Podcast appearances and mentions of Jim Sheridan

In this Film Ireland podcast, Gemma Creagh talks to John Farrelly, Writer/Director of An Taibhse. An Taibhse unfolds in the bleak landscape of post-famine Ireland,exploring the profound hardships faced by its people. The narrative centres around Éamon (Tom Kerrisk) and his daughter Máire (Livvy Hill), who take on the task of maintaining a remote mansion , only to be driven to  the edge of sanity by the horrors lurking within. Their task, initially serene, veers into terror as they encounter inexplicable phenomena. The film explores the depths of human resilience in the face of unspeakable horror, presenting a nuanced portrayal of survival and the complex ways the mind adapts to protect itself. In cinemas from 28th March 2025. Produced, Written & Directed: John Farrelly Executive Producers: Jim Sheridan, Tom Kerrisk Starring: Tom Kerrisk, Livvy Hill, Anthony Murphy John Farrelly - Writer & Director John Farrelly is an acclaimed Irish filmmaker, best known for directing An Taibhse (The Ghost), the first-ever horror feature film in the Irish language. At the age of 17, Farrelly was named Ireland's Best Young Filmmaker for his short film Choice. Throughout his later school years and college, he went on to direct the award-winning feature film The Sleep Experiment and the Irish language short Difriúil. An Taibhse, set in post-famine Ireland, has garnered critical praise at international festivals, with six-time Oscar nominee Jim Sheridan serving as Executive Producer.

Send us a textOn this episode of Speaking Of…College of Charleston, we have a great conversation with Joe Kelly, director of Irish and Irish American Studies and Colleen Glenn, director of film studies at the College about Irish books and movies. The colleagues first met playing softball with faculty from the English department and quickly became friends. They put their heads together and took a group of students to Ireland for a study abroad program, traveling from Dublin to Galway.“When we do those visits, the students follow our discussions of films, like In The Name of the Father and they're really able to see the landscape and the culture that inspired the movie they they saw on the big screen,” says Glenn.They recount trips around Ireland, emphasizing locations featured in Irish films such as Dublin, Galway, Connemara, and Belfast. Films discussed include The Quiet Man, Michael Collins and Banshees of Inisherin among others, illustrating the socio-political history and cultural identity of Ireland. The episode also touches on significant Irish cinematic movements and celebrates the storytelling legacy and literary richness of Irish culture.The way Kelly's describes the landscape, and the novels are a clear indicator of his knowledge and love for the country. He's an in-demand professor for a reason.“John Huston did a film version of The Dead, which is a very quiet story,” says Kelly. “And it ends with this beautiful scene where Gabriel Conroy is looking out the window at the snow falling onto the streets of Dublin and he imagines it falling across the mutinous Shannon waves and the bog of Allen and out onto the crooked crosses in the graveyard where Michael Furey lay buried. It's the most beautiful prose I've ever read and it's a absolutely beautiful 10 minutes of cinematography too.”Featured on this Episode:Joe Kelly, director of Irish and Irish American Studies at the College of Charleston, has been studying and writing about Irish literature since the 1990s, and in the last fifteen years he's been writing narrative histories about American democracy. His next book, The Biggest Lie: A Hundred Years of American Fascism, 1818-1918, will be out this time next year.Colleen Glenn, director of film studies at the College, teaches courses on film history and American Cinema as well as special topics courses on topics like Irish Cinema & Hollywood Auteurs. In addition to co-editing an anthology on stardom, she has published on Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Stewart, and other film stars.Irish movies mentionedThe Quiet Man (John Ford, 1952)The Crying Game (Neil Jordan, 1992)In the Name of the Father  (Jim Sheridan, 1993)Michael Collins (Neil Jordan, 1996). The Wind That Shakes the Barley (Ken Loach, 2006 '71 (Yann Demange, 2014).  Hunger (Steve McQueen, 2008). The Field. (Jim Sheridan, 1990)**Banshees of Inisherin. (writ and dir by Martin McDonagh, 2022) Philomena (Stephen Frears, 2013) The Magdalene Sisters (Peter Mullen, 2002)Small Things Like These (Tim Mielants, 2024) (Claire Keegan wrote the book).Waking Ned Divine (Kirk Jones, 1998)-The Commitments (Alan Parker (ENGL), 1991). Once. Glen Hansard (John Carney, 2007). My Left Foot (Jim Sheridan, 1989). 

Existen películas que buscan la indignación en el público, suelen ser hechos deleznables que le han ocurrido a algún infeliz en el lugar y el tiempo menos indicado. En el caso del largometraje de Jim Sheridan, En el nombre del padre, la condena perpetua, la tortura y la muerte por las penalidades en la cárcel del padre del protagonista laceran, nos hacen preguntarnos hasta que límites de miseria puede llegar la condición humana. Gerry Conlon se entrevista con su abogada y le asegura que él ya no cree en la compasión, no puede, fue encerrado junto con su padre y otros sospechosos de pertenecer al IRA y colocar una bomba en un pub. Con pruebas manipuladas y otras ocultas, eran inocentes, parias irlandeses, cabezas de turco en la altiva democracia inglesa de los años 70. La narración de Sheridan avanza como la pólvora por las calles de Belfast, con las tanquetas armadas del ejército británico pisando los talones de un chaval de pelo largo y pocas luces. Encontrará un amigo del colegio y se embarcará en su aventura fatídica por tierras inglesas. El film se ensombrece en las dependencias policiales, las torturas, las conversaciones en la misma celda de un padre y un hijo que nunca se han entendido y terminan conociéndose, acercándose en su sufrimiento. Esa relación paternofilial bien trazada al principio, el padre intenta resolver los entuertos de un hijo con poca cabeza. Siempre utilizaba frases hechas para todo, comenta el joven, rabioso de vivir. Cuando sale de casa en busca de fortuna para tomar el ferry a Inglaterra, la madre susurra al cerrar la puerta que como mucho en un mes estará de vuelta. Respecto al guion Sheridan y George se permiten algunas licencias, padre e hijo nunca compartieron celda, el director lo hizo para mantener la tensión y no hacer aburrida la segunda parte del film. No tuvo lugar el motín en la proyección de El padrino ni tampoco le metieron fuego al funcionario de prisiones. Efectismos que podían haberse ahorrado, no hacían falta, la historia es potente, y nos deja dubitativos, pensamos igual que Gerry. Dónde está la compasión, la justicia en un sistema podrido de intereses creados y burocracia. Esta noche corremos por las calles de Belfast arrojando cócteles molotov… Zacarías Cotán, Salvador Limón, Raúl Gallego, Chari Medina y José Miguel Moreno.

Die Grippe-Welle hat auch vor uns leider nicht Halt gemacht, sodass Holger und Rüdiger in dieser Woche leider remote sprechen mussten. Und weil schon Fußball-Philosoph Andreas Brehme wusste: "Haste Scheiße am Fuß, haste Scheiße am Fuß", gab es dazu noch technische Probleme, sodass die Tonqualität diese Woche etwas suboptimal ist. Suboptimal gilt auch für die neue Zombie-Serie "Generation Z" (47:05) bei ZDFneo, die wir daher nur kurz am Ende besprechen. Zuvor geht es um die aktuell beliebteste Netflix-Serie "Die Åre-Morde" (4:30) nach Romanen von Vivika Sten, die in der ersten Staffel gleich zwei Bücher nacheinander abhandelt. Die literarischen Vorlagen hätte Holger am liebsten mit zahlreichen Anmerkungen zurück an die Autorin gegeben, aber schlägt sich die Serie besser? Anschließend holen wir die Wow-Serie "Lockerbie: A Search for Truth" (24:47) nach, die nicht ohne Grund einen unbestimmten Artikel im Titel trägt. Denn die von Jim Sheridan produzierte Miniserie mit Colin Firth in der Hauptrolle ist alles andere als ein objektiver Blick auf den feigen Terroranschlag, der im Dezember 1988 270 Menschenleben kostete. Ist sie trotzdem gut? Cold-Open-Frage: "In welche Serie haben wir uns aktuell verliebt?"

