Podcast appearances and mentions of genevieve bujold

Never trust the guy who makes the first toast at your anniversary party! Jeremy responds to Dave's inaugural choice of Hitchcock's I CONFESS with Brian De Palma's 1976 film OBSESSION, starring Cliff Robertson and Genevieve Bujold, with a treacherous frenemy turn from John Lithgow. Something is rotten in New Orleans in this genteely lurid steambath of loss and longing, as Robertson's Michael Courtland hopes to recapture the love of his life by wooing a younger woman whose uncanny resemblance to his dead wife alarms those closest to him. With Bujold playing both female roles, we're firmly in Hitchcock territory, with nods to VERTIGO piling up like stacks of cash in the ransom scheme that robbed our hero of his wife and daughter years before.  Dave unpacks the parallels between Hitchcock's masterpiece of fetishism and OBSESSION's layers of imitation, while Jeremy marvels at the artistic choices that made Roger Ebert enthusiastically describe this film as “overwrought melodrama” in which “excess is its own reward.” With Lithgow twanging his way through a series of white linen suits and languid, spiteful glances, Robertson's stoic and deeply tanned widower and his new paramour both find themselves retreading familiar ground as they approach the uncanny denouement.  Is it good-bad or bad-good? Can you blame a guy for believing the unlikeliest of coincidences? Don't you want to see what happens when he goes all in? Join us for our next episode where we uncover the image behind the image that is OBSESSION.  Music by Jeremy Donald. Find Dave here: https://linktr.ee/davedwelling

For many the greatest depiction of Anne Boleyn on screen came at the end of 1969, when Anne of the Thousand Days was released in cinemas across the world. An epic historical drama based on the life of Queen Anne Boleyn starring Genevieve Bujold in the titular role alongside Richard Burton, as King Henry VIII. In this weeks bonus episode I will be taking a look back on Anne of the Thousand Days, looking at how it was made, behind the scenes dramas and why, I believe, it retains such a beloved place in the hearts of Anne Boleyn devotees.

Pucker up, listeners - Daddy's here! That's right: accomplished Brian De Palmist and official Daddy of the show, Hit Factory co-host Aaron Casias, is back to help us unpack De Palma's Schrader-scripted 1976 VERTIGO riff OBSESSION! We kind of did a one-episode De Palma podcast, honestly, because there's a bit more BDP here than Paul Schrader. Join us for more Bernard Herrmann talk, more Geneviève Bujold talk (from TIGHTROPE, remember?), and very informed New Orleans opinions. Check it out! You don't really have to watch the movie tbh!!! Topics include: Vilmos Zsigmond, Hitchcock riff, Tony Scott's DEJA VU, voyeurism, women in genre film, "The New South", Cliff Robertson being a pain in the ass, OLDBOY, Aaron's impassioned plea for us to cover BDP, and only a little bit of bathroom talk, we promise. Further Reading: Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan by Robin Wood "Repeat Performance": Brad Westcott on Obsession   Further Viewing: VERTIGO (1958) DEJA VU (2006) DE PALMA (2015)   Follow Aaron Casias: https://twitter.com/HitFactoryPod   https://www.podcastyforme.com/ Follow Pod Casty For Me: https://twitter.com/podcastyforme https://www.instagram.com/podcastyforme/ https://www.youtube.com/@podcastyforme Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PodCastyForMe Artwork by Jeremy Allison: https://www.instagram.com/jeremyallisonart  

"She had to commit a data breach to get this information and her punishment is she has to get a hysterectomy. A coma hysterectomy." Confirmed rulebreaker J.B. returns with February birth month movies: one from 1978 and TWO from 1998. Yyyyeah, we don't know about that. 0:00 -- Intro7:08 -- Coma25:54 -- Dark City50:53 -- The Replacement Killers1.05:36 -- Contact information1.09:40 -- Awards and rankings1.55:22 -- Future business (With Zo on the horn for deep future business!)2:05:20 -- Outro, and outtakes Hey! Be sure to watch The Birds, Kingdom of the Spiders, and Jurassic Park for next time! Hey! Leave us a voicemail at (801) 896-4542! Hey! The Zazzle store! Hey! Hear In Memoriam! Hey! Hear Fantasy Murder Love Triangle! Hey! Genevieve Bujold on Voyager! Hey! Ebert liked Dark City! Hey! Siskel and Ebert's best of '98! Hey! Proyas on the influence of Dark City on The Matrix! Hey! Subscribe in Apple Podcasts! Hey!

New York-based film writer Jason Miller joins to discuss the strange, beautiful cinematic worlds of the unsung Alan Rudolph and his 1992 film 'Equinox' starring Matthew Modine as identical twin brothers separated at birth. We begin with a discussion of Rudolph's career, beginning as an assistant director to the great Robert Altman before branching out and producing some of the most compellingly idiosyncratic films of the 1980s (as well as his feature 'Remember My Name' from 1978, arguably his greatest work).  Then we turn our sights to 'Equinox' and talk about the film's distinctive rhythms and characters as well as the ways Rudolph imbues his fantasy world with a potent naturalism and sense of place. Finally, we discuss the injustice of Rudolph's relative obscurity within cinephile circles, and why the filmmaker's entire body of work is due for a necessary and urgent reappraisal. We're committed to getting 'Equinox' in front of as many eyes as possible! Email us at hitfactorypod@gmail.com for more info. Follow Jason on Twitter and check out links to his work here. Read Dan Sallit's teriffic monograph on Alan Rudolph here. Get access to all of our premium episodes and bonus content by becoming a Hit Factory Patron for just $5/month.....Our theme song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish. 

