Cadillac Man
In this comedy directed by Roger Donaldson, Williams plays a car salesman that must sell 12 cars before he loses his job. Co-starring Tim Robbins, Pamela Reed, and Fran Drescher.
It’s hard being a car salesman, people have a misconception of you being a bad person, like an invisible man to mug you with options you didn’t want. It was something I really had to work at.
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
In this fantasy based on the novel written by Rudolph Erich Raspe and directed by Terry Gilliam, Williams plays the The Man on the Moon. The film is about a Baron who needs to end a war he started himself by flying into outerspace on a cannonball, being swallowed by a whale, ballooning to the moon, and exploring a volcano. Costars John Neville, Uma Thurman, and Sarah Polley. Gilliam:
Williams helped save this film. Budgets were cut, actors pulled out and were sick from exhaustion, Williams kept spirits high and the film rolling.
The ‘Burbs
The ‘Burbs is the beginning of a string of films starring Hanks that gained little box office success. In The ‘Burbs, Hanks stars as an average home owner trying to find out more about his mysterious cul-de-sac sharing neighbors.
Good Morning, America
In this drama based on a true story, directed by Barry Levinson and co-starring Forest Whitaker, Williams plays US Army DJ Adrian Cronauer. Cronauer is deployed to serve as a morning radio show host, and gains fame with the comic relief his monologues offer to the American troops. Producer Mark Johnson:
Robin would get up in the morning and say, “We have to do yesterday’s work all over again. I’ll pay for it.” I’d say, “What are you talking about! It worked great.”
Less Than Zero
Downey Jr. stars as Julian, a struggling junkie, in the drama about the addictive tendencies of the youth of Los Angeles based on Brett Easton Ellis’ book. Rumors of Downey arriving on the set of Less Than Zero already high on the drugs he was meant to be acting with began to surround the film’s reputation and Downey’s. Co-starring Andrew McCarthy and James Spader.
Until that movie, I took my drugs after work and on the weekends. Maybe I’d turn up hungover on the set, but no more so than the stuntman. That changed on Less Than Zero. I was playing this junkie-faggot guy and, for me, the role was like the ghost of Christmas future. The character was an exaggeration of myself. Then things changed and, in some ways, I became an exaggeration of the character. That lasted far longer than it needed to last.
On the Ledge
In this comedy directed by Peter Ferrera, Williams costars as himself in a movie that is completely improvised with no written scripts that allowed the actors to make up the skits as they went along. Co-starring Jonathan Winters, Susan Anton, Milton Berle, and Phyllis Diller.
It was fun to work on. We would drive out, use all the film and keep on going.
Raising Arizona
A petty thief played by Cage and the police woman who keeps arresting him fall in love and decide to start a family. When they discover they can’t have babies, they steal one from a furniture mogul who has just sired a set of quintuplets. This film stars Cage, Holly Hunter, and John Goodman.
I was impressed by their preparation. By their writing, I saw echos of other writers I admired and just how funny they were. They just kill me. Its like a bottomless they’re just funny.
The Rosary Murders
0 0 Paul M. Paul M.2014-07-19 03:25:202015-02-08 01:53:52The Rosary Murders
Not Nothing Without You
Frankenberg writes, directs and stars in this comedy (renamed as Noisy Martha in 1987). Co-starring Klaus Bueb as Alfred.
Martha, at 25, is a single mother, a painter, a filmmaker, impulsive, insecure, happy and unhappy. Financially well off through no fault of her own, her biggest problem, as she sees it, is her superficiality. Then there is Alfred, a decade older than Martha and all the more lost for it, he always seems to have misplaced something… something he thought he’d taken with him, back in ’68. Martha can’t cut it with men, Alfred likewise with women.
Ghostbusters
Aykroyd plays Dr. Raymond Stantz, a parapsychologist turned ghostbuster who, along with his compatriots Dr. Peter Venkman and Dr. Egon Spengler, works to rid Manhattan of ghosts and poltergeists in Ghostbusters, directed by Ivan Reitman. Co-starring Bill Murray, Sigourney Weaver, Rick Moranis, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson.