A lost John Ford film is found in Chile, while Jim Sheridan lines up his next film King of the Wind.

Com o desafio de criar uma lista de sugestões de 15 filmes que (quase) ninguém viu, mas devia ver, a Mónica Moreira, o Miguel Tomar Nogueira e o Ricardo Correia escolheram 5 filmes cada, e a lista é a seguinte: 1 - "The Field", Jim Sheridan (1990) 2 - "La leggenda del pianista sull'oceano", Giuseppe Tornatore (1998) 3 - "Everything is illuminated", Liev Shreiber (2005) 4 - "Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada", Tommy Lee Jones (2005) 5 - "Et maintenant on va où?", Nadine Labaki (2011) 6 - “Top Secret!”, David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker (1984) 7 - “Wings of Desire”, Wim Wenders (1987) 8 - “Naked Lunch”, David Cronenberg (1991) 9 - “Dark City”, Alex Proyas (1998) 10 - “A Bittersweet Life”, Kim Jee-woon (2005) 11 - “Hedwig and The Angry Inch”, John Cameron Mitchell (2001) 12 - “In America”, Jim Sheridan (2002) 13 - “The Tree of Life”, Terrence Malick (2011) 14 - “Jagten/The Hunt”, Thomas Vinterberg (2012) 15 - “Relatos Salvajes”, Damián Szifron (2014) Música utilizada: naked Lunch, de Howard Shore.

This week we're in Sheriff Street in Dublin's capital for Part 1 of an interview with local hero Pierce O'Leary. We take a walk around with unbeaten world title hopeful Big Bang while he spends some time at home between fight dates. Pierce talks about his love for the community, the pride he feels for the area and the drive it gives him to dig deep in his toughest battles. Once the bustling heartland of Dublin's Docklands, industrialisation took its toll and the area became run-down and crime-ridden. To outsiders, the name Sheriff Street became synonymous with lawlessness and criminality - but the community has always stuck together and produced people who've made a significant contribution to Ireland, from Sean O'Casey to Luke Kelly to Jim Sheridan, along with boxing idols like previous podcast guest Gus Farrell and now O'Leary. As we walk around, it's hard to ignore the rapid pace of development in the Docklands. It's changed even since Pierce was a kid and it's not been without controversy. Locals have voiced concern about the loss of community identity, lack of affordable housing, threat of gentrification and the prioritisation of commercial interests over community needs. They fight for the area and they also support their fighters, as witnessed by the celebrations up the road on Killarney Street when another north inner city boxer, Kellie Harrington, brought home her second Olympic gold medal from Paris. We finish up at the statue of Luke Kelly which sits beside the Royal Canal before it enters the Liffey and Pierce allows himself to dream of a statue of himself there beside the Dubliner. Stay tuned for Part 2 where Pierce discusses his dream fights, beating Darragh Foley last time out in a derby bout, boxing while sick with food poisoning and his enduring love for horses, which has been handed down through the generations on Sheriff Street. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On today's episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Bruno Anković about his new film ‘Celebration', which premiered at this years Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Crystal Globe competition. We dive into the themes and storytelling techniques used in ‘Celebration', which explores the cyclical nature of history and the challenges of portraying the passage of time through different actors. We also discuss Bruno's cinema influences, including Michael Haneke's ‘The White Ribbon' (2009) and Jim Sheridan's ‘The Field' (1990). Other past inspiration includes the Croatian films ‘Handcuffs' (Croatian title - “Lisice”), dir. Krsto Papić (1969) and ‘The Birch Tree' (Croatian title - “Breza”), dir. Antę Babaja (1967). The discussion also provides insights into Bruno's creative process and the connection between personal experiences and artistic expression. It explores the challenges of making a film that tackles sensitive topics and the importance of creating dialogue and understanding. Bruno discusses the political and social context of the Balkans region and the ongoing tensions that exist. His film ‘Celebration' aims to shed light on why young people can be drawn to extreme ideologies, and the impact of poverty and lack of education. Short EndsThe current cinema landscape is influenced by past films and filmmakers like Michael Haneke and Jim Sheridan, and it is important to appreciate and learn from their work.The passage of time can be effectively portrayed through storytelling techniques such as nonlinear narratives and the use of different actors to represent different stages of a character's life.Filmmaking is a powerful medium for exploring historical and social themes, and it allows for a deeper understanding of the cyclical nature of history.Personal experiences and cultural backgrounds can shape the creative process and influence the themes and storytelling choices in a film.Filmmaking can be a powerful tool for addressing sensitive topics and creating dialogue and understanding.The Balkans region continues to face political and social tensions, and the film ‘Celebration' aims to shed light on these issues.The film explores the reasons why young people can be drawn to extreme ideologies, highlighting the impact of poverty and lack of education.Film festivals play a crucial role in promoting and distributing independent films, and sales agents are important in navigating the industry.What Movies Are You Watching?Like, subscribe and follow us on our socials @pastpresentfeature

In the Name of the FatherHosts: Clark Coffey & Cullen McFaterThis week Clark and Cullen talk about the 1993 historical drama In the Name of the Father. Set in Northern Ireland and England during the troubles and following the story of the Guilford Four, director Jim Sheridan focusses on Gerry Conlon (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his relationship with his father (Pete Postlethwaite), and their struggle to prove their innocence.In the Name of the Father TrailerDirector: Jim SheridanStarring: Daniel Day Lewis, Pete PostlethwaiteSocials:FacebookTwitterInstagram

Welcome to The B-Side, from The Film Stage. Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between. And sometimes if we're lucky we talk to movie stars about their B-Sides! Today we talk to the great Eric Bana about Eric Bana B-Sides on the occasion of the release of his new film, Force of Nature: The Dry 2, now available in theaters and on VOD. Our B-Sides today include: Lucky You, Romulus, My Father, and The Secret Scripture. Bana discusses why Lucky You maybe didn't connect with audiences in 2007, how Romulus, My Father is actually quite the A-Side in Australia, and the need to be malleable when working with somebody like director Jim Sheridan. We also talk about Bana's detective influences for the Aaron Falk character in The Dry films, why Munich was strangely received upon release, and why his performance in Roland Joffé's The Forgiven (co-starring Forest Whitaker as Desmond Tutu) is one of his favorites in his career. Special shout-out to good friend Mitchell Beaupre's great interview with Bana earlier this year, which is referenced quite a bit here. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter and Facebook at @TFSBSide. Also enter our giveaways, get access to our private Slack channel, and support new episodes by becoming a Patreon contributor.

Jim Sheridan is a hard keyboard player to quantify, as his career has been incredibly diverse. That said, it's fair  to say he's a TV production expert from a musical viewpoint, and it's given him some fascinating perspectives on composition, production and musicianship. To listen / watch: Audio-only: click on the play button in the... The post Jim Sheridan, TV Music Producer, Musical Director & Composer appeared first on The Keyboard Chronicles.