We continue our look back at the movies released by independent distributor Vestron Pictures, focusing on their 1988 releases. ----more---- The movies discussed on this episode, all released by Vestron Pictures in 1988 unless otherwise noted, include: Amsterdamned (Dick Maas) And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim) The Beat (Paul Mones) Burning Secret (Andrew Birkin) Call Me (Sollace Mitchell) The Family (Ettore Scola) Gothic (Ken Russell, 1987) The Lair of the White Worm (Ken Russell) Midnight Crossing (Roger Holzberg) Paramedics (Stuart Margolin) The Pointsman (Jos Stelling) Salome's Last Dance (Ken Russell) Promised Land (Michael Hoffman) The Unholy (Camilo Vila) Waxwork (Anthony Hickox)   TRANSCRIPT   From Los Angeles, California, the Entertainment Capital of the World, it's The 80s Movies Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today.   At the end of the previous episode, Vestron Pictures was celebrating the best year of its two year history. Dirty Dancing had become one of the most beloved movies of the year, and Anna was becoming a major awards contender, thanks to a powerhouse performance by veteran actress Sally Kirkland. And at the 60th Academy Awards ceremony, honoring the films of 1987, Dirty Dancing would win the Oscar for Best Original Song, while Anna would be nominated for Best Actress, and The Dead for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Costumes.   Surely, things could only go up from there, right?   Welcome to Part Two of our miniseries.   But before we get started, I'm issuing a rare mea culpa. I need to add another Vestron movie which I completely missed on the previous episode, because it factors in to today's episode. Which, of course, starts before our story begins.   In the 1970s, there were very few filmmakers like the flamboyant Ken Russell. So unique a visual storyteller was Russell, it's nigh impossible to accurately describe him in a verbal or textual manner. Those who have seen The Devils, Tommy or Altered States know just how special Russell was as a filmmaker. By the late 1980s, the hits had dried up, and Russell was in a different kind of artistic stage, wanting to make somewhat faithful adaptations of late 19th and early 20th century UK authors. Vestron was looking to work with some prestigious filmmakers, to help build their cache in the filmmaking community, and Russell saw the opportunity to hopefully find a new home with this new distributor not unlike the one he had with Warner Brothers in the early 70s that brought forth several of his strongest movies.   In June 1986, Russell began production on a gothic horror film entitled, appropriately enough, Gothic, which depicted a fictionalized version of a real life meeting between Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, John William Polidori and Claire Clairemont at the Villa Diodati in Geneva, hosted by Lord Byron, from which historians believe both Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and John William Polidori's The Vampyre were inspired.   And you want to talk about a movie with a great cast. Gabriel Byrne plays Lord Byron, Julian Sands as Percy Shelley, Natasha Richardson, in her first ever movie, as Mary Shelley, Timothy Spall as John William Polidori, and Dexter Fletcher.   Although the film was produced through MGM, and distributed by the company in Europe, they would not release the film in America, fearing American audiences wouldn't get it. So Vestron would swoop in and acquire the American theatrical rights.   Incidentally, the film did not do very well in American theatres. Opening at the Cinema 1 in midtown Manhattan on April 10th, 1987, the film would sell $45,000 worth of tickets in its first three days, one of the best grosses of any single screen in the city. But the film would end up grossing only $916k after three months in theatres.   BUT…   The movie would do quite well for Vestron on home video, enough so that Vestron would sign on to produce Russell's next three movies. The first of those will be coming up very soon.   Vestron's 1988 release schedule began on January 22nd with the release of two films.   The first was Michael Hoffman's Promised Land. In 1982, Hoffman's first film, Privileged, was the first film to made through the Oxford Film Foundation, and was notable for being the first screen appearances for Hugh Grant and Imogen Stubbs, the first film scored by future Oscar winning composer Rachel Portman, and was shepherded into production by none other than John Schlesinger, the Oscar winning director of 1969 Best Picture winner Midnight Cowboy. Hoffman's second film, the Scottish comedy Restless Natives, was part of the 1980s Scottish New Wave film movement that also included Bill Forsyth's Gregory's Girl and Local Hero, and was the only film to be scored by the Scottish rock band Big Country.   Promised Land was one of the first films to be developed by the Sundance Institute, in 1984, and when it was finally produced in 1986, would include Robert Redford as one of its executive producers. The film would follow two recent local high school graduates, Hancock and Danny, whose lives would intersect again with disastrous results several years after graduation. The cast features two young actors destined to become stars, in Keifer Sutherland and Meg Ryan, as well as Jason Gedrick, Tracy Pollan, and Jay Underwood. Shot in Reno and around the Sundance Institute outside Park City, Utah during the early winter months of 1987, Promised Land would make its world premiere at the prestigious Deauville Film Festival in September 1987, but would lose its original distributor, New World Pictures around the same time. Vestron would swoop in to grab the distribution rights, and set it for a January 22nd, 1988 release, just after its American debut at the then U.S. Film Festival, which is now known as the Sundance Film Festival.    Convenient, eh?   Opening on six screens in , the film would gross $31k in its first three days. The film would continue to slowly roll out into more major markets, but with a lack of stellar reviews, and a cast that wouldn't be more famous for at least another year and a half, Vestron would never push the film out to more than 67 theaters, and it would quickly disappear with only $316k worth of tickets sold.   The other movie Vestron opened on January 22nd was Ettore Scale's The Family, which was Italy's submission to that year's Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film. The great Vittorio Gassman stars as a retired college professor who reminisces about his life and his family over the course of the twentieth century. Featuring a cast of great international actors including Fanny Ardant, Philip Noiret, Stefania Sandrelli and Ricky Tognazzi, The Family would win every major film award in Italy, and it would indeed be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, but in America, it would only play in a handful of theatres for about two months, unable to gross even $350k.   When is a remake not a remake? When French filmmaker Roger Vadim, who shot to international fame in 1956 with his movie And God Created Woman, decided to give a generational and international spin on his most famous work. And a completely different story, as to not resemble his original work in any form outside of the general brushstrokes of both being about a young, pretty, sexually liberated young woman.   Instead of Bridget Bardot, we get Rebecca De Mornay, who was never able to parlay her starring role in Risky Business to any kind of stardom the way one-time boyfriend Tom Cruise had. And if there was any American woman in the United States in 1988 who could bring in a certain demographic to see her traipse around New Mexico au natural, it would be Rebecca De Mornay. But as we saw with Kathleen Turner in Ken Russell's Crimes of Passion in 1984 and Ellen Barkin in Mary Lambert's Siesta in 1987, American audiences were still rather prudish when it came to seeing a certain kind of female empowered sexuality on screen, and when the film opened at 385 theatres on March 4th, it would open to barely a $1,000 per screen average. And God Created Woman would be gone from theatres after only three weeks and $717k in ticket sales.   Vestron would next release a Dutch film called The Pointsman, about a French woman who accidentally gets off at the wrong train station in a remote Dutch village, and a local railwayman who, unable to speak the other person's language, develop a strange relationship while she waits for another train that never arrives.   Opening at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas on New York's Upper West Side on April 8th, the film would gross $7,000 in its first week, which in and of itself isn't all that bad for a mostly silent Dutch film. Except there was another Dutch film in the marketplace already, one that was getting much better reviews, and was the official Dutch entry into that year's Best Foreign Language Film race. That film, Babette's Feast, was becoming something more than just a movie. Restaurants across the country were creating menus based on the meals served in the film, and in its sixth week of release in New York City that weekend, had grossed four times as much as The Pointsman, despite the fact that the theatre playing Babette's Feast, the Cinema Studio 1, sat only 65 more people than the Lincoln Plaza 1. The following week, The Pointsman would drop to $6k in ticket sales, while Babette's Feast's audience grew another $6k over the previous week. After a third lackluster week, The Pointsman was gone from the Lincoln Plaza, and would never play in another theatre in America.   In the mid-80s, British actor Ben Cross was still trying to capitalize on his having been one of the leads in the 1981 Best Picture winner Chariots of Fire, and was sharing a home with his wife and children, as well as Camilo Vila, a filmmaker looking for his first big break in features after two well-received short films made in his native Cuba before he defected in the early 1980s. When Vila was offered the chance to direct The Unholy, about a Roman Catholic priest in New Orleans who finds himself battling a demonic force after being appointed to a new parish, he would walk down the hall of his shared home and offered his roomie the lead role.   Along with Ned Beatty, William Russ, Hal Holbrook and British actor Trevor Howard in his final film, The Unholy would begin two weeks of exterior filming in New Orleans on October 27th, 1986, before moving to a studio in Miami for seven more weeks. The film would open in 1189 theatres, Vestron's widest opening to date, on April 22nd, and would open in seventh place with $2.35m in ticket sales. By its second week in theatres, it would fall to eleventh place with a $1.24m gross. But with the Summer Movie Season quickly creeping up on the calendar, The Unholy would suffer the same fate as most horror films, making the drop to dollar houses after two weeks, as to make room for such dreck as Sunset, Blake Edwards' lamentable Bruce Willis/James Garner riff on Hollywood and cowboys in the late 1920s, and the pointless sequel to Critters before screens got gobbled up by Rambo III on Memorial Day weekend. It would earn a bit more than $6m at the box office.   When Gothic didn't perform well in American theatres, Ken Russell thought his career was over. As we mentioned earlier, the American home video store saved his career, as least for the time being.    The first film Russell would make for Vestron proper was Salome's Last Dance, based on an 1891 play by Oscar Wilde, which itself was based on a story from the New Testament. Russell's script would add a framing device as a way for movie audiences to get into this most theatrical of stories.   On Guy Fawkes Day in London in 1892, Oscar Wilde and his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, arrive late at a friend's brothel, where the author is treated to a surprise performance of his play Salome, which has recently been banned from being performed at all in England by Lord Chamberlain. All of the actors in his special performance are played by the prostitutes of the brothel and their clients, and the scenes of the play are intertwined with Wilde's escapades at the brothel that night.   We didn't know it at the time, but Salome's Last Dance would be the penultimate film performance for Academy Award winning actress Glenda Jackson, who would retire to go into politics in England a couple years later, after working with Russell on another film, which we'll get to in a moment. About the only other actor you might recognize in the film is David Doyle, of all people, the American actor best known for playing Bosley on Charlie's Angels.   Like Gothic, Salome's Last Dance would not do very well in theatres, grossing less than half a million dollars after three months, but would find an appreciative audience on home video.   The most interesting thing about Roger Holzberg's Midnight Crossing is the writer and director himself. Holzberg started in the entertainment industry as a playwright, then designed the props and weapons for Albert Pyun's 1982 film The Sword and the Sorcerer, before moving on to direct the second unit team on Pyun's 1985 film Radioactive Dreams. After making this film, Holzberg would have a cancer scare, and pivot to health care, creating a number of technological advancements to help evolve patient treatment, including the Infusionarium, a media setup which helps children with cancer cope with treatment by asking them questions designed to determine what setting would be most comforting to them, and then using virtual reality technology and live events to immerse them in such an environment during treatment.   That's pretty darn cool, actually.   Midnight Crossing stars Faye Dunaway and Hill Street Blues star Daniel J. Travanti in his first major movie role as a couple who team with another couple, played by Kim Cattrall and John Laughlin, who go hunting for treasure supposedly buried between Florida and Cuba.   