I believe that 50% of Ghostbusters’ success is due to Sigourney, Moranis, Ramis and my writing and Reitman’s direction. And 50% was Murray and his presence as a leading man – he’s the greatest. He just brings such great energy and creativity and he brings the audience because they love that kind of hung dog who had such vulnerability. Really, I owe a lot to Billy.
![Ghostbusters (1984) - Official® Trailer [HD]](https://newslines.org/wp-content/plugins/wp-youtube-lyte/lyteCache.php?origThumbUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FvntAEVjPBzQ%2F0.jpg)
Children of the Corn
King’s Children of the Corn is adapted into a feature-length film. The tale was originally released as a short story in his compilation book, Night Shift. It’s a story of a twelve-year-old preacher who convinces all the kids in a rural neighborhood to kill everyone over eighteen for Jesus. King originally wrote the screen play for the film adaptation of Children of the Corn, but his version was thrown out due to having too much dialogue and back-story. Instead, a much more violent/gory version with more conventional narrative style was written by George Goldsmith and used for the film. Directed by Fritz Kiersch and starring Peter Horton and Linda Hamilton, the film grosses $14.5 million after being made on a minimal budget of $800 thousand.
Christine
John Carpenter directs the film adaptation of King’s novel, starring Keith Gordon. The film grosses $21 million after being made on a $9.7 million budget. King approved of all the work done on the film, apart from one major difference from his original novel. In King’s version, Christine was haunted by the spirit of a previous owner. In Carpenter’s version, the car is haunted from the very moment it’s built. When asked why he made Christine a 1958 Fury:
Because they’re almost totally forgotten cars. They were the most mundane fifties car that I could remember. I didn’t want a car that already had a legend attached to it like the fifties Thunderbird, the Ford Galaxies etc. […] Seriously, I don’t know how Chrysler feels about Christine, anymore than I know how the Ford Company feels about Cujo, in which a woman is stranded in a Pinto. But they should feel happy, because it’s a pretty lively car and it lasts a long time. It’s like a Timex watch, it takes a licking and goes on ticking.
The Survivors
Williams portrays Donald Quinelle, an executive who is fired from his job in Michael Ritchie’s comedy. He goes to a diner and meets Sonny Paluso (Walter Matthau) who owns a gas station that was blown up. The two of them witness a robbery and the hit man threatens to kill them. Quinelle becomes obsessed with guns as a way to protect himself from the mob and enrolls in a survivalist training school in the mountains of Vermont. Co-starring Jerry Reed, James Wainwright, and Annie McEnroe. Ritchie:
Walter [Matthau] becomes straight man to Robin, and then Robin is straight man to him. That doesn’t happen in great comedy teams, where they form a pattern; Dean Martin is always in a certain relationship with Jerry Lewis, or Abbott is with Costello. Instead, with Walter and Danny or Walter and Robin, you have this balance constantly shifting.
The World According to Garp
Based on the novel by John Irving, Williams plays T.S. Garp – an only child conceived when his single mother has sex with a brain-damaged soldier in her nursing care, in this drama directed by George Roy Hil. Garp’s life from birth to death is punctuated by events such as: marriage and infidelity, parenting and the loss of a child, social and political activism, fame and death threats. Co-starring, Mary Beth Hurt. Helen Holm, Glenn Close and Jenny Fields.
I started off just improvising like crazy. And [director] George Roy Hill made a face like a weasel in a wind tunnel and I then I went, ‘Not good?’ And he went [breathes deep and whispers], ‘Just say the words.’
Mad Max 2
In the second of the series, Gibson plays Max, a former Australian policeman, who is living in the post-apocalyptic outback as a warrior who agrees to help a community of survivors living in a gasoline refinery. He defends them and their gasoline supplies from evil barbarian warriors. Co-starring Bruce Spence and Emil Minty,
We filmed in the only place nobody would go, where the turd wranglers would drop all their sh–. It wasn’t glamorous at all. It was low-budget. Twenty-five guys in the crew. You didn’t have a trailer. You want to change your costume? Go over to the side of the road and strip down. That was it.
![Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior - Official® Trailer 1 [HD]](https://newslines.org/wp-content/plugins/wp-youtube-lyte/lyteCache.php?origThumbUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FCaDc5C2bTCE%2F0.jpg)
Raging Bull
DeNiro plays Jake La Motta, a middleweight boxer and portrays his violent journey through life. This biopic is directed by Martin Scorsese and co-stars Joe Pesci and Cathy Moriarty.
It was sent to me by Pete Savage who was very helpful in getting the whole thing started and very helpful in getting me trained with Jake and Jake was one of the associate producers and something about the story interested me.
Popeye
Williams portrays Popeye in Robert Altman’s musical comedy live-action realization of the American comic strip character Popeye the Sailor Man. Popeye is a spinach-eating sailor in love with Olive Oil (Shelley Duvall) and at odds with Bluto (Paul L. Smith), his perennial nemesis.
Near the end of the movie . . . the studio had pooled all of the money, so all the special effects people left. It was Ed Wood the last weeks of the movie. Shelley Duvall was in a pond, basically, with an octopus with no internal mechanism, having to drape it over her body like a feather boa. I’m in the water, and I’m kind of like sitting there .. . . . . we’re there on Malta, which is a very small island in between Italy and North Africa, and it was some of the worst weather they had had in 60 years. So it was a pretty crazy experience. But! I got to work with Robert Altman and I’ll never forget that.
The Blues Brothers
Aykroyd plays Elwood Blues, brother to “Joliet” Jake Blues, who is fresh out of prison, in this comedy directed by John Landis. The pair set out to bring their band back together so they can raise $5,000 and save the Catholic home where they were raised. Co-starring John Belushi, Cab Calloway, James Brown, Ray Charles, and Aretha Franklin.
The idea is based on two classic recidivist American characters. It’s based on a love of the city of Chicago and the music that came out of there.
The Shining
Stanley Kubrick adapts King’s The Shining into a feature film starring Jack Nicholson and Shelly Duvall as young parents who move with their young son to a large abandoned hotel to be caretakers for the winter off season. The film grossed $44.4 million after being filmed for $19 million. The famous line proclaimed by Jack Torrence as he chops down a bathroom door, “Here’s Johnny!” was improved by Nicholson on the spot, originally being inspired by the introduction of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. King was disappointed with Kubrick’s decision not to film at the Stanley Hotel and did not like the adaptation, saying that his novel focused on main problems such as the disintegration of a family and the dangers of alcoholism, which, he believes, Kubrick completely ignored.
Parts of the film are chilling, charged with a relentlessly claustrophobic terror, but others fall flat. Not that religion has to be involved in horror, but a visceral skeptic such as Kubrick just couldn’t grasp the sheer inhuman evil of The Overlook Hotel. So he looked, instead, for evil in the characters and made the film into a domestic tragedy with only vaguely supernatural overtones. That was the basic flaw: because he couldn’t believe, he couldn’t make the film believable to others. What’s basically wrong with Kubrick’s version of The Shining is that it’s a film by a man who thinks too much and feels too little; and that’s why, for all its virtuoso effects, it never gets you by the throat and hangs on the way real horror should.
![The Shining - Official Trailer [1980] HD](https://newslines.org/wp-content/plugins/wp-youtube-lyte/lyteCache.php?origThumbUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FS014oGZiSdI%2F0.jpg)
All That Jazz
Scheider plays Joe Gideon, a director/choreographer, in this musical drama written by Robert Alan Aurthur and Bob Fosse, directed by Fosse. Gideon is a thinly veiled version of Fosse himself in a cynical and fantasy driven vision of his own life, fueled as it was by his many addictions. Co-starring Ann Reinking, Jessica Lange, and Leland Palmer.
That will always be my favorite film. But I never worked harder in my life. I felt I had to prove myself to the dance company. I didn’t want to misrepresent them. . . . I was in relatively good shape. But at the end of the day, I’d return to the Holiday Inn with my Tiger Balm.