13. Macbeth in Monaghan - Sample Answer -A comparative study highlightiing the cultural contexts of Shakespeare's Macbeth, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and Jim Sheridan's My Left Foot

Alexandra Wright is a classically trained actress with a BA from the University of Southern California and an MFA in Acting from Harvard University. She has also trained internationally in London at the British American Drama Academy and at Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre in Russia.  Recently nominated by Broadway World as Performer of the Decade, Alexandra has been fortunate enough to perform in London, Paris, Moscow, and Scotland, and has had the opportunity to work with exceptional artists such as Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Josh Brolin, Neil Patrick Harris, Neil Gaiman, Scott Zigler, Kevin Bright (creator of Friends), the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Nancy Meckler from the RSC.  In addition to her regional theatre work, Alexandra's film and television credits include a series regular on Vertical Network's Solve, recurring roles on ABC and Freeform, and guest stars on NBC, CBS, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and HBOMax on shows like Chicago PD, This is Us, Grace and Frankie, Outer Range, Greek, and Julia. She has worked alongside Shonda Rhimes, KJ Steinberg, and Oscar winners Jim Sheridan, Louis Gossett, Jr, Jane Fonda, and Morgan Freeman.  Alexandra has trained extensively at UCB and has also performed stand up multiple times at the legendary Comedy Store and Flappers. Commercially, she has been the spokesperson for Proactiv and Lenovo computers, has had numerous national commercial campaigns, including Weight Watchers, Osteo Bi Flex, Blue Buffalo, and Budweiser, and has been the voice for brands such as Yelp, Service Titan, and Hop Skip Drive.  Alexandra also produces, writes, and hosts a podcast on Shakespearean classics, cocktails, and casting called Shake Shake Shake. She is a professor of acting, Shakespeare, and voice at UCLA. Passionate about mentoring and fostering community for artists, she also runs an online community for actors and private acting clients called The Delta Acting Community.  Landon Marshall has trained at many studios. However, he did not start out that way. He was all District in Football in High School. Thus him going to college at Maryville College to play football. While there he Majored in History, Minored in Film. He played for two years leading the league in touchdowns and yards. But was unfulfilled.  After dropping out of Maryville, he enrolled at Middle Tennessee State Univ. He was wanting to walk on for football, but found out halfway through the semester his tuition had not been paid. So he left. Working landscaping, construction jobs.  His father passed away in 2011. He decided now is the time. He trained with Alan Dysert, Ed Coupee, Caroline Locorriere. Caroline had the most impact on him. He has worked with Jake Owens, Chris Carmack, Stephen Cragg, Alan Powell, Rodney Atkins, Chris Young, and Robin Williams. Robin Williams last film was BOULEVARD.  Moved to Los Angeles in 2015. Has studied with Warner Loughlin, Alice Carter, Annie Grindlay, and now with Cameron Watson. He has found himself more and more interested in theater. He did community theater growing up, but did not explore it. Now, he has come to realize how theater is so important to the arts. To the art of acting, writing.  He runs his own Golf company that brings people of like minds together. He is a 4 handicap golfer himself. He currently works at Delilah, the hottest nightclub in LA.

Alexandra Wright is a classically trained actress with a BA from the University of Southern California and an MFA in Acting from Harvard University. She has also trained internationally in London at the British American Drama Academy and at Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre in Russia. Alexandra has trained extensively at UCB and has also performed stand up multiple times at the legendary Comedy Store and Flappers. Recently nominated by Broadway World as Performer of the Decade, Alexandra has been fortunate enough to perform in London, Paris, Moscow, and Scotland, and has had the opportunity to work with exceptional artists such as Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Josh Brolin, Neil Patrick Harris, and Neil Gaiman. Alexandra's film and television credits include Chicago PD, This is Us, Grace and Frankie, Outer Range, Greek, and Julia. She has worked alongside Shonda Rhimes, KJ Steinberg, and Oscar winners Jim Sheridan, Louis Gossett, Jr, Jane Fonda, and Morgan Freeman. She is a professor of acting, Shakespeare, and voice at UCLA. Passionate about mentoring and fostering community for artists, she also runs an online community for actors and private acting clients called The Delta Acting Community. ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ ALEXANDRA WRIGHT ⌲ IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm5096181/?ref_=nm_mv_close ⌲ IG: https://www.instagram.com/the_alexandrawright/?hl=en ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ The Moving Spotlight Podcast ⌲ iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-moving-spotlight/id1597207264 ⌲ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7cjqYAWSFXz2hgCHiAjy27 ⌲ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/themovingspotlight ⌲ ALL: https://linktr.ee/themovingspotlight ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ #Shakespeare #Mississippi #Theatre #CameronWatson #Teaching #UCLA #DeltaActingCommunity #USC #BADA #Emmys #TVTime #iTunes #Actor #ActorsLife #Believe #Success #Inspiration #Netflix #Hulu #Amazon #HBO #AppleTV #Showtime #Acting #Artist #Theatre #Film #YourBestBadActing #Content #CorbinCoyle #JohnRuby #RealFIREacting #TMS_Pod --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/the-moving-spotlight/support

It was a great night for the Irish at the Oscars with Cillian Murphy taking home the Best Actor award for his role in Oppenheimer There was success for Element Pictures too picking up 4 Oscars for Poor Things, including Emma Stone picking up the Best Actress gong.Kieran was joined by Jim Sheridan, Irish film director, Natalie Britton, Actress and Actor Paul Meade to discuss...

In this episode “Shadows over the Kingdom” we talk about the gripping true crime story that uncovers the mysterious murder of Moss Moore in the small Irish community of Reamore, Co. Kerry in 1958.Join us as we delve into the chilling events surrounding Moss Moore's untimely demise. We will reconstruct the timeline of the murder and explore the complex web of relationships that defined the Reamore community during that tumultuous year.Transport yourself to the picturesque landscapes of rural Ireland as we paint a vivid picture of the idyllic area that is Reamore. We deep dive into the lives of some of its inhabitants, examining the pressures, resentments, and simmering tensions that would ultimately lead to tragedy.We attempt to piece together the puzzle of Moss Moore's murder. Was it a crime of passion, or were there darker motives at play? We explore the potential suspects and their possible motivations.In this episode, we draw intriguing comparisons to the 1990 film 'The Field,' directed by Jim Sheridan. We explore the shared themes of territorial disputes, greed, and the relentless quest for the truth, discovering similarities that shed light on the social dynamics and challenges faced by the Reamore community.Uncover the hidden secrets that have plagued Reamore for decades. In this intriguing episode, we lay the foundations for a thrilling journey through one of Ireland's oldest cold cases. Prepare to be captivated by the intricate details, immerse yourself in Irish history and culture, and join us as we unravel the secrets surrounding Moss Moore's tragic fate.Be sure to subscribe to “Ireland Crimes and Mysteries” to stay updated on future episodes if you don't want to miss the next instalment, where we will be telling more stories from Irelands darker side.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/ireland-crimes-and-mysteries--5973961/support.

Welcome to The B-Side, from The Film Stage. Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones they made in between. We discuss everyone's favorite method man: Daniel Day-Lewis. Our B-Sides are 1988's Stars and Bars, Eversmile, New Jersey (1989), Jim Sheridan's The Boxer, and Rebecca Miller's The Ballad of Jack and Rose. Returning guest Fiona Underhill joins us to discuss the myth-making around the actor, his process, as well as a few hot takes on whether some of his most lauded credits are properly rated. Naturally, we also discuss his peak ‘90s hotness (it's a tie between, Mohicans and The Crucible, by the way), and his influence, for better or worse, on a younger generation of actors. The scope of our B-Sides unlock a few lesser-seen tools in Day-Lewis' belt, from the farcical to the oddball. These are modes he doesn't necessarily seem comfortable in as a younger star, but that serve as practice for when he deconstructs his own serious image with his career peak in Phantom Thread. We can all be glad he gave us Reynolds Woodcock before retiring. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter and Facebook at @TFSBSide. Also enter our giveaways, get access to our private Slack channel, and support new episodes by becoming a Patreon contributor.