The film would open in 419 theaters on May 11th, 1988, and gross a paltry $673k in its first three days, putting it 15th on the list of box office grosses for the week, $23k more than Three Men and a Baby, which was playing on 538 screens in its 25th week of release. In its second week, Midnight Crossing would lose more than a third of its theatres, and the weekend gross would fall to just $232k. The third week would be even worse, dropping to just 67 theatres and $43k in ticket sales. After a few weeks at a handful of dollar houses, the film would be history with just $1.3m in the bank. Leonard Klady, then writing for the Los Angeles Times, would note in a January 1989 article about the 1988 box office that Midnight Crossing's box office to budget ratio of 0.26 was the tenth worst ratio for any major or mini-major studio, ahead of And God Created Woman's 8th worst ratio of .155 but behind other stinkers like Caddyshack II.   The forgotten erotic thriller Call Me sounds like a twist on the 1984 Alan Rudolph romantic comedy Choose Me, but instead of Genevieve Bujold we get Patricia Charbonneau, and instead of a meet cute involving singles at a bar in Los Angeles, we get a murder mystery involving a New York City journalist who gets involved with a mysterious caller after she witnesses a murder at a bar due to a case of mistaken identity.   The film's not very good, but the supporting cast is great, including Steve Buscemi, Patti D'Arbanville, Stephen McHattie and David Straithairn.   Opening on 24 screens in major markets on May 20th, Call Me would open to horrible reviews, lead by Siskel and Ebert's thumbs facing downward, and only $58,348 worth of tickets sold in its first three days. After five weeks in theatres, Vestron hung up on Call Me with just $252k in the kitty.   Vestron would open two movies on June 3rd, one in a very limited release, and one in a moderate national release.   There are a lot of obscure titles in these two episodes, and probably the most obscure is Paul Mones' The Beat. The film followed a young man named Billy Kane, played by William McNamara in his film debut, who moves into a rough neighborhood controlled by several gangs, who tries to help make his new area a better place by teaching them about poetry. John Savage from The Deer Hunter plays a teacher, and future writer and director Reggie Rock Bythewood plays one of the troubled youths whose life is turned around through the written and spoken word.   The production team was top notch. Producer Julia Phillips was one of the few women to ever win a Best Picture Oscar when she and her then husband Michael Phillips produced The Sting in 1973. Phillips was assisted on the film by two young men who were making their first movie. Jon Kilik would go on to produce or co-produce every Spike Lee movie from Do the Right Thing to Da 5 Bloods, except for BlackkKlansman, while Nick Weschler would produce sex, lies and videotape, Drugstore Cowboy, The Player and Requiem for a Dream, amongst dozens of major films. And the film's cinematographer, Tom DiCillo, would move into the director's chair in 1991 with Johnny Suede, which gave Brad Pitt his first lead role.   The Beat would be shot on location in New York City in the summer of 1986, and it would make its world premiere at the Cannes Film Market in May 1987. But it would be another thirteen months before the film arrived in theatres.   Opening on seven screens in Los Angeles and New York City on June 3rd, The Beat would gross just $7,168 in its first three days.  There would not be a second week for The Beat. It would make its way onto home video in early 1989, and that's the last time the film was seen for nearly thirty years, until the film was picked up by a number of streaming services.   Vestron's streak of bad luck continued with the comedy Paramedics starring George Newbern and Christopher McDonald. The only feature film directed by Stuart Margolin, best known as Angel on the 1970s TV series The Rockford Files, Newbern and McDonald play two… well, paramedics… who are sent by boss, as punishment, from their cushy uptown gig to a troubled district at the edge of the city, where they discover two other paramedics are running a cadavers for dollars scheme, harvesting organs from dead bodies to the black market.   Here again we have a great supporting cast who deserve to be in a better movie, including character actor John P. Ryan, James Noble from Benson, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs from Welcome Back Kotter, the great Ray Walston, and one-time Playboy Playmate Karen Witter, who plays a sort of angel of death.   Opening on 301 screens nationwide, Paramedics would only gross $149,577 in its first three days, the worst per screen average of any movie playing in at least 100 theatres that weekend. Vestron stopped tracking the film after just three days.   Two weeks later, on June 17th, Vestron released a comedy horror film that should have done better. Waxwork was an interesting idea, a group of college students who have some strange encounters with the wax figures at a local museum, but that's not exactly why it should have been more popular. It was the cast that should have brought audiences in. On one side, you had a group of well-known younger actors like Deborah Foreman from Valley Girl, Zack Gailligan from Gremlins, Michelle Johnson from Blame It on Rio, and Miles O'Keeffe from Sword of the Valiant. On the other hand, you had a group of seasoned veterans from popular television shows and movies, such as Patrick Macnee from the popular 1960s British TV show The Avengers, John Rhys-Davies from the Indiana Jones movies, and David Warner, from The Omen and Time after Time and Time Bandits and Tron.   But if I want to be completely honest, this was not a movie to release in the early part of summer. While I'm a firm believer that the right movie can find an audience no matter when it's released, Waxwork was absolutely a prime candidate for an early October release. Throughout the 1980s, we saw a number of horror movies, and especially horror comedies, released in the summer season that just did not hit with audiences. So it would be of little surprise when Waxwork grossed less than a million dollars during its theatrical run. And it should be of little surprise that the film would become popular enough on home video to warrant a sequel, which would add more popular sci-fi and horror actors like Marina Sirtis from Star Trek: The Next Generation, David Carradine and even Bruce Campbell. But by 1992, when Waxwork 2 was released, Vestron was long since closed.   The second Ken Russell movie made for Vestron was The Lair of the White Worm, based on a 1911 novel by Bram Stoker, the author's final published book before his death the following year. The story follows the residents in and around a rural English manor that are tormented by an ancient priestess after the skull of a serpent she worships is unearthed by an archaeologist.   Russell would offer the role of Sylvia Marsh, the enigmatic Lady who is actually an immortal priestess to an ancient snake god, to Tilda Swinton, who at this point of her career had already racked up a substantial resume in film after only two years, but she would decline. Instead, the role would go to Amanda Donohoe, the British actress best known at the time for her appearances in a pair of Adam Ant videos earlier in the decade. And the supporting cast would include Peter Capaldi, Hugh Grant, Catherine Oxenberg, and the under-appreciated Sammi Davis, who was simply amazing in Mona Lisa, A Prayer for the Dying and John Boorman's Hope and Glory.   The $2m would come together fairly quickly. Vestron and Russell would agree on the film in late 1987, the script would be approved by January 1988, filming would begin in England in February, and the completed film would have its world premiere at the Montreal Film Festival before the end of August.   When the film arrived in American theatres starting on October 21st, many critics would embrace the director's deliberate camp qualities and anachronisms. But audiences, who maybe weren't used to Russell's style of filmmaking, did not embrace the film quite so much. New Yorkers would buy $31k worth of tickets in its opening weekend at the D. W. Griffith and 8th Street Playhouse, and the film would perform well in its opening weeks in major markets, but the film would never quite break out, earning just $1.2m after ten weeks in theatres. But, again, home video would save the day, as the film would become one of the bigger rental titles in 1989.   If you were a teenager in the early 80s, as I was, you may remember a Dutch horror film called The Lift. Or, at the very least, you remember the key art on the VHS box, of a man who has his head stuck in between the doors of an elevator, while the potential viewer is warned to take the stairs, take the stairs, for God's sake, take the stairs. It was an impressive debut film for Dick Maas, but it was one that would place an albatross around the neck of his career.   One of his follow ups to The Lift, called Amsterdamned, would follow a police detective who is searching for a serial killer in his home town, who uses the canals of the Dutch capital to keep himself hidden. When the detective gets too close to solving the identity of the murderer, the killer sends a message by killing the detective's girlfriend, which, if the killer had ever seen a movie before, he should have known you never do. You never make it personal for the cop, because he's gonna take you down even worse.   When the film's producers brought the film to the American Film Market in early 1988, it would become one of the most talked about films, and Vestron would pick up the American distribution rights for a cool half a million dollars. The film would open on six screens in the US on November 25th, including the Laemmle Music Hall in Beverly Hills but not in New York City, but a $15k first weekend gross would seal its fate almost immediately. The film would play for another four weeks in theatres, playing on 18 screens at its widest, but it would end its run shortly after the start of of the year with only $62,044 in tickets sold.   The final Vestron Pictures release of 1988 was Andrew Birkin's Burning Secret. Birkin, the brother of French singer and actress Jane Birkin, would co-write the screenplay for this adaptation of a 1913 short story by Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig, about a about an American diplomat's son who befriends a mysterious baron while staying at an Austrian spa during the 1920s. According to Birkin in a 2021 interview, making the movie was somewhat of a nightmare, as his leading actors, Klaus Maria Brandauer and Faye Dunaway, did not like each other, and their lack of comfort with each other would bleed into their performances, which is fatal for a film about two people who are supposed to passionately burn for each other.   Opening on 16 screens in major markets on Thursday, December 22nd, Burning Secret would only gross $27k in its first four days. The film would actually see a post-Christmas bump, as it would lose a screen but see its gross jump to $40k. But after the first of the year, as it was obvious reviews were not going to save the film and awards consideration was non-existent, the film would close after three weeks with only $104k worth of tickets sold.   By the end of 1988, Vestron was facing bankruptcy. The major distributors had learned the lessons independents like Vestron had taught them about selling more volumes of tapes by lowering the price, to make movies collectables and have people curate their own video library. Top titles were harder to come by, and studios were no longer giving up home video rights to the movies they acquired from third-party producers.   Like many of the distributors we've spoken about before, and will undoubtedly speak of again, Vestron had too much success with one movie too quickly, and learned the wrong lessons about growth. If you look at the independent distribution world of 2023, you'll see companies like A24 that have learned that lesson. Stay lean and mean, don't go too wide too quickly, try not to spend too much money on a movie, no matter who the filmmaker is and how good of a relationship you have with them. A24 worked with Robert Eggers on The Witch and The Lighthouse, but when he wanted to spend $70-90m to make The Northman, A24 tapped out early, and Focus Features ended up losing millions on the film. Focus, the “indie” label for Universal Studios, can weather a huge loss like The Northman because they are a part of a multinational, multimedia conglomerate.   This didn't mean Vestron was going to quit quite yet, but, spoiler alert, they'll be gone soon enough.   In fact, and in case you are newer to the podcast and haven't listen to many of the previous episodes, none of the independent distribution companies that began and/or saw their best years in the 1980s that we've covered so far or will be covering in the future, exist in the same form they existed in back then.    New Line still exists, but it's now a label within Warner Brothers instead of being an independent distributor. Ditto Orion, which is now just a specialty label within MGM/UA. The Samuel Goldwyn Company is still around and still distributes movies, but it was bought by Orion Pictures the year before Orion was bought by MGM/UA, so it too is now just a specialty label, within another specialty label. Miramax today is just a holding company for the movies the company made before they were sold off to Disney, before Disney sold them off to a hedge fund, who sold Miramax off to another hedge fund.    Atlantic is gone. New World is gone. Cannon is gone. Hemdale is gone. Cinecom is gone. Island Films is gone. Alive Films is gone. Concorde Films is gone. MCEG is gone. CineTel is gone. Crown International is gone. Lorimar is gone. New Century/Vista is gone. Skouras Films is gone. Cineplex Odeon Films is gone.   Not one of them survived.   The same can pretty much be said for the independent distributors created in the 1990s, save Lionsgate, but I'll leave that for another podcast to tackle.   As for the Vestron story, we'll continue that one next week, because there are still a dozen more movies to talk about, as well as the end of the line for the once high flying company.   Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again soon.   Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about the movies we covered this episode.   The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment.   Thank you again.   Good night.

