water. Shot from low angles, Manhattan appears more vertical and dwarfing than ever (Joe was the tallest structure back in Texas). This is Manhattan from a much scuzzier era: all neon vice and deviancy,...
“Where’s that Joe Buck?” the Texan locals ask. Here he is: it’s Jon Voight, a New Yorker playing a Deep Southern wannabe gigolo in flamboyant cowboy getup. Voight looks as pretty as his daughter playing the doe-eyed Joe, who ditches his grimy cafe job and sets off for the Big Apple to make a living sleeping with wealthy older women, while Fred Neil’s insufferably catchy “Everybody’s Talkin’” hums on the soundtrack.
Joe is confident and fearless, simple and childlike, but NYC isn’t all he hoped. Nothing of what he hoped. He’s a fish out of water. Shot from low angles, Manhattan appears more vertical and dwarfing than ever (Joe was the tallest structure back in Texas). This is Manhattan from a much scuzzier era: all neon vice and deviancy,...
- 5/25/2018
- by Rupert Harvey
- Nerdly
Of all the ‘depressed relationship’ dramas of the early ’70s, this may be the most rewarding. It also sports one of the longest titles on record. Paul Zindel’s award-winning play gets a marvelous adaptation for the screen, thanks to Alvin Sargent, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. There’s also the stealth input of the star couple’s daughter Nell Potts, whose restrained performance is the happy opposite of mawkish and maudlin.
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
Blu-ray
Twilight Time
1972 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 101 min. / Street Date February 20, 2018 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95
Starring: Joanne Woodward, Nell Potts, Roberta Wallach, Judith Lowry, David Spielberg, Richard Venture, Jess Osuna, Will Hare.
Cinematography: Adam Holender
Film Editor: Evan A. Lottman, Craig McKay, assistant
Original Music: Maurice Jarre
Written by Alvin Sargent from the play by Paul Zindel
Produced and Directed by Paul Newman
The late-’60s freedom of...
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
Blu-ray
Twilight Time
1972 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 101 min. / Street Date February 20, 2018 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95
Starring: Joanne Woodward, Nell Potts, Roberta Wallach, Judith Lowry, David Spielberg, Richard Venture, Jess Osuna, Will Hare.
Cinematography: Adam Holender
Film Editor: Evan A. Lottman, Craig McKay, assistant
Original Music: Maurice Jarre
Written by Alvin Sargent from the play by Paul Zindel
Produced and Directed by Paul Newman
The late-’60s freedom of...
- 2/24/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Initially a bustling urban backdrop for this new and correspondingly modern medium known as cinema, New York City has been a focal point of American movies since the inception of the form itself. Movies were made to move, and no place moved like NYC. At first, it was the city alone that dazzled filmgoers: the sheer scope and scale of Manhattan’s topography, the size of the city’s towering skyscrapers, the clustered ebb and flow of its lively population. Then stories emerged out of this concrete jungle, stories born from the teeming metropolitan setting: immigrant tragedies, gangster tales, social dramas of class inequality and economic expansion. Before long, Hollywood coopted New York, and suddenly, the bi-coastal portrayal of the Big Apple featured posh penthouses, swanky nightclubs, and a decidedly one-sided representation of the haves and have-nots (Hollywood liked the haves). As an alternative, independent filmmakers took the city’s...
- 6/30/2017
- MUBI
Drug addicts! Who in 1970 really knew what life was like for them? Jerry Schatzberg, Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne's story of hell on the streets of NYC provided a stunning debut for Al Pacino -- and should have done the same for Kitty Winn. It sounds too tough to watch, but it's riveting. The Panic in Needle Park Blu-ray Twilight Time Limited Edition 1971 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 109 min. / Ship Date June 14, 2016 / available through Twilight Time Movies / 29.95 Starring Al Pacino, Kitty Winn, Alan Vint, Richard Bright, Marcia Jean Kurtz, Raul Julia, Joe Santos, Paul Sorvino Cinematography Adam Holender Film Editor Evan Lottman Original Music Ned Rorem Written by Joan Didion, John Gregory Dunne from the novel by James Mills. Produced by Dominique Dunne, Roger M. Rothstein Directed by Jerry Schatzberg
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
We all know how the 1970s upheaval in Hollywood brought new talent to film -- actors,...
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
We all know how the 1970s upheaval in Hollywood brought new talent to film -- actors,...
- 6/26/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
It's a shock to go back and watch "Midnight Cowboy" 45 years after its debut (on May 25, 1969) and see how raw and otherworldly it looks. After all, the X-rated Best Picture Oscar-winner has been so thoroughly assimilated into American pop culture that even kiddie entertainments like the Muppets have copied from it.