Crossy and Zeinab exclusively caught up with 50 cent while he was in Dublin! He spoke about hanging out in Ireland, being close to Jim Sheridan, the Superbowl and 20 years of get rich or die tryin Fiona the sheep is making headlines aorund the world for being the loneliest sheep after being found in the highlands in scotland! she's now been rescued and is now on a farm! it's a wild story We played FM104s Instagrand Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It is always, always a big episode when a new Martin Scorsese movie comes out. We dig deep on the director's 30th feature, "Killers of the Flower Moon," out in theaters. Then we talk about the Errol Morris documentary on John LeCarre, "The Pigeon Tunnel." And a reboot! We look back on Jim Sheridan's 2002 drama "In America." But we go longest, as you might suspect, on the Scorsese movie.. Timestamps: 10:15: "Killers of the Flower Moon" 59:12 "The Pigeon Tunnel" 1:18:37 "In America"  Thanks to Dylan Mayer and My Friend Mary, both of which are wonderful, for the music. We hope you enjoy. Let us know what you think @griersonleitch on Twitter, or griersonleitch@gmail.com. As always, give us a review on iTunes with the name of a movie you'd like us to review, and we'll discuss it on a later podcast.

We finally complete our mini-series on the 1980s movies released by Miramax Films in 1989, a year that included sex, lies, and videotape, and My Left Foot. ----more---- 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.   On this episode, we complete our look back at the 1980s theatrical releases for Miramax Films. And, for the final time, a reminder that we are not celebrating Bob and Harvey Weinstein, but reminiscing about the movies they had no involvement in making. We cannot talk about cinema in the 1980s without talking about Miramax, and I really wanted to get it out of the way, once and for all.   As we left Part 4, Miramax was on its way to winning its first Academy Award, Billie August's Pelle the Conquerer, the Scandinavian film that would be second film in a row from Denmark that would win for Best Foreign Language Film.   In fact, the first two films Miramax would release in 1989, the Australian film Warm Night on a Slow Moving Train and the Anthony Perkins slasher film Edge of Sanity, would not arrive in theatres until the Friday after the Academy Awards ceremony that year, which was being held on the last Wednesday in March.   Warm Nights on a Slow Moving Train stars Wendy Hughes, the talented Australian actress who, sadly, is best remembered today as Lt. Commander Nella Daren, one of Captain Jean-Luc Picard's few love interests, on a 1993 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, as Jenny, a prostitute working a weekend train to Sydney, who is seduced by a man on the train, unaware that he plans on tricking her to kill someone for him. Colin Friels, another great Aussie actor who unfortunately is best known for playing the corrupt head of Strack Industries in Sam Raimi's Darkman, plays the unnamed man who will do anything to get what he wants.   Director Bob Ellis and his co-screenwriter Denny Lawrence came up with the idea for the film while they themselves were traveling on a weekend train to Sydney, with the idea that each client the call girl met on the train would represent some part of the Australian male.   Funding the $2.5m film was really simple… provided they cast Hughes in the lead role. Ellis and Lawrence weren't against Hughes as an actress. Any film would be lucky to have her in the lead. They just felt she she didn't have the right kind of sex appeal for this specific character.   Miramax would open the film in six theatres, including the Cineplex Beverly Center in Los Angeles and the Fashion Village 8 in Orlando, on March 31st. There were two versions of the movie prepared, one that ran 130 minutes and the other just 91. Miramax would go with the 91 minute version of the film for the American release, and most of the critics would note how clunky and confusing the film felt, although one critic for the Village Voice would have some kind words for Ms. Hughes' performance.   Whether it was because moviegoers were too busy seeing the winners of the just announced Academy Awards, including Best Picture winner Rain Man, or because this weekend was also the opening weekend of the new Major League Baseball season, or just turned off by the reviews, attendance at the theatres playing Warm Nights on a Slow Moving Train was as empty as a train dining car at three in the morning. The Beverly Center alone would account for a third of the movie's opening weekend gross of $19,268. After a second weekend at the same six theatres pocketing just $14,382, this train stalled out, never to arrive at another station.   Their other March 31st release, Edge of Sanity, is notable for two things and only two things: it would be the first film Miramax would release under their genre specialty label, Millimeter Films, which would eventually evolve into Dimension Films in the next decade, and it would be the final feature film to star Anthony Perkins before his passing in 1992.   The film is yet another retelling of the classic 1886 Robert Louis Stevenson story The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, with the bonus story twist that Hyde was actually Jack the Ripper. As Jekyll, Perkins looks exactly as you'd expect a mid-fifties Norman Bates to look. As Hyde, Perkins is made to look like he's a backup keyboardist for the first Nine Inch Nails tour. Head Like a Hole would have been an appropriate song for the end credits, had the song or Pretty Hate Machine been released by that time, with its lyrics about bowing down before the one you serve and getting what you deserve.   Edge of Sanity would open in Atlanta and Indianapolis on March 31st. And like so many other Miramax releases in the 1980s, they did not initially announce any grosses for the film. That is, until its fourth weekend of release, when the film's theatre count had fallen to just six, down from the previous week's previously unannounced 35, grossing just $9,832. Miramax would not release grosses for the film again, with a final total of just $102,219.   Now when I started this series, I said that none of the films Miramax released in the 1980s were made by Miramax, but this next film would become the closest they would get during the decade.   In July 1961, John Profumo was the Secretary of State for War in the conservative government of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, when the married Profumo began a sexual relationship with a nineteen-year-old model named Christine Keeler. The affair was very short-lived, either ending, depending on the source, in August 1961 or December 1961. Unbeknownst to Profumo, Keeler was also having an affair with Yevgeny Ivanov, a senior naval attache at the Soviet Embassy at the same time.   No one was the wiser on any of this until December 1962, when a shooting incident involving two other men Keeler had been involved with led the press to start looking into Keeler's life. While it was never proven that his affair with Keeler was responsible for any breaches of national security, John Profumo was forced to resign from his position in June 1963, and the scandal would take down most of the Torie government with him. Prime Minister Macmillan would resign due to “health reasons” in October 1963, and the Labour Party would take control of the British government when the next elections were held in October 1964.   Scandal was originally planned in the mid-1980s as a three-part, five-hour miniseries by Australian screenwriter Michael Thomas and American music producer turned movie producer Joe Boyd. The BBC would commit to finance a two-part, three-hour miniseries,  until someone at the network found an old memo from the time of the Profumo scandal that forbade them from making any productions about it. Channel 4, which had been producing quality shows and movies for several years since their start in 1982, was approached, but rejected the series on the grounds of taste.   Palace Pictures, a British production company who had already produced three films for Neil Jordan including Mona Lisa, was willing to finance the script, provided it could be whittled down to a two hour movie. Originally budgeted at 3.2m British pounds, the costs would rise as they started the casting process.  John Hurt, twice Oscar-nominated for his roles in Midnight Express and The Elephant Man, would sign on to play Stephen Ward, a British osteopath who acted as Christine Keeler's… well… pimp, for lack of a better word. Ian McKellen, a respected actor on British stages and screens but still years away from finding mainstream global success in the X-Men movies, would sign on to play John Profumo. Joanne Whaley, who had filmed the yet to be released at that time Willow with her soon to be husband Val Kilmer, would get her first starring role as Keeler, and Bridget Fonda, who was quickly making a name for herself in the film world after being featured in Aria, would play Mandy Rice-Davies, the best friend and co-worker of Keeler's.   To save money, Palace Pictures would sign thirty-year-old Scottish filmmaker Michael Caton-Jones to direct, after seeing a short film he had made called The Riveter. But even with the neophyte feature filmmaker, Palace still needed about $2.35m to be able to fully finance the film. And they knew exactly who to go to.   Stephen Woolley, the co-founder of Palace Pictures and the main producer on the film, would fly from London to New York City to personally pitch Harvey and Bob Weinstein. Woolley felt that of all the independent distributors in America, they would be the ones most attracted to the sexual and controversial nature of the story. A day later, Woolley was back on a plane to London. The Weinsteins had agreed to purchase the American distribution rights to Scandal for $2.35m.   