We continue our look back at the movies released by independent distributor Vestron Pictures, focusing on their 1988 releases. ----more---- The movies discussed on this episode, all released by Vestron Pictures in 1988 unless otherwise noted, include: Amsterdamned (Dick Maas) And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim) The Beat (Paul Mones) Burning Secret (Andrew Birkin) Call Me (Sollace Mitchell) The Family (Ettore Scola) Gothic (Ken Russell, 1987) The Lair of the White Worm (Ken Russell) Midnight Crossing (Roger Holzberg) Paramedics (Stuart Margolin) The Pointsman (Jos Stelling) Salome's Last Dance (Ken Russell) Promised Land (Michael Hoffman) The Unholy (Camilo Vila) Waxwork (Anthony Hickox)   TRANSCRIPT   From Los Angeles, California, the Entertainment Capital of the World, it's The 80s Movies Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today.   At the end of the previous episode, Vestron Pictures was celebrating the best year of its two year history. Dirty Dancing had become one of the most beloved movies of the year, and Anna was becoming a major awards contender, thanks to a powerhouse performance by veteran actress Sally Kirkland. And at the 60th Academy Awards ceremony, honoring the films of 1987, Dirty Dancing would win the Oscar for Best Original Song, while Anna would be nominated for Best Actress, and The Dead for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Costumes.   Surely, things could only go up from there, right?   Welcome to Part Two of our miniseries.   But before we get started, I'm issuing a rare mea culpa. I need to add another Vestron movie which I completely missed on the previous episode, because it factors in to today's episode. Which, of course, starts before our story begins.   In the 1970s, there were very few filmmakers like the flamboyant Ken Russell. So unique a visual storyteller was Russell, it's nigh impossible to accurately describe him in a verbal or textual manner. Those who have seen The Devils, Tommy or Altered States know just how special Russell was as a filmmaker. By the late 1980s, the hits had dried up, and Russell was in a different kind of artistic stage, wanting to make somewhat faithful adaptations of late 19th and early 20th century UK authors. Vestron was looking to work with some prestigious filmmakers, to help build their cache in the filmmaking community, and Russell saw the opportunity to hopefully find a new home with this new distributor not unlike the one he had with Warner Brothers in the early 70s that brought forth several of his strongest movies.   In June 1986, Russell began production on a gothic horror film entitled, appropriately enough, Gothic, which depicted a fictionalized version of a real life meeting between Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, John William Polidori and Claire Clairemont at the Villa Diodati in Geneva, hosted by Lord Byron, from which historians believe both Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and John William Polidori's The Vampyre were inspired.   And you want to talk about a movie with a great cast. Gabriel Byrne plays Lord Byron, Julian Sands as Percy Shelley, Natasha Richardson, in her first ever movie, as Mary Shelley, Timothy Spall as John William Polidori, and Dexter Fletcher.   Although the film was produced through MGM, and distributed by the company in Europe, they would not release the film in America, fearing American audiences wouldn't get it. So Vestron would swoop in and acquire the American theatrical rights.   Incidentally, the film did not do very well in American theatres. Opening at the Cinema 1 in midtown Manhattan on April 10th, 1987, the film would sell $45,000 worth of tickets in its first three days, one of the best grosses of any single screen in the city. But the film would end up grossing only $916k after three months in theatres.   BUT…   The movie would do quite well for Vestron on home video, enough so that Vestron would sign on to produce Russell's next three movies. The first of those will be coming up very soon.   Vestron's 1988 release schedule began on January 22nd with the release of two films.   The first was Michael Hoffman's Promised Land. In 1982, Hoffman's first film, Privileged, was the first film to made through the Oxford Film Foundation, and was notable for being the first screen appearances for Hugh Grant and Imogen Stubbs, the first film scored by future Oscar winning composer Rachel Portman, and was shepherded into production by none other than John Schlesinger, the Oscar winning director of 1969 Best Picture winner Midnight Cowboy. Hoffman's second film, the Scottish comedy Restless Natives, was part of the 1980s Scottish New Wave film movement that also included Bill Forsyth's Gregory's Girl and Local Hero, and was the only film to be scored by the Scottish rock band Big Country.   Promised Land was one of the first films to be developed by the Sundance Institute, in 1984, and when it was finally produced in 1986, would include Robert Redford as one of its executive producers. The film would follow two recent local high school graduates, Hancock and Danny, whose lives would intersect again with disastrous results several years after graduation. The cast features two young actors destined to become stars, in Keifer Sutherland and Meg Ryan, as well as Jason Gedrick, Tracy Pollan, and Jay Underwood. Shot in Reno and around the Sundance Institute outside Park City, Utah during the early winter months of 1987, Promised Land would make its world premiere at the prestigious Deauville Film Festival in September 1987, but would lose its original distributor, New World Pictures around the same time. Vestron would swoop in to grab the distribution rights, and set it for a January 22nd, 1988 release, just after its American debut at the then U.S. Film Festival, which is now known as the Sundance Film Festival.    Convenient, eh?   Opening on six screens in , the film would gross $31k in its first three days. The film would continue to slowly roll out into more major markets, but with a lack of stellar reviews, and a cast that wouldn't be more famous for at least another year and a half, Vestron would never push the film out to more than 67 theaters, and it would quickly disappear with only $316k worth of tickets sold.   The other movie Vestron opened on January 22nd was Ettore Scale's The Family, which was Italy's submission to that year's Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film. The great Vittorio Gassman stars as a retired college professor who reminisces about his life and his family over the course of the twentieth century. Featuring a cast of great international actors including Fanny Ardant, Philip Noiret, Stefania Sandrelli and Ricky Tognazzi, The Family would win every major film award in Italy, and it would indeed be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, but in America, it would only play in a handful of theatres for about two months, unable to gross even $350k.   When is a remake not a remake? When French filmmaker Roger Vadim, who shot to international fame in 1956 with his movie And God Created Woman, decided to give a generational and international spin on his most famous work. And a completely different story, as to not resemble his original work in any form outside of the general brushstrokes of both being about a young, pretty, sexually liberated young woman.   Instead of Bridget Bardot, we get Rebecca De Mornay, who was never able to parlay her starring role in Risky Business to any kind of stardom the way one-time boyfriend Tom Cruise had. And if there was any American woman in the United States in 1988 who could bring in a certain demographic to see her traipse around New Mexico au natural, it would be Rebecca De Mornay. But as we saw with Kathleen Turner in Ken Russell's Crimes of Passion in 1984 and Ellen Barkin in Mary Lambert's Siesta in 1987, American audiences were still rather prudish when it came to seeing a certain kind of female empowered sexuality on screen, and when the film opened at 385 theatres on March 4th, it would open to barely a $1,000 per screen average. And God Created Woman would be gone from theatres after only three weeks and $717k in ticket sales.   Vestron would next release a Dutch film called The Pointsman, about a French woman who accidentally gets off at the wrong train station in a remote Dutch village, and a local railwayman who, unable to speak the other person's language, develop a strange relationship while she waits for another train that never arrives.   Opening at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas on New York's Upper West Side on April 8th, the film would gross $7,000 in its first week, which in and of itself isn't all that bad for a mostly silent Dutch film. Except there was another Dutch film in the marketplace already, one that was getting much better reviews, and was the official Dutch entry into that year's Best Foreign Language Film race. That film, Babette's Feast, was becoming something more than just a movie. Restaurants across the country were creating menus based on the meals served in the film, and in its sixth week of release in New York City that weekend, had grossed four times as much as The Pointsman, despite the fact that the theatre playing Babette's Feast, the Cinema Studio 1, sat only 65 more people than the Lincoln Plaza 1. The following week, The Pointsman would drop to $6k in ticket sales, while Babette's Feast's audience grew another $6k over the previous week. After a third lackluster week, The Pointsman was gone from the Lincoln Plaza, and would never play in another theatre in America.   In the mid-80s, British actor Ben Cross was still trying to capitalize on his having been one of the leads in the 1981 Best Picture winner Chariots of Fire, and was sharing a home with his wife and children, as well as Camilo Vila, a filmmaker looking for his first big break in features after two well-received short films made in his native Cuba before he defected in the early 1980s. When Vila was offered the chance to direct The Unholy, about a Roman Catholic priest in New Orleans who finds himself battling a demonic force after being appointed to a new parish, he would walk down the hall of his shared home and offered his roomie the lead role.   Along with Ned Beatty, William Russ, Hal Holbrook and British actor Trevor Howard in his final film, The Unholy would begin two weeks of exterior filming in New Orleans on October 27th, 1986, before moving to a studio in Miami for seven more weeks. The film would open in 1189 theatres, Vestron's widest opening to date, on April 22nd, and would open in seventh place with $2.35m in ticket sales. By its second week in theatres, it would fall to eleventh place with a $1.24m gross. But with the Summer Movie Season quickly creeping up on the calendar, The Unholy would suffer the same fate as most horror films, making the drop to dollar houses after two weeks, as to make room for such dreck as Sunset, Blake Edwards' lamentable Bruce Willis/James Garner riff on Hollywood and cowboys in the late 1920s, and the pointless sequel to Critters before screens got gobbled up by Rambo III on Memorial Day weekend. It would earn a bit more than $6m at the box office.   When Gothic didn't perform well in American theatres, Ken Russell thought his career was over. As we mentioned earlier, the American home video store saved his career, as least for the time being.    The first film Russell would make for Vestron proper was Salome's Last Dance, based on an 1891 play by Oscar Wilde, which itself was based on a story from the New Testament. Russell's script would add a framing device as a way for movie audiences to get into this most theatrical of stories.   On Guy Fawkes Day in London in 1892, Oscar Wilde and his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, arrive late at a friend's brothel, where the author is treated to a surprise performance of his play Salome, which has recently been banned from being performed at all in England by Lord Chamberlain. All of the actors in his special performance are played by the prostitutes of the brothel and their clients, and the scenes of the play are intertwined with Wilde's escapades at the brothel that night.   We didn't know it at the time, but Salome's Last Dance would be the penultimate film performance for Academy Award winning actress Glenda Jackson, who would retire to go into politics in England a couple years later, after working with Russell on another film, which we'll get to in a moment. About the only other actor you might recognize in the film is David Doyle, of all people, the American actor best known for playing Bosley on Charlie's Angels.   Like Gothic, Salome's Last Dance would not do very well in theatres, grossing less than half a million dollars after three months, but would find an appreciative audience on home video.   The most interesting thing about Roger Holzberg's Midnight Crossing is the writer and director himself. Holzberg started in the entertainment industry as a playwright, then designed the props and weapons for Albert Pyun's 1982 film The Sword and the Sorcerer, before moving on to direct the second unit team on Pyun's 1985 film Radioactive Dreams. After making this film, Holzberg would have a cancer scare, and pivot to health care, creating a number of technological advancements to help evolve patient treatment, including the Infusionarium, a media setup which helps children with cancer cope with treatment by asking them questions designed to determine what setting would be most comforting to them, and then using virtual reality technology and live events to immerse them in such an environment during treatment.   That's pretty darn cool, actually.   Midnight Crossing stars Faye Dunaway and Hill Street Blues star Daniel J. Travanti in his first major movie role as a couple who team with another couple, played by Kim Cattrall and John Laughlin, who go hunting for treasure supposedly buried between Florida and Cuba.   