The tale of the unlikely friendship between naïve Texas gigolo Joe Buck (Jon Voight) and frail Bronx con man Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), "Midnight Cowboy" was initially considered so risqué that it's the only X-rated movie ever to win the Academy's top prize (though after it won, the ratings board reconsidered and gave the film an R). Still, the film featured two lead performances and a few individual scenes that were so iconic that homages (and parodies) have popped up virtually everywhere. (Most often imitated is the scene where Ratso, limping across a busy Manhattan street, is nearly...
The tale of the unlikely friendship between naïve Texas gigolo Joe Buck (Jon Voight) and frail Bronx con man Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), "Midnight Cowboy" was initially considered so risqué that it's the only X-rated movie ever to win the Academy's top prize (though after it won, the ratings board reconsidered and gave the film an R). Still, the film featured two lead performances and a few individual scenes that were so iconic that homages (and parodies) have popped up virtually everywhere. (Most often imitated is the scene where Ratso, limping across a busy Manhattan street, is nearly...
- 5/23/2014
- by Gary Susman
- Moviefone
Hunger Games DoP Tom Stern and 12 Years a Slave cinematographer Sean Bobbitt among those chosen for jury duty.
The 21st Camerimage, the International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography (Nov 16-23), has revealed the competition jurors who will judge entries at this year’s event in Bydgoszcz, Poland.
Jury members of the main competition jury are:
Tom Stern, cinematographer (Million Dollar Baby, Gran Torino, The Hunger Games);Ed Lachman, cinematographer (Erin Brockovich, The Virgin Suicides, I’m Not There);Todd McCarthy, journalist and film critic;Denis Lenoir, cinematographer (Paris, je t’aime, Righteous Kill, 88 Minutes);Adam Holender, cinematographer (Midnight Cowboy, Smoke, Fresh);Timo Salminen, cinematographer (The Man Without a Past, La Havre, The Match Factory Girl);Franz Lustig, cinematographer (Don’t Come Knocking, Land of Plenty, Palermo Shooting);Jeffrey Kimball, cinematographer (Top Gun, Mission: Impossible II, The Expendables).Polish Films Competition
Jost Vacano, the cinematographer behind several Paul Verhoeven films including Total Recall, RoboCop and [link...
The 21st Camerimage, the International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography (Nov 16-23), has revealed the competition jurors who will judge entries at this year’s event in Bydgoszcz, Poland.
Jury members of the main competition jury are:
Tom Stern, cinematographer (Million Dollar Baby, Gran Torino, The Hunger Games);Ed Lachman, cinematographer (Erin Brockovich, The Virgin Suicides, I’m Not There);Todd McCarthy, journalist and film critic;Denis Lenoir, cinematographer (Paris, je t’aime, Righteous Kill, 88 Minutes);Adam Holender, cinematographer (Midnight Cowboy, Smoke, Fresh);Timo Salminen, cinematographer (The Man Without a Past, La Havre, The Match Factory Girl);Franz Lustig, cinematographer (Don’t Come Knocking, Land of Plenty, Palermo Shooting);Jeffrey Kimball, cinematographer (Top Gun, Mission: Impossible II, The Expendables).Polish Films Competition
Jost Vacano, the cinematographer behind several Paul Verhoeven films including Total Recall, RoboCop and [link...
- 11/8/2013
- by michael.rosser@screendaily.com (Michael Rosser)
- ScreenDaily
"Urban" cinema tends to mean black cinema or cinema reflecting a "Ghetto" experience often from a youthful perspective. So I will that as a rough guide and then narrowing it down to crime related and violent features I'm going to look at some of the best from this "Genre", if it can really be called a genre.
1. La Haine (1995) Directed by Mathieu Kassovitz
La Haine is arguably the best "Urban" film ever made, certainly the most politically charged and the one with the most impacting ending. French Jewish director Mathieu Kassovitz may have gone on to make the crappy Gothica, but in 1995 he made the best film of the year. So the top film on my list is not American as you would expect, but French. In fact as far as I am aware, a decade after its release the film which took won best director and was nominated for...
1. La Haine (1995) Directed by Mathieu Kassovitz
La Haine is arguably the best "Urban" film ever made, certainly the most politically charged and the one with the most impacting ending. French Jewish director Mathieu Kassovitz may have gone on to make the crappy Gothica, but in 1995 he made the best film of the year. So the top film on my list is not American as you would expect, but French. In fact as far as I am aware, a decade after its release the film which took won best director and was nominated for...