The film would spend two months shooting in the London area through the summer of 1988. Christine Keeler had no interest in the film, and refused to meet the now Joanne Whaley-Kilmer to talk about the affair, but Mandy Rice-Davies was more than happy to Bridget Fonda about her life, although the meetings between the two women were so secret, they would not come out until Woolley eulogized Rice-Davies after her 2014 death.   Although Harvey and Bob would be given co-executive producers on the film, Miramax was not a production company on the film. This, however, did not stop Harvey from flying to London multiple times, usually when he was made aware of some sexy scene that was going to shoot the following day, and try to insinuate himself into the film's making. At one point, Woolley decided to take a weekend off from the production, and actually did put Harvey in charge. That weekend's shoot would include a skinny-dipping scene featuring the Christine Keeler character, but when Whaley-Kilmer learned Harvey was going to be there, she told the director that she could not do the nudity in the scene. Her new husband was objecting to it, she told them. Harvey, not skipping a beat, found a lookalike for the actress who would be willing to bare all as a body double, and the scene would begin shooting a few hours later. Whaley-Kilmer watched the shoot from just behind the camera, and stopped the shoot a few minutes later. She was not happy that the body double's posterior was notably larger than her own, and didn't want audiences to think she had that much junk in her trunk. The body double was paid for her day, and Whaley-Kilmer finished the rest of the scene herself.   Caton-Jones and his editing team worked on shaping the film through the fall, and would screen his first edit of the film for Palace Pictures and the Weinsteins in November 1988. And while Harvey was very happy with the cut, he still asked the production team for a different edit for American audiences, noting that most Americans had no idea who Profumo or Keeler or Rice-Davies were, and that Americans would need to understand the story more right out of the first frame. Caton-Jones didn't want to cut a single frame, but he would work with Harvey to build an American-friendly cut.   While he was in London in November 1988, he would meet with the producers of another British film that was in pre-production at the time that would become another important film to the growth of the company, but we're not quite at that part of the story yet. We'll circle around to that film soon.   One of the things Harvey was most looking forward to going in to 1989 was the expected battle with the MPAA ratings board over Scandal. Ever since he had seen the brouhaha over Angel Heart's X rating two years earlier, he had been looking for a similar battle. He thought he had it with Aria in 1988, but he knew he definitely had it now.   And he'd be right.   In early March, just a few weeks before the film's planned April 21st opening day, the MPAA slapped an X rating on Scandal. The MPAA usually does not tell filmmakers or distributors what needs to be cut, in order to avoid accusations of actual censorship, but according to Harvey, they told him exactly what needed to be cut to get an R: a two second shot during an orgy scene, where it appears two background characters are having unsimulated sex.   So what did Harvey do?   He spent weeks complaining to the press about MPAA censorship, generating millions in free publicity for the film, all the while already having a close-up shot of Joanne Whaley-Kilmer's Christine Keeler watching the orgy but not participating in it, ready to replace the objectionable shot.   A few weeks later, Miramax screened the “edited” film to the MPAA and secured the R rating, and the film would open on 94 screens, including 28 each in the New York City and Los Angeles metro regions, on April 28th.   And while the reviews for the film were mostly great, audiences were drawn to the film for the Miramax-manufactured controversy as well as the key art for the film, a picture of a potentially naked Joanne Whaley-Kilmer sitting backwards in a chair, a mimic of a very famous photo Christine Keeler herself took to promote a movie about the Profumo affair she appeared in a few years after the events. I'll have a picture of both the Scandal poster and the Christine Keeler photo on this episode's page at The80sMoviePodcast.com   Five other movies would open that weekend, including the James Belushi comedy K-9 and the Kevin Bacon drama Criminal Law, and Scandal, with $658k worth of ticket sales, would have the second best per screen average of the five new openers, just a few hundred dollars below the new Holly Hunter movie Miss Firecracker, which only opened on six screens.   In its second weekend, Scandal would expand its run to 214 playdates, and make its debut in the national top ten, coming in tenth place with $981k. That would be more than the second week of the Patrick Dempsey rom-com Loverboy, even though Loverboy was playing on 5x as many screens.   In weekend number three, Scandal would have its best overall gross and top ten placement, coming in seventh with $1.22m from 346 screens. Scandal would start to slowly fade after that, falling back out of the top ten in its sixth week, but Miramax would wisely keep the screen count under 375, because Scandal wasn't going to play well in all areas of the country. After nearly five months in theatres, Miramax would have its biggest film to date. Scandal would gross $8.8m.   The second release from Millimeter Films was The Return of the Swamp Thing. And if you needed a reason why the 1980s was not a good time for comic book movies, here you are. The Return of the Swamp Thing took most of what made the character interesting in his comic series, and most of what was good from the 1982 Wes Craven adaptation, and decided “Hey, you know what would bring the kids in? Camp! Camp unseen in a comic book adaptation since the 1960s Batman series. They loved it then, they'll love it now!”   They did not love it now.   Heather Locklear, between her stints on T.J. Hooker and Melrose Place, plays the step-daughter of Louis Jourdan's evil Dr. Arcane from the first film, who heads down to the Florida swaps to confront dear old once presumed dead stepdad. He in turns kidnaps his stepdaughter and decides to do some of his genetic experiments on her, until she is rescued by Swamp Thing, one of Dr. Arcane's former co-workers who got turned into the gooey anti-hero in the first movie.   The film co-stars Sarah Douglas from Superman 1 and 2 as Dr. Arcane's assistant, Dick Durock reprising his role as Swamp Thing from the first film, and 1980s B-movie goddess Monique Gabrielle as Miss Poinsettia.   For director Jim Wynorski, this was his sixth movie as a director, and at $3m, one of the highest budgeted movies he would ever make. He's directed 107 movies since 1984, most of them low budget direct to video movies with titles like The Bare Wench Project and Alabama Jones and the Busty Crusade, although he does have one genuine horror classic under his belt, the 1986 sci-fi tinged Chopping Maul with Kelli Maroney and Barbara Crampton.   Wynorski suggested in a late 1990s DVD commentary for the film that he didn't particularly enjoy making the film, and had a difficult time directing Louis Jourdan, to the point that outside of calling “action” and “cut,” the two didn't speak to each other by the end of the shoot.   The Return of Swamp Thing would open in 123 theatres in the United States on May 12th, including 28 in the New York City metro region, 26 in the Los Angeles area, 15 in Detroit, and a handful of theatres in Phoenix, San Francisco. And, strangely, the newspaper ads would include an actual positive quote from none other than Roger Ebert, who said on Siskel & Ebert that he enjoyed himself, and that it was good to have Swamp Thing back. Siskel would not reciprocate his balcony partner's thumb up. But Siskel was about the only person who was positive on the return of Swamp Thing, and that box office would suffer. In its first three days, the film would gross just $119,200. After a couple more dismal weeks in theatres, The Return of Swamp Thing would be pulled from distribution, with a final gross of just $275k.   Fun fact: The Return of Swamp Thing was produced by Michael E. Uslan, whose next production, another adaptation of a DC Comics character, would arrive in theatres not six weeks later and become the biggest film of the summer. In fact, Uslan has been a producer or executive producer on every Batman-related movie and television show since 1989, from Tim Burton to Christopher Nolan to Zack Snyder to Matt Reeves, and from LEGO movies to Joker. He also, because of his ownership of the movie rights to Swamp Thing, got the movie screen rights, but not the television screen rights, to John Constantine.   Miramax didn't have too much time to worry about The Return of Swamp Thing's release, as it was happening while the Brothers Weinstein were at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival. They had two primary goals at Cannes that year:   To buy American distribution rights to any movie that would increase their standing in the cinematic worldview, which they would achieve by picking up an Italian dramedy called, at the time, New Paradise Cinema, which was competing for the Palme D'Or with a Miramax pickup from Sundance back in January. Promote that very film, which did end up winning the Palme D'Or.   