The film would open in 419 theaters on May 11th, 1988, and gross a paltry $673k in its first three days, putting it 15th on the list of box office grosses for the week, $23k more than Three Men and a Baby, which was playing on 538 screens in its 25th week of release. In its second week, Midnight Crossing would lose more than a third of its theatres, and the weekend gross would fall to just $232k. The third week would be even worse, dropping to just 67 theatres and $43k in ticket sales. After a few weeks at a handful of dollar houses, the film would be history with just $1.3m in the bank. Leonard Klady, then writing for the Los Angeles Times, would note in a January 1989 article about the 1988 box office that Midnight Crossing's box office to budget ratio of 0.26 was the tenth worst ratio for any major or mini-major studio, ahead of And God Created Woman's 8th worst ratio of .155 but behind other stinkers like Caddyshack II.   The forgotten erotic thriller Call Me sounds like a twist on the 1984 Alan Rudolph romantic comedy Choose Me, but instead of Genevieve Bujold we get Patricia Charbonneau, and instead of a meet cute involving singles at a bar in Los Angeles, we get a murder mystery involving a New York City journalist who gets involved with a mysterious caller after she witnesses a murder at a bar due to a case of mistaken identity.   The film's not very good, but the supporting cast is great, including Steve Buscemi, Patti D'Arbanville, Stephen McHattie and David Straithairn.   Opening on 24 screens in major markets on May 20th, Call Me would open to horrible reviews, lead by Siskel and Ebert's thumbs facing downward, and only $58,348 worth of tickets sold in its first three days. After five weeks in theatres, Vestron hung up on Call Me with just $252k in the kitty.   Vestron would open two movies on June 3rd, one in a very limited release, and one in a moderate national release.   There are a lot of obscure titles in these two episodes, and probably the most obscure is Paul Mones' The Beat. The film followed a young man named Billy Kane, played by William McNamara in his film debut, who moves into a rough neighborhood controlled by several gangs, who tries to help make his new area a better place by teaching them about poetry. John Savage from The Deer Hunter plays a teacher, and future writer and director Reggie Rock Bythewood plays one of the troubled youths whose life is turned around through the written and spoken word.   The production team was top notch. Producer Julia Phillips was one of the few women to ever win a Best Picture Oscar when she and her then husband Michael Phillips produced The Sting in 1973. Phillips was assisted on the film by two young men who were making their first movie. Jon Kilik would go on to produce or co-produce every Spike Lee movie from Do the Right Thing to Da 5 Bloods, except for BlackkKlansman, while Nick Weschler would produce sex, lies and videotape, Drugstore Cowboy, The Player and Requiem for a Dream, amongst dozens of major films. And the film's cinematographer, Tom DiCillo, would move into the director's chair in 1991 with Johnny Suede, which gave Brad Pitt his first lead role.   The Beat would be shot on location in New York City in the summer of 1986, and it would make its world premiere at the Cannes Film Market in May 1987. But it would be another thirteen months before the film arrived in theatres.   Opening on seven screens in Los Angeles and New York City on June 3rd, The Beat would gross just $7,168 in its first three days.  There would not be a second week for The Beat. It would make its way onto home video in early 1989, and that's the last time the film was seen for nearly thirty years, until the film was picked up by a number of streaming services.   Vestron's streak of bad luck continued with the comedy Paramedics starring George Newbern and Christopher McDonald. The only feature film directed by Stuart Margolin, best known as Angel on the 1970s TV series The Rockford Files, Newbern and McDonald play two… well, paramedics… who are sent by boss, as punishment, from their cushy uptown gig to a troubled district at the edge of the city, where they discover two other paramedics are running a cadavers for dollars scheme, harvesting organs from dead bodies to the black market.   Here again we have a great supporting cast who deserve to be in a better movie, including character actor John P. Ryan, James Noble from Benson, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs from Welcome Back Kotter, the great Ray Walston, and one-time Playboy Playmate Karen Witter, who plays a sort of angel of death.   Opening on 301 screens nationwide, Paramedics would only gross $149,577 in its first three days, the worst per screen average of any movie playing in at least 100 theatres that weekend. Vestron stopped tracking the film after just three days.   Two weeks later, on June 17th, Vestron released a comedy horror film that should have done better. Waxwork was an interesting idea, a group of college students who have some strange encounters with the wax figures at a local museum, but that's not exactly why it should have been more popular. It was the cast that should have brought audiences in. On one side, you had a group of well-known younger actors like Deborah Foreman from Valley Girl, Zack Gailligan from Gremlins, Michelle Johnson from Blame It on Rio, and Miles O'Keeffe from Sword of the Valiant. On the other hand, you had a group of seasoned veterans from popular television shows and movies, such as Patrick Macnee from the popular 1960s British TV show The Avengers, John Rhys-Davies from the Indiana Jones movies, and David Warner, from The Omen and Time after Time and Time Bandits and Tron.   But if I want to be completely honest, this was not a movie to release in the early part of summer. While I'm a firm believer that the right movie can find an audience no matter when it's released, Waxwork was absolutely a prime candidate for an early October release. Throughout the 1980s, we saw a number of horror movies, and especially horror comedies, released in the summer season that just did not hit with audiences. So it would be of little surprise when Waxwork grossed less than a million dollars during its theatrical run. And it should be of little surprise that the film would become popular enough on home video to warrant a sequel, which would add more popular sci-fi and horror actors like Marina Sirtis from Star Trek: The Next Generation, David Carradine and even Bruce Campbell. But by 1992, when Waxwork 2 was released, Vestron was long since closed.   The second Ken Russell movie made for Vestron was The Lair of the White Worm, based on a 1911 novel by Bram Stoker, the author's final published book before his death the following year. The story follows the residents in and around a rural English manor that are tormented by an ancient priestess after the skull of a serpent she worships is unearthed by an archaeologist.   Russell would offer the role of Sylvia Marsh, the enigmatic Lady who is actually an immortal priestess to an ancient snake god, to Tilda Swinton, who at this point of her career had already racked up a substantial resume in film after only two years, but she would decline. Instead, the role would go to Amanda Donohoe, the British actress best known at the time for her appearances in a pair of Adam Ant videos earlier in the decade. And the supporting cast would include Peter Capaldi, Hugh Grant, Catherine Oxenberg, and the under-appreciated Sammi Davis, who was simply amazing in Mona Lisa, A Prayer for the Dying and John Boorman's Hope and Glory.   The $2m would come together fairly quickly. Vestron and Russell would agree on the film in late 1987, the script would be approved by January 1988, filming would begin in England in February, and the completed film would have its world premiere at the Montreal Film Festival before the end of August.   When the film arrived in American theatres starting on October 21st, many critics would embrace the director's deliberate camp qualities and anachronisms. But audiences, who maybe weren't used to Russell's style of filmmaking, did not embrace the film quite so much. New Yorkers would buy $31k worth of tickets in its opening weekend at the D. W. Griffith and 8th Street Playhouse, and the film would perform well in its opening weeks in major markets, but the film would never quite break out, earning just $1.2m after ten weeks in theatres. But, again, home video would save the day, as the film would become one of the bigger rental titles in 1989.   If you were a teenager in the early 80s, as I was, you may remember a Dutch horror film called The Lift. Or, at the very least, you remember the key art on the VHS box, of a man who has his head stuck in between the doors of an elevator, while the potential viewer is warned to take the stairs, take the stairs, for God's sake, take the stairs. It was an impressive debut film for Dick Maas, but it was one that would place an albatross around the neck of his career.   One of his follow ups to The Lift, called Amsterdamned, would follow a police detective who is searching for a serial killer in his home town, who uses the canals of the Dutch capital to keep himself hidden. When the detective gets too close to solving the identity of the murderer, the killer sends a message by killing the detective's girlfriend, which, if the killer had ever seen a movie before, he should have known you never do. You never make it personal for the cop, because he's gonna take you down even worse.   When the film's producers brought the film to the American Film Market in early 1988, it would become one of the most talked about films, and Vestron would pick up the American distribution rights for a cool half a million dollars. The film would open on six screens in the US on November 25th, including the Laemmle Music Hall in Beverly Hills but not in New York City, but a $15k first weekend gross would seal its fate almost immediately. The film would play for another four weeks in theatres, playing on 18 screens at its widest, but it would end its run shortly after the start of of the year with only $62,044 in tickets sold.   The final Vestron Pictures release of 1988 was Andrew Birkin's Burning Secret. Birkin, the brother of French singer and actress Jane Birkin, would co-write the screenplay for this adaptation of a 1913 short story by Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig, about a about an American diplomat's son who befriends a mysterious baron while staying at an Austrian spa during the 1920s. According to Birkin in a 2021 interview, making the movie was somewhat of a nightmare, as his leading actors, Klaus Maria Brandauer and Faye Dunaway, did not like each other, and their lack of comfort with each other would bleed into their performances, which is fatal for a film about two people who are supposed to passionately burn for each other.   Opening on 16 screens in major markets on Thursday, December 22nd, Burning Secret would only gross $27k in its first four days. The film would actually see a post-Christmas bump, as it would lose a screen but see its gross jump to $40k. But after the first of the year, as it was obvious reviews were not going to save the film and awards consideration was non-existent, the film would close after three weeks with only $104k worth of tickets sold.   By the end of 1988, Vestron was facing bankruptcy. The major distributors had learned the lessons independents like Vestron had taught them about selling more volumes of tapes by lowering the price, to make movies collectables and have people curate their own video library. Top titles were harder to come by, and studios were no longer giving up home video rights to the movies they acquired from third-party producers.   Like many of the distributors we've spoken about before, and will undoubtedly speak of again, Vestron had too much success with one movie too quickly, and learned the wrong lessons about growth. If you look at the independent distribution world of 2023, you'll see companies like A24 that have learned that lesson. Stay lean and mean, don't go too wide too quickly, try not to spend too much money on a movie, no matter who the filmmaker is and how good of a relationship you have with them. A24 worked with Robert Eggers on The Witch and The Lighthouse, but when he wanted to spend $70-90m to make The Northman, A24 tapped out early, and Focus Features ended up losing millions on the film. Focus, the “indie” label for Universal Studios, can weather a huge loss like The Northman because they are a part of a multinational, multimedia conglomerate.   This didn't mean Vestron was going to quit quite yet, but, spoiler alert, they'll be gone soon enough.   In fact, and in case you are newer to the podcast and haven't listen to many of the previous episodes, none of the independent distribution companies that began and/or saw their best years in the 1980s that we've covered so far or will be covering in the future, exist in the same form they existed in back then.    New Line still exists, but it's now a label within Warner Brothers instead of being an independent distributor. Ditto Orion, which is now just a specialty label within MGM/UA. The Samuel Goldwyn Company is still around and still distributes movies, but it was bought by Orion Pictures the year before Orion was bought by MGM/UA, so it too is now just a specialty label, within another specialty label. Miramax today is just a holding company for the movies the company made before they were sold off to Disney, before Disney sold them off to a hedge fund, who sold Miramax off to another hedge fund.    Atlantic is gone. New World is gone. Cannon is gone. Hemdale is gone. Cinecom is gone. Island Films is gone. Alive Films is gone. Concorde Films is gone. MCEG is gone. CineTel is gone. Crown International is gone. Lorimar is gone. New Century/Vista is gone. Skouras Films is gone. Cineplex Odeon Films is gone.   Not one of them survived.   The same can pretty much be said for the independent distributors created in the 1990s, save Lionsgate, but I'll leave that for another podcast to tackle.   As for the Vestron story, we'll continue that one next week, because there are still a dozen more movies to talk about, as well as the end of the line for the once high flying company.   Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again soon.   Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about the movies we covered this episode.   The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment.   Thank you again.   Good night.