- 4/7/2009
- by Leigh
- Latemag.com/film
Movie fans line up outside The Directors Guild Theater. (Photo: copyright Lee Pfeiffer/Cinema Retro)Alumni of a classic reunite: (L to R) John Barry, David V. Picker, Sylvia Miles, Jerome Hellman, Ann Roth and Adam Holender. (Photo: copyright Lee Pfeiffer/Cinema Retro)
By Lee Pfeiffer
Last night New York City became Hollywood-on-the-Hudson when The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hosted a 40th anniversary screening of Midnight Cowboy at The Directors Guild Theater. It was an extraordinary evening on every level. The program is part of the Monday Nights with Oscar series, which was created by Patrick Harrison of A.M.P.A.S. For years, Harrison has presented some of the most unique and memorable classic movie events the city has seen - and last evening was no exception. For the Midnight Cowboy tribute, some key members of the creative production team were reunited for an on-stage...
By Lee Pfeiffer
Last night New York City became Hollywood-on-the-Hudson when The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hosted a 40th anniversary screening of Midnight Cowboy at The Directors Guild Theater. It was an extraordinary evening on every level. The program is part of the Monday Nights with Oscar series, which was created by Patrick Harrison of A.M.P.A.S. For years, Harrison has presented some of the most unique and memorable classic movie events the city has seen - and last evening was no exception. For the Midnight Cowboy tribute, some key members of the creative production team were reunited for an on-stage...
- 3/17/2009
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Cinema Retro has received the following press release from the A.M.P.A.S. New York office. Cinema Retro will cover this exciting and historic event and will post a report on the web site next week.
New York, NY – The 1969 Best Picture winner “Midnight Cowboy” will screen for New York audience as part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ “Monday Nights with Oscar®” series on Monday, March 16, at 7:30 p.m. at the Directors Guild of America Theatre in New York City. Academy Award®-winning producer Jerome Hellman will join Academy Award-nominated actress Sylvia Miles in a post-screening discussion. David V. Picker, the executive-in-charge at United Artist during the film’s development, will moderate the onstage conversation, which also will include actor Bob Balaban, cinematographer Adam Holender, composer John Barry and costumer designer Ann Roth.
“Midnight Cowboy” stars Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight as two...
New York, NY – The 1969 Best Picture winner “Midnight Cowboy” will screen for New York audience as part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ “Monday Nights with Oscar®” series on Monday, March 16, at 7:30 p.m. at the Directors Guild of America Theatre in New York City. Academy Award®-winning producer Jerome Hellman will join Academy Award-nominated actress Sylvia Miles in a post-screening discussion. David V. Picker, the executive-in-charge at United Artist during the film’s development, will moderate the onstage conversation, which also will include actor Bob Balaban, cinematographer Adam Holender, composer John Barry and costumer designer Ann Roth.
“Midnight Cowboy” stars Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight as two...
- 3/13/2009
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
A bench in Central Park is the primary setting for Herb Gardner's "I'm Not Rappaport". Unfortunately, this filmic adaptation of Gardner's successful play largely sits in one place too, as if still on a stage.
Its sedentary visuals are largely overcome by Walter Matthau's crackling central performance as an elderly firebrand who rants and rages not only against life's ongoing injustices but also against his own incipient infirmity.
"Rappaport" should wrap some solid, select-site holiday business, but even with Matthau's blustery performance, "Rappaport"'s inert visualization, as well as its from-the-penthouse vantage point on Central Park's seedier sides, will hinder it from doing more than one lap around the boxoffice park.
With a bench as his primary soapbox, senior citizen Nat (Matthau) still fights the good fight. An old-time Lefty with a lifetime of union causes under his belt, Nat now finds himself a crusader without a movement. Too feisty and socially concerned to sit still, he insinuates himself into what he considers local injustices, protesting the high prices at the deli, for instance. He's a local-yokel Ralph Nader and Rosa Luxembourg rolled into one and his squirrelly tactics are not only provocative but amusing -- though least amusing for his protective daughter (Amy Irving), who fears that her elderly father will soon get himself into serious legal or physical danger.
In this outing, Matthau switches odd-couple partners and is paired with Ossie Davis, who plays Midge, a soft-spoken, gentle man whose nonconfrontational ways are the antithesis of Nat's feisty nature. It's their relationship that's the crux of the story and writer-director Gardner's perceptions are vital and touching. At its best, "Rappaport" is a very moving glimpse into the last days of two very different, idiosyncratic men who, through the restrictions of old age and economics, find themselves together at the end of their lives.
As powerful and commanding as Matthau is in his performance, so too is Davis in his portrayal of the low-key Midge. Beneath his character's fearful diffidence, Davis shows the stern mettle of a man who has survived many hurtful personal wars. In a supporting role, Amy Irving is also sympathetic as Nat's loving daughter whose patience is at the breaking point because of his shenanigans.