Ever since he was a kid, Steven Soderbergh wanted to be a filmmaker. Growing up in Baton Rouge, LA in the late 1970s, he would enroll in the LSU film animation class, even though he was only 15 and not yet a high school graduate. After graduating high school, he decided to move to Hollywood to break into the film industry, renting an above-garage room from Stephen Gyllenhaal, the filmmaker best known as the father of Jake and Maggie, but after a few freelance editing jobs, Soderbergh packed up his things and headed home to Baton Rouge.   Someone at Atco Records saw one of Soderbergh's short films, and hired him to direct a concert movie for one of their biggest bands at the time, Yes, who was enjoying a major comeback thanks to their 1983 triple platinum selling album, 90125. The concert film, called 9012Live, would premiere on MTV in late 1985, and it would be nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Long Form Music Video.   Soderbergh would use the money he earned from that project, $7,500, to make Winston, a 12 minute black and white short about sexual deception that he would, over the course of an eight day driving trip from Baton Rouge to Los Angeles, expand to a full length screen that he would call sex, lies and videotape. In later years, Soderbergh would admit that part of the story is autobiographical, but not the part you might think. Instead of the lead, Graham, an impotent but still sexually perverse late twentysomething who likes to tape women talking about their sexual fantasies for his own pleasure later, Soderbergh based the husband John, the unsophisticated lawyer who cheats on his wife with her sister, on himself, although there would be a bit of Graham that borrows from the filmmaker. Like his lead character, Soderbergh did sell off most of his possessions and hit the road to live a different life.   When he finished the script, he sent it out into the wilds of Hollywood. Morgan Mason, the son of actor James Mason and husband of Go-Go's lead singer Belinda Carlisle, would read it and sign on as an executive producer. Soderbergh had wanted to shoot the film in black and white, like he had with the Winston short that lead to the creation of this screenplay, but he and Mason had trouble getting anyone to commit to the project, even with only a projected budget of $200,000. For a hot moment, it looked like Universal might sign on to make the film, but they would eventually pass.   Robert Newmyer, who had left his job as a vice president of production and acquisitions at Columbia Pictures to start his own production company, signed on as a producer, and helped to convince Soderbergh to shoot the film in color, and cast some name actors in the leading roles. Once he acquiesced, Richard Branson's Virgin Vision agreed to put up $540k of the newly budgeted $1.2m film, while RCA/Columbia Home Video would put up the remaining $660k.   Soderbergh and his casting director, Deborah Aquila, would begin their casting search in New York, where they would meet with, amongst others, Andie MacDowell, who had already starred in two major Hollywood pictures, 1984's Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, and 1985's St. Elmo's Fire, but was still considered more of a top model than an actress, and Laura San Giacomo, who had recently graduated from the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama in Pittsburgh and would be making her feature debut. Moving on to Los Angeles, Soderbergh and Aquila would cast James Spader, who had made a name for himself as a mostly bad guy in 80s teen movies like Pretty in Pink and Less Than Zero, but had never been the lead in a drama like this. At Spader's suggestion, the pair met with Peter Gallagher, who was supposed to become a star nearly a decade earlier from his starring role in Taylor Hackford's The Idolmaker, but had mostly been playing supporting roles in television shows and movies for most of the decade.   In order to keep the budget down, Soderbergh, the producers, cinematographer Walt Lloyd and the four main cast members agreed to get paid their guild minimums in exchange for a 50/50 profit participation split with RCA/Columbia once the film recouped its costs.   The production would spend a week in rehearsals in Baton Rouge, before the thirty day shoot began on August 1st, 1988. On most days, the shoot was unbearable for many, as temperatures would reach as high as 110 degrees outside, but there were a couple days lost to what cinematographer Lloyd said was “biblical rains.” But the shoot completed as scheduled, and Soderbergh got to the task of editing right away. He knew he only had about eight weeks to get a cut ready if the film was going to be submitted to the 1989 U.S. Film Festival, now better known as Sundance. He did get a temporary cut of the film ready for submission, with a not quite final sound mix, and the film was accepted to the festival. It would make its world premiere on January 25th, 1989, in Park City UT, and as soon as the first screening was completed, the bids from distributors came rolling in. Larry Estes, the head of RCA/Columbia Home Video, would field more than a dozen submissions before the end of the night, but only one distributor was ready to make a deal right then and there.   Bob Weinstein wasn't totally sold on the film, but he loved the ending, and he loved that the word “sex” not only was in the title but lead the title. He knew that title alone would sell the movie. Harvey, who was still in New York the next morning, called Estes to make an appointment to meet in 24 hours. When he and Estes met, he brought with him three poster mockups the marketing department had prepared, and told Estes he wasn't going to go back to New York until he had a contract signed, and vowed to beat any other deal offered by $100,000. Island Pictures, who had made their name releasing movies like Stop Making Sense, Kiss of the Spider-Woman, The Trip to Bountiful and She's Gotta Have It, offered $1m for the distribution rights, plus a 30% distribution fee and a guaranteed $1m prints and advertising budget. Estes called Harvey up and told him what it would take to make the deal. $1.1m for the distribution rights, which needed to paid up front, a $1m P&A budget, to be put in escrow upon the signing of the contract until the film was released, a 30% distribution fee, no cutting of the film whatsoever once Soderbergh turns in his final cut, they would need to provide financial information for the films costs and returns once a month because of the profit participation contracts, and the Weinsteins would have to hire Ira Deutchman, who had spent nearly 15 years in the independent film world, doing marketing for Cinema 5, co-founding United Artists Classics, and co-founding Cinecom Pictures before opening his own company to act as a producers rep and marketer. And the Weinsteins would not only have to do exactly what Deutchman wanted, they'd have to pay for his services too.   The contract was signed a few weeks later.   The first move Miramax would make was to get Soderbergh's final cut of the film entered into the Cannes Film Festival, where it would be accepted to compete in the main competition. Which you kind of already know what happened, because that's what I lead with. The film would win the Palme D'Or, and Spader would be awarded the festival's award for Best Actor. It was very rare at the time, and really still is, for any film to be awarded more than one prize, so winning two was really a coup for the film and for Miramax, especially when many critics attending the festival felt Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing was the better film.   In March, Miramax expected the film to make around $5-10m, which would net the company a small profit on the film. After Cannes, they were hopeful for a $15m gross.   They never expected what would happen next.   On August 4th, sex, lies, and videotape would open on four screens, at the Cinema Studio in New York City, and at the AMC Century 14, the Cineplex Beverly Center 13 and the Mann Westwood 4 in Los Angeles. Three prime theatres and the best they could do in one of the then most competitive zones in all America. Remember, it's still the Summer 1989 movie season, filled with hits like Batman, Dead Poets Society, Ghostbusters 2, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Lethal Weapon 2, Parenthood, Turner & Hooch, and When Harry Met Sally. An independent distributor even getting one screen at the least attractive theatre in Westwood was a major get. And despite the fact that this movie wasn't really a summertime movie per se, the film would gross an incredible $156k in its first weekend from just these four theatres. Its nearly $40k per screen average would be 5x higher than the next closest film, Parenthood.   In its second weekend, the film would expand to 28 theatres, and would bring in over $600k in ticket sales, its per screen average of $21,527 nearly triple its closest competitor, Parenthood again. The company would keep spending small, as it slowly expanded the film each successive week. Forty theatres in its third week, and 101 in its fourth. The numbers held strong, and in its fifth week, Labor Day weekend, the film would have its first big expansion, playing in 347 theatres. The film would enter the top ten for the first time, despite playing in 500 to 1500 fewer theatres than the other films in the top ten. In its ninth weekend, the film would expand to its biggest screen count, 534, before slowly drawing down as the other major Oscar contenders started their theatrical runs. The film would continue to play through the Oscar season of 1989, and when it finally left theatres in May 1989, its final gross would be an astounding $24.7m.   