Oh boi-- Here we are closing out Dysfunctional December, 2022 AND season 3! And what a great film to do it with: 1997's The House of Yes! Parker Posey, Josh Hamilton, Freddie Prinz Jr, Tori Spelling and Genevieve Bujold deliver a tight adaptation of a play by Wendy MacLeod. Mark Waters and crew adroitly guide us through this contemporary take on Jacobean-style upper class drama. We delve into how much and why we loved the performances in this film and also reflect upon our personal relationships to nerd culture and feeling out of place. Thanks for spending 2022 with us! See you next year! xo, Z & K +++++ Intro: by Professor Ping available on Bandcamp Outro: Tina Turner performing She Came In Through The Bathroom Window --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/zandkmoviepod/support

[ For full episode catalogue please subscribe to our Patreon at Patreon.com/BestActress ] The year is 1970 and the nominees are: 1. Maggie Smith - The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie 2. Genevieve Bujold - Anne of the Thousand Days 3. Jane Fonda - They Shoot Horses, Don't They? 4. Liza Minnelli - The Sterile Cuckoo 5. Jean Simmons - The Happy Ending - In 1970 Maggie Smith won her first of two Oscars for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Smith plays an eccentric schoolteacher in a conservative school during the 1930's in Edinburgh, Scotland. She had won the BAFTA for Best Lead Actress but odds on favourite at the Oscars was Jane Fonda in They Shoot Horses, Don't They. Many speculated she (Fonda) lost this Oscar due to an arrest on Fort Hood military reservation as well as rumours of drug use and adultery had cost her the award. Remember! It was the late 1960's/70's. However Smith delivers an amazing performance in TPOMJB. Liza Minnelli became a first time nominee in The Sterile Cuckoo. A role Judy Garland urged her not to play worried it would make her seem unattractive. I don't agree! Pookie (the character Minnelli plays) is obnoxiously charming! Genevieve Bujold plays Anne Boleyn in Anne of the Thousand Days. A fantastic performance and I would recommend if you enjoy period pieces. Finally, Jean Simmons was nominated for The Happy Ending - a hilarious camp film about a woman who walks out on her family (inexplicably) and struggles with drug and alcohol addiction. Join host Kyle Brownrigg with guest host Luke McFarlane as they discuss.