The central story is, unfortunately, thinly backscaped: Other denizens of the Park ring false, including a Latino thug (Guillermo Diaz), an ersatz cowboy (Craig T. Nelson) and a troubled teen (Martha Plimpton).
Under Gardner's static direction, the technical contributions do little to flesh out the vitality and energy of the location and the life situation. While composer Gerry Mulligan's baleful sax sounds clue us to the inner fears of Nat and Midge, the thin sounds convey none of the roiling nature of the Park setting. Throughout, cinematographer Adam Holender's static shooting confines "Rappaport" to the squeezed dimension of a stage proscenium, never allowing it to reach the billowing contradictory forces of its central characters' personalities.
I'M NOT RAPPAPORT
Gramercy Pictures
Producers John Penotti, John Starke
Screenwriter-director Herb Gardner
Executive producer David Sameth
Director of photography Adam Holender
Production designer Mark Friedberg
Editors Wendey Stanzler, Emily Paine
Music Gerry Mulligan
Costume designer Jennifer Von Mayrhauser
Casting Lynn Kressel
Sound mixer James Sabat
Color/stereo
Cast:
Nat Walter Matthau
Midge Ossie Davis
Clara Amy Irving
The Cowboy Craig T. Nelson
Danforth Boyd Gaines
Laurie Martha Plimpton
J.C. Guillermo Diaz
Clara Lemlich Elina Lowensohn
Running time -- 135 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
Its sedentary visuals are largely overcome by Walter Matthau's crackling central performance as an elderly firebrand who rants and rages not only against life's ongoing injustices but also against his own incipient infirmity.
"Rappaport" should wrap some solid, select-site holiday business, but even with Matthau's blustery performance, "Rappaport"'s inert visualization, as well as its from-the-penthouse vantage point on Central Park's seedier sides, will hinder it from doing more than one lap around the boxoffice park.
With a bench as his primary soapbox, senior citizen Nat (Matthau) still fights the good fight. An old-time Lefty with a lifetime of union causes under his belt, Nat now finds himself a crusader without a movement. Too feisty and socially concerned to sit still, he insinuates himself into what he considers local injustices, protesting the high prices at the deli, for instance. He's a local-yokel Ralph Nader and Rosa Luxembourg rolled into one and his squirrelly tactics are not only provocative but amusing -- though least amusing for his protective daughter (Amy Irving), who fears that her elderly father will soon get himself into serious legal or physical danger.
In this outing, Matthau switches odd-couple partners and is paired with Ossie Davis, who plays Midge, a soft-spoken, gentle man whose nonconfrontational ways are the antithesis of Nat's feisty nature. It's their relationship that's the crux of the story and writer-director Gardner's perceptions are vital and touching. At its best, "Rappaport" is a very moving glimpse into the last days of two very different, idiosyncratic men who, through the restrictions of old age and economics, find themselves together at the end of their lives.
As powerful and commanding as Matthau is in his performance, so too is Davis in his portrayal of the low-key Midge. Beneath his character's fearful diffidence, Davis shows the stern mettle of a man who has survived many hurtful personal wars. In a supporting role, Amy Irving is also sympathetic as Nat's loving daughter whose patience is at the breaking point because of his shenanigans.
The central story is, unfortunately, thinly backscaped: Other denizens of the Park ring false, including a Latino thug (Guillermo Diaz), an ersatz cowboy (Craig T. Nelson) and a troubled teen (Martha Plimpton).
Under Gardner's static direction, the technical contributions do little to flesh out the vitality and energy of the location and the life situation. While composer Gerry Mulligan's baleful sax sounds clue us to the inner fears of Nat and Midge, the thin sounds convey none of the roiling nature of the Park setting. Throughout, cinematographer Adam Holender's static shooting confines "Rappaport" to the squeezed dimension of a stage proscenium, never allowing it to reach the billowing contradictory forces of its central characters' personalities.
I'M NOT RAPPAPORT
Gramercy Pictures
Producers John Penotti, John Starke
Screenwriter-director Herb Gardner
Executive producer David Sameth
Director of photography Adam Holender
Production designer Mark Friedberg
Editors Wendey Stanzler, Emily Paine
Music Gerry Mulligan
Costume designer Jennifer Von Mayrhauser
Casting Lynn Kressel
Sound mixer James Sabat
Color/stereo
Cast:
Nat Walter Matthau
Midge Ossie Davis
Clara Amy Irving
The Cowboy Craig T. Nelson
Danforth Boyd Gaines
Laurie Martha Plimpton
J.C. Guillermo Diaz
Clara Lemlich Elina Lowensohn
Running time -- 135 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
- 12/22/1996
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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