Now, remember a few moments ago when I said that Miramax needed to provide financial statements every month for the profit participation contracts of Soderbergh, the producers, the cinematographer and the four lead actors? The film was so profitable for everyone so quickly that RCA/Columbia made its first profit participation payouts on October 17th, barely ten weeks after the film's opening.   That same week, Soderbergh also made what was at the time the largest deal with a book publisher for the writer/director's annotated version of the screenplay, which would also include his notes created during the creation of the film. That $75,000 deal would be more than he got paid to make the movie as the writer and the director and the editor, not counting the profit participation checks.   During the awards season, sex, lies, and videotape was considered to be one of the Oscars front runners for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay and at least two acting nominations. The film would be nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress by the Golden Globes, and it would win the Spirit Awards for Best Picture, Soderbergh for Best Director, McDowell for Best Actress, and San Giacomo for Best Supporting Actress. But when the Academy Award nominations were announced, the film would only receive one nomination, for Best Original Screenplay. The same total and category as Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, which many people also felt had a chance for a Best Picture and Best Director nomination. Both films would lose out to Tom Shulman's screenplay for Dead Poet's Society.   The success of sex, lies, and videotape would launch Steven Soderbergh into one of the quirkiest Hollywood careers ever seen, including becoming the first and only director ever to be nominated twice for Best Director in the same year by the Motion Picture Academy, the Golden Globes and the Directors Guild of America, in 2001 for directing Erin Brockovich and Traffic. He would win the Oscar for directing Traffic.   Lost in the excitement of sex, lies, and videotape was The Little Thief, a French movie that had an unfortunate start as the screenplay François Truffaut was working on when he passed away in 1984 at the age of just 52.   Directed by Claude Miller, whose principal mentor was Truffaut, The Little Thief starred seventeen year old Charlotte Gainsbourg as Janine, a young woman in post-World War II France who commits a series of larcenies to support her dreams of becoming wealthy.   The film was a modest success in France when it opened in December 1988, but its American release date of August 25th, 1989, was set months in advance. So when it was obvious sex, lies, and videotape was going to be a bigger hit than they originally anticipated, it was too late for Miramax to pause the release of The Little Thief.   Opening at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas in New York City, and buoyed by favorable reviews from every major critic in town, The Little Thief would see $39,931 worth of ticket sales in its first seven days, setting a new house record at the theatre for the year. In its second week, the gross would only drop $47. For the entire week. And when it opened at the Royal Theatre in West Los Angeles, its opening week gross of $30,654 would also set a new house record for the year.   The film would expand slowly but surely over the next several weeks, often in single screen playdates in major markets, but it would never play on more than twenty-four screens in any given week. And after four months in theatres, The Little Thief, the last movie created one of the greatest film writers the world had ever seen, would only gross $1.056m in the United States.   The next three releases from Miramax were all sent out under the Millimeter Films banner.   The first, a supernatural erotic drama called The Girl in a Swing, was about an English antiques dealer who travels to Copenhagen where he meets and falls in love with a mysterious German-born secretary, whom he marries, only to discover a darker side to his new bride. Rupert Frazer, who played Christian Bale's dad in Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun, plays the antique dealer, while Meg Tilly the mysterious new bride.   Filmed over a five week schedule in London and Copenhagen during May and June 1988, some online sources say the film first opened somewhere in California in December 1988, but I cannot find a single theatre not only in California but anywhere in the United States that played the film before its September 29th, 1989 opening date.   Roger Ebert didn't like the film, and wished Meg Tilly's “genuinely original performance” was in a better movie. Opening in 26 theatres, including six theatres each in New York City and Los Angeles, and spurred on by an intriguing key art for the film that featured a presumed naked Tilly on a swing looking seductively at the camera while a notice underneath her warns that No One Under 18 Will Be Admitted To The Theatre, The Girl in a Swing would gross $102k, good enough for 35th place nationally that week. And that's about the best it would do. The film would limp along, moving from market to market over the course of the next three months, and when its theatrical run was complete, it could only manage about $747k in ticket sales.   We'll quickly burn through the next two Millimeter Films releases, which came out a week apart from each other and didn't amount to much.   Animal Behavior was a rather unfunny comedy featuring some very good actors who probably signed on for a very different movie than the one that came to be. Karen Allen, Miss Marion Ravenwood herself, stars as Alex, a biologist who, like Dr. Jane Goodall, develops a “new” way to communicate with chimpanzees via sign language. Armand Assante plays a cellist who pursues the good doctor, and Holly Hunter plays the cellist's neighbor, who Alex mistakes for his wife.   Animal Behavior was filmed in 1984, and 1985, and 1987, and 1988. The initial production was directed by Jenny Bowen with the assistance of Robert Redford and The Sundance Institute, thanks to her debut film, 1981's Street Music featuring Elizabeth Daily. It's unknown why Bowen and her cinematographer husband Richard Bowen left the project, but when filming resumed again and again and again, those scenes were directed by the film's producer, Kjehl Rasmussen.   Because Bowen was not a member of the DGA at the time, she was not able to petition the guild for the use of the Alan Smithee pseudonym, a process that is automatically triggered whenever a director is let go of a project and filming continues with its producer taking the reigns as director. But she was able to get the production to use a pseudonym anyway for the director's credit, H. Anne Riley, while also giving Richard Bowen a pseudonym of his own for his work on the film, David Spellvin.   Opening on 24 screens on October 27th, Animal Behavior would come in 50th place in its opening weekend, grossing just $20,361. The New York film critics ripped the film apart, and there wouldn't be a second weekend for the film.   The following Friday, November 3rd, saw the release of The Stepfather II, a rushed together sequel to 1987's The Stepfather, which itself wasn't a big hit in theatres but found a very quick and receptive audience on cable.   Despite dying at the end of the first film, Terry O'Quinn's Jerry is somehow still alive, and institutionalized in Northern Washington state. He escapes and heads down to Los Angeles, where he assumes the identity of a recently deceased publisher, Gene Clifford, but instead passes himself off as a psychiatrist. Jerry, now Gene, begins to court his neighbor Carol, and the whole crazy story plays out again. Meg Foster plays the neighbor Carol, and Jonathan Brandis is her son.    Director Jeff Burr had made a name for himself with his 1987 horror anthology film From a Whisper to a Scream, featuring Vincent Price, Clu Gulager and Terry Kiser, and from all accounts, had a very smooth shooting process with this film. The trouble began when he turned in his cut to the producers. The producers were happy with the film, but when they sent it to Miramax, the American distributors, they were rather unhappy with the almost bloodless slasher film. They demanded reshoots, which Burr and O'Quinn refused to participate in. They brought in a new director, Doug Campbell, to handle the reshoots, which are easy to spot in the final film because they look and feel completely different from the scenes they're spliced into.   When it opened, The Stepfather II actually grossed slightly more than the first film did, earning $279k from 100 screens, compared to $260k for The Stepfather from 105 screens. But unlike the first film, which had some decent reviews when it opened, the sequel was a complete mess. To this day, it's still one of the few films to have a 0% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and The Stepfather II would limp its way through theatres during the Christmas holiday season, ending its run with a $1.5m gross.   But it would be their final film of the decade that would dictate their course for at least the first part of the 1990s.   Remember when I said earlier in the episode that Harvey Weinstein meant with the producers of another British film while in London for Scandal? We're at that film now, a film you probably know.   My Left Foot.   By November 1988, actor Daniel Day-Lewis had starred in several movies including James Ivory's A Room With a View and Philip Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. He had even been the lead in a major Hollywood studio film, Pat O'Connor's Stars and Bars, a very good film that unfortunately got caught up in the brouhaha over the exit of the studio head who greenlit the film, David Puttnam.   