Tom and Jenny discuss this 1970s medical thriller, based on the best-selling novel by Robin Cook, and adapted for the screen and directed by Michael Crichton. It stars Genevieve Bujold, Michael Douglas, and Richard Widmark, and also features early appearances by Tom Selleck and Ed Harris in small roles. Find this movie and more at … Continue reading Movie Retrospective: Coma (1978)

Canuck Puck! One more diversion from the list for now as Jason brings forth a Canadian film all about the inevitable end of the world called Last Night written, directed by and starring Don McKellar. The guys talk all about their end-of-the-world plans, whether David Cronenberg plays the most sane or INSANE character in the film, Purge-style gangs, the connection to Y2K paranoia at the time and much more.   Next week: Back to the Empire list and it's time for the debut of a fairly prolific director! Questions? Comments? Suggestions? You can always shoot us an e-mail at forscreenandcountry@gmail.com   Full List: https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/best-british-films/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/forscreenandcountry Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/fsacpod Our logo was designed by the wonderful Mariah Lirette (https://instagram.com/its.mariah.xo) Pride and Prejudice stars Don McKellar, Sandra Oh, Callum Keith Rennie, Sarah Polley, Genevieve Bujold, Tracy Wright and David Cronenberg; directed by Don McKellar. Is It Streaming? USA: available to rent on Amazon Canada: Amazon Prime, CBC Gem and available to rent on Apple TV UK: N/A Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, the guys talk about a movie featuring TWO Jeremy Ironses - that's right, it's #7 on the list, Dead Ringers. Many topics are discussed such as the subtle differences in both of Irons' performances, the surprising lack of gore but strong colour design that may act as a substitution, the real-life twin gynecologists on which the movie is based, the Canadian touches Cronenberg adds to this Hollywood film and much more. Also: do British people call it pop or soda? TELL US!   Next week: It's time to get VERY local with a Maritime classic at #6 - Goin' Down the Road. Questions? Comments? Suggestions? You can always shoot us an e-mail at forscreenandcountry@gmail.com   Full List: https://globalnews.ca/news/1956583/atanarjuat-named-top-canadian-film-of-all-time/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/forscreenandcountry Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/fsacpod Our logo was designed by the wonderful Mariah Lirette (https://instagram.com/its.mariah.xo) Dead Ringers stars Jeremy Irons (x2), Genevieve Bujold, Shirley Douglas, Stephen Lack, Lynne Cormack and Barbara Gordon; directed by David Cronenberg. Is It Streaming? USA: Prime, Hoopla, Kanopy, Popcornflix and available to rent Canada: Prime, Hoopla, Shudder and available to rent UK: available to rent on Apple TV Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Elyse comes back on the pod to talk some good old fashioned dysfunctional family films to spread holiday joy. The House of Yes(1997) Directed by Mark Waters. Starring Parker Posey, Josh Hamilton, Tori Spelling, Freddie Prinze Jr. and Genevieve Bujold. Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48-M7MfrYMc The Myth of Fingerprints(1997) Directed by Bart Freundlich. Starring Julianne Moore, Roy Scheider, Noah Wyle, Arija Bareikis, and Blythe Danner. Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRzz9DOm1G0 Elyse's Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/dumbeslute/ Twitter: @DoubledFeature Instagram: DoubledFeature Email: DoubledFeaturePodcast@Gmail.com Dan's Twitter: @DannyJenkem Dan's Letterboxd: @DannyJenkem Max's Twitter: @Mac_Dead Max's Letterboxd: @Mac_Dead Executive Producer: Koolaid --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/doubledfeature/message

This week on The First Run, Chris and Matt have another triple feature in store for all you! First Up, TFR favorite Edgar Wright deliver's his version of the giallo with a possible dusting of time travel thrown in with, ‘Last Night In Soho', featuring Thomasin McKenzie and Anya Taylor-Joy. Wright has yet to make a bad film, could this be the first one? Then it's on to the horror film, ‘Antlers', featuring an interesting monster and a dash about eco-horror. From there the Body Horror Marathon wraps up with David Cronenberg's ‘Dead Ringers', featuring Jeremy Irons and Genevieve Bujold. There's the always thrilling review of the big release on Physical Media, featuring the Straight to DVD and Streaming Picks of the Week. Then Matt and Chris close out the show by sharing their Body Horror Marathon Awards. It's been an odd marathon with what you may think are obvious choices. Only way to know for sure is to listen dear friends!00:00-14:24: Intro/Last Night In Soho14:25-20:51: Antlers20:52-29:46: Physical Media Picks29:47-38:04: Dead Ringers38:05-47:32: Body Horror Marathon Awards47:33-49:20: Wrap UpTheme music by Jamal Malachi Ford-BeyTwitterInstagramFacebook

In the forty-third episode of Season 4 (The Horror, The Horror) Kyle is joined by novelist Samuel Cullado and actor Benjamin McGinley to discuss the late 80s David Cronenberg masterpiece, the deeply disturbing and ultimately tragic portrait of twin gynecologists and their struggle of identity, the shadow self, and co-dependent annihilation I'm Dead Ringers.

For today's movie review:Brian DePalma imitates Vertigo in his own way with 1976's Obsession! Cliff Robertson loses his wife Genevieve Bujold to kidnappers only to discover a woman who looks remarkably similar to her years later.Check out Obsession (1978)Show Notes:Viewer's Question:What are your favorite Brian DePalma movies?Comment/email your answers.Chapters:(~0:00:08) Introduction(~0:00:46) Featured Review(~0:15:03) Viewer's Question(~0:23:25) ClosingLike, comment, or subscribe if you'd want to see more episodes.Feel free to send us a question we can answer on the air to ReelShame@gmail.com or follow us on Instagram @ReelShame.

Dos Cuerpos, dos mentes y una sola alma.  En el episodio de esta semana conoceremos a los ginecólogos Elliot y Beverly Mantle, un par de hermanos gemelos que se benefician de ser idénticos para compartir experiencias, logros profesionales, relaciones sentimentales y sexuales. Hasta que la llegada de Claire a sus vidas, comienza a deteriorar esta estrecha relación fraternal.  Inseparables (DEAD RINGERS) es una película de 1988 protagonizada por Jeremy Irons y Genevieve Bujold, y dirigida por el padre del body horror David Cronenberg. “¿Cuál es tu Película de Terror favorita?”- PLANETA TERROR es un podcast semanal en español dedicado al cine de horror/slasher/gore. Reseñas, noticias, rankings y discusión general desde el punto de vista de alguien cuyo “goal” en la vida es mudarse a Woodsboro, vivir en Elm Street y asistir al Campamento Crystal Lake. Apple Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/planeta-terror-podcast/id1539867451 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/planetaterrorpod/ Twitter https://mobile.twitter.com/planetaterrorpd Anchor.FM https://anchor.fm/planetaterrorpod Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/1ukj8s0MswQucavWmYWP7O?si=nSCBW3MbQN-i3Cibih8ByQ RadioPublic https://radiopublic.com/planeta-terror-podcast-Ww3a40

Today on the show we have veteran indie producer and best-selling author Suzanne Lyons. Suzanne was one of my first guests on the Indie Film Hustle Podcast. Her episodes are some of my most downloaded episodes so I had to have her back on to talk shop.Suzanne will go over a ton of information on how to produce an indie feature film. She covers:The dos and don'ts of Low Budget FilmmakingWhat is Soft Prep?ContractsWorking with unionsThe hell of deliverablesand much moreIn 1999 Suzanne Lyons launched Snowfall Films and to date has produced/executive produced twelve movies. These included A BAFTA award-winning British comedy UNDERTAKING BETTY(aka “Plots With A View”), with actors Christopher Walken, Brenda Blethyn, Alfred Molina and Naomi Watts with Miramax Distribution.British/Canadian thriller JERICHO MANSIONS staring James Caan, Genevieve Bujold, Maribel Verdu, and Jennifer Tilly. JERICHO MANSIONS was an official selection at the Montreal Film Festival and the Hollywood Film Festival. British/Canadian family comedy BAILEY’S BILLION$ which stars Dean Cain, Laurie Holden, Tim Curry, and Jon Lovitz.A drama HEART IS DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS, based on J.T. LeRoy's novel, starring Asia Argento, Marilyn Manson, Winona Ryder, and Peter Fonda. The film premiered during the Directors Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival and screened to high acclaim at the Toronto Film Festival.In 2012 Ms. Lyons published her book through Focal Press (Taylor and Francis Publishing) titled Indie Film Producing: The Craft of Low Budget Filmmaking which is the #1 book on Indie Film Producing on Amazon.We also discuss Suzanne’s new online workshop The Complete Indie Film Producing Workshop.Enjoy my conversation with producer Suzanne Lyons.

We review the film Earthquake starring Charlton Heston. When I was a kid I fondly remember going on the Earthquake ride at Universal Studios. Looking back, it was amazing that the ride has held up better than the film.

This week, we check out the 1978 medical thriller Coma, starring Genevieve Bujold and Michael Douglas. Does it deliver excited or put us to sleep? Tune in to find out. We also chat about City of the Dead, Rocky Mountain Christmas and The Magical Christmas Ornaments. marriedwithclickers@gmail.com

Coming Attractions/News: Captain MarvelHow to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World   New Movies The House With A Clock in its Walls - A young orphan named Lewis Barnavelt aids his magical uncle in locating a clock with the power to bring about the end of the world.   Farenheit 11/9 - Filmmaker Michael Moore examines the current state of American politics, particularly the Donald J. Trump presidency and gun violence, while highlighting the power of grassroots democratic movements.   Life Itself - As a young New York couple goes from college romance to marriage and the birth of their first child, the unexpected twists of their journey create reverberations that echo over continents and through lifetimes.   Assassination Nation - After a malicious data hack exposes the secrets of the perpetually American town of Salem, chaos decends and four girls must fight to survive, while coping with the hack themselves.   Undisputed Classic   Galaxy Quest - The alumni cast of a space opera television series have to play their roles as the real thing when an alien race needs their help. However, they also have to defend both Earth and the alien race from a reptilian warlord.   Top Five - Sigourney Weaver   1988   Gorillas In the Mist (Sigourney Weaver, Bryan Brown): The story of Dian Fossey, a scientist who came to Africa to study the vanishing mountain gorillas, and later fought to protect them. Dead Ringers (Jeremy Irons, Genevieve Bujold, David Cronenberg): Twin gynecologists take full advantage of the fact that nobody can tell them apart, until their relationship begins to deteriorate over a woman. Kansas (Matt Dillon, Andrew McCarthy): A young man returning home to attend a wedding hooks up with a drifter who turns out to be a violent bank robber. Before he knows it, the man finds himself involved in the robber's plans. Sweet Hearts Dance (Don Johnson, Susan Sarandon, Jeff Daniels, Elizabeth Perkins): Wiley and Sandra have been happily married for years and are now in the process of breaking up. Sam, his childhood friend, is just beginning to fall in love with a new teacher at the high school. As they try to adjust to these conflicting emotions they find themselves having to evaluate their own relationship as well. Spellbinder (Tim Daly, Kelly Preston): A young lawyer, after falling in love with a beautiful woman, finds that she has an extremely mysterious past. Next Week:  Hell Fest, Night School, Smallfoot. Our Undisputed Classic: From Hell. Top Five: Movies About Hell

Story: Ned Lynch ist der gefürchtete scharlachrote Pirat: Ein Haudegen, der mit seiner hitzigen Crew die Karibik unsicher macht. Als ihn die Adelige Jane Barnet um Hilfe bittet, zeigt der Draufgänger, dass er das Herz am rechten Fleck hat: Gemeinsam bekämpfen sie Lord Durant, einen Tyrannen, der Janes Vater in den Ruin getrieben hat. Blu-Ray/DVD-Release: 13.04.2017 (Koch Media) Swashbuckler Genre: Abenteuer, Piratenfilm Land: USA 1976 Laufzeit: ca. 101 min. FSK: 12 Regie: James Goldstone Drehbuch: Jeffrey Bloom Mit Robert Shaw, James Earl Jones, Peter Boyle, Genevieve Bujold, Beau Bridges, Geoffrey Holder, Avery Schreiber, Tom Clancy, Anjelica Huston, Bernard Behrens, Dorothy Tristan, ... https://youtu.be/p0Rbvonrh40

Story: Ned Lynch ist der gefürchtete scharlachrote Pirat: Ein Haudegen, der mit seiner hitzigen Crew die Karibik unsicher macht. Als ihn die Adelige Jane Barnet um Hilfe bittet, zeigt der Draufgänger, dass er das Herz am rechten Fleck hat: Gemeinsam bekämpfen sie Lord Durant, einen Tyrannen, der Janes Vater in den Ruin getrieben hat. Blu-Ray/DVD-Release: 13.04.2017 (Koch Media) Swashbuckler Genre: Abenteuer, Piratenfilm Land: USA 1976 Laufzeit: ca. 101 min. FSK: 12 Regie: James Goldstone Drehbuch: Jeffrey Bloom Mit Robert Shaw, James Earl Jones, Peter Boyle, Genevieve Bujold, Beau Bridges, Geoffrey Holder, Avery Schreiber, Tom Clancy, Anjelica Huston, Bernard Behrens, Dorothy Tristan, ... https://youtu.be/p0Rbvonrh40

Casting Voyager with Larry Nemecek. 1994 was an incredibly busy year for Star Trek. Upon the conclusion of TNG's seventh season, the cast and crew went straight into production for Star Trek Generations. On top of that and the third season of DS9, they were also starting production on Voyager. And, as many fans know, the fallout with Genevieve Bujold added uncertainty as to whether a woman would stay in the center seat, putting other character roles in jeopardy—on a production timeline that was already behind schedule. In this episode of To The Journey, Charlynn talks with guest Larry Nemecek about the crazy circumstances that surrounded the casting of Voyager. Who was a lock for their role? Who made it in at the last minute? Listen on and find out the answer to these questions and much more.

1994 was an incredibly busy year for Star Trek. Upon the conclusion of TNG's seventh season, the cast and crew went straight into production for Star Trek Generations. On top of that and the third season of DS9, they were also starting production on Voyager. And, as many fans know, the fallout with Genevieve Bujold added uncertainty as to whether a woman would stay in the center seat, putting other character roles in jeopardy—on a production timeline that was already behind schedule. In this episode of To The Journey, Charlynn talks with guest Larry Nemecek about the crazy circumstances that surrounded the casting of Voyager. Who was a lock for their role? Who made it in at the last minute? Listen on and find out the answer to these questions and much more. Originally published as To The Journey 75: Film Everything Without Janeway First.

Casting Could-Have-Beens. Finding the perfect actress to play the role of Janeway was a long and difficult process— especially after the first pick, Genevieve Bujold, quit after two days of shooting. In this episode of To The Journey, Char and Tristan talk about several people who auditioned for Janeway, as well as others who auditioned for main roles. Could you imagine the series being helmed by Lindsay Crouse, Patty Duke, or Joanna Cassidy? What about Claudia Christian as Seven of Nine? Listen on as Tristan and Char imagine the possibilities.

Michel Brault et sa muse, Genevieve Bujold. Permettez-nous une petite incursion sur le plancher des vaches. On reste à la maison et on est fier. Cette semaine, nous explorons le cinéma de Michel Brault et plus particulièrement une oeuvre qui nous est chère, ENTRE LA MER ET L'EAU DOUCE, ainsi que ce que nous considèrons sa préquelle, GENEVIÈVE, célébration de la beauté de Geneviève Bujold dans la fleur de l'âge.

Michel Brault et sa muse, Genevieve Bujold. Permettez-nous une petite incursion sur le plancher des vaches. On reste à la maison et on est fier. Cette semaine, nous explorons le cinéma de Michel Brault et plus particulièrement une oeuvre qui nous est chère, ENTRE LA MER ET L'EAU DOUCE, ainsi que ce que nous considèrons sa préquelle, GENEVIÈVE, célébration de la beauté de Geneviève Bujold dans la fleur de l'âge.