The film's director, Jim Sheridan, had never directed a movie before. He had become involved in stage production during his time at the University College in Dublin in the late 1960s, where he worked with future filmmaker Neil Jordan, and had spent nearly a decade after graduation doing stage work in Ireland and Canada, before settling in New York City in the early 1980s. Sheridan would go to New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where one of his classmates was Spike Lee, and return to Ireland after graduating. He was nearly forty, married with two pre-teen daughters, and he needed to make a statement with his first film.   He would find that story in the autobiography of Irish writer and painter Christy Brown, whose spirit and creativity could not be contained by his severe cerebral palsy. Along with Irish actor and writer Shane Connaughton, Sheridan wrote a screenplay that could be a powerhouse film made on a very tight budget of less than a million dollars.   Daniel Day-Lewis was sent a copy of the script, in the hopes he would be intrigued enough to take almost no money to play a physically demanding role. He read the opening pages, which had the adult Christy Brown putting a record on a record player and dropping the needle on to the record with his left foot, and thought to himself it would be impossible to film. That intrigued him, and he signed on. But during filming in January and February of 1989, most of the scenes were shot using mirrors, as Day-Lewis couldn't do the scenes with his left foot. He could do them with his right foot, hence the mirrors.   As a method actor, Day-Lewis remained in character as Christy Brown for the entire two month shoot. From costume fittings and makeup in the morning, to getting the actor on set, to moving him around between shots, there were crew members assigned to assist the actor as if they were Christy Brown's caretakers themselves, including feeding him during breaks in shooting. A rumor debunked by the actor years later said Day-Lewis had broken two ribs during production because of how hunched down he needed to be in his crude prop wheelchair to properly play the character.   The actor had done a lot of prep work to play the role, including spending time at the Sandymount School Clinic where the young Christy Brown got his education, and much of his performance was molded on those young people.   While Miramax had acquired the American distribution rights to the film before it went into production, and those funds went into the production of the film, the film was not produced by Miramax, nor were the Weinsteins given any kind of executive producer credit, as they were able to get themselves on Scandal.   My Left Foot would make its world premiere at the Montreal World Film Festival on September 4th, 1989, followed soon thereafter by screening at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 13th and the New York Film Festival on September 23rd. Across the board, critics and audiences were in love with the movie, and with Daniel Day-Lewis's performance. Jim Sheridan would receive a special prize at the Montreal World Film Festival for his direction, and Day-Lewis would win the festival's award for Best Actor. However, as the film played the festival circuit, another name would start to pop up. Brenda Fricker, a little known Irish actress who played Christy Brown's supportive but long-suffering mother Bridget, would pile up as many positive notices and awards as Day-Lewis. Although there was no Best Supporting Actress Award at the Montreal Film Festival, the judges felt her performance was deserving of some kind of attention, so they would create a Special Mention of the Jury Award to honor her.   Now, some sources online will tell you the film made its world premiere in Dublin on February 24th, 1989, based on a passage in a biography about Daniel Day-Lewis, but that would be impossible as the film would still be in production for two more days, and wasn't fully edited or scored by then.   I'm not sure when it first opened in the United Kingdom other than sometime in early 1990, but My Left Foot would have its commercial theatre debut in America on November 10th, when opened at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas in New York City and the Century City 14 in Los Angeles. Sheila Benson of the Los Angeles Times would, in the very opening paragraph of her review, note that one shouldn't see My Left Foot for some kind of moral uplift or spiritual merit badge, but because of your pure love of great moviemaking. Vincent Canby's review in the New York Times spends most of his words praising Day-Lewis and Sheridan for making a film that is polite and non-judgmental.    Interestingly, Miramax went with an ad campaign that completely excluded any explanation of who Christy Brown was or why the film is titled the way it is. 70% of the ad space is taken from pull quotes from many of the top critics of the day, 20% with the title of the film, and 10% with a picture of Daniel Day-Lewis, clean shaven and full tooth smile, which I don't recall happening once in the movie, next to an obviously added-in picture of one of his co-stars that is more camera-friendly than Brenda Fricker or Fiona Shaw.   Whatever reasons people went to see the film, they flocked to the two theatres playing the film that weekend. It's $20,582 per screen average would be second only to Kenneth Branagh's Henry V, which had opened two days earlier, earning slightly more than $1,000 per screen than My Left Foot.   In week two, My Left Foot would gross another $35,133 from those two theatres, and it would overtake Henry V for the highest per screen average. In week three, Thanksgiving weekend, both Henry V and My Left Foot saw a a double digit increase in grosses despite not adding any theatres, and the latter film would hold on to the highest per screen average again, although the difference would only be $302. And this would continue for weeks. In the film's sixth week of release, it would get a boost in attention by being awarded Best Film of the Year by the New York Film Critics Circle. Daniel Day-Lewis would be named Best Actor that week by both the New York critics and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, while Fricker would win the Best Supporting Actress award from the latter group.   But even then, Miramax refused to budge on expanding the film until its seventh week of release, Christmas weekend, when My Left Foot finally moved into cities like Chicago and San Francisco. Its $135k gross that weekend was good, but it was starting to lose ground to other Oscar hopefuls like Born on the Fourth of July, Driving Miss Daisy, Enemies: A Love Story, and Glory.   And even though the film continued to rack up award win after award win, nomination after nomination, from the Golden Globes and the Writers Guild and the National Society of Film Critics and the National Board of Review, Miramax still held firm on not expanding the film into more than 100 theatres nationwide until its 16th week in theatres, February 16th, 1990, two days after the announcement of the nominees for the 62nd Annual Academy Awards. While Daniel Day-Lewis's nomination for Best Actor was virtually assured and Brenda Fricker was practically a given, the film would pick up three other nominations, including surprise nominations for Best Picture and Best Director. Jim Sheridan and co-writer Shane Connaughton would also get picked for Best Adapted Screenplay.   Miramax also picked up a nomination for Best Original Screenplay for sex, lies, and videotape, and a Best Foreign Language Film nod for the Italian movie Cinema Paradiso, which, thanks to the specific rules for that category, a film could get a nomination before actually opening in theatres in America, which Miramax would rush to do with Paradiso the week after its nomination was announced.   The 62nd Academy Awards ceremony would be best remembered today as being the first Oscar show to be hosted by Billy Crystal, and for being considerably better than the previous year's ceremony, a mess of a show best remembered as being the one with a 12 minute opening musical segment that included Rob Lowe singing Proud Mary to an actress playing Snow White and another nine minute musical segment featuring a slew of expected future Oscar winners that, to date, feature exact zero Oscar nominees, both which rank as amongst the worst things to ever happen to the Oscars awards show.   The ceremony, held on March 26th, would see My Left Foot win two awards, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress, as well as Cinema Paradiso for Best Foreign Film. The following weekend, March 30th, would see Miramax expand My Left Foot to 510 theatres, its widest point of release, and see the film made the national top ten and earn more than a million dollars for its one and only time during its eight month run.   The film would lose steam pretty quickly after its post-win bump, but it would eek out a modest run that ended with $14.75m in ticket sales just in the United States. Not bad for a little Irish movie with no major stars that cost less than a million dollars to make.   Of course, the early 90s would see Miramax fly to unimagined heights. In all of the 80s, Miramax would release 39 movies. They would release 30 films alone in 1991. They would release the first movies from Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith. They'd release some of the best films from some of the best filmmakers in the world, including Woody Allen, Pedro Almadovar, Robert Altman, Bernardo Bertolucci, Atom Egoyan, Steven Frears, Peter Greenaway, Peter Jackson, Neil Jordan, Chen Kaige, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Lars von Trier, and Zhang Yimou. In 1993, the Mexican dramedy Like Water for Chocolate would become the highest grossing foreign language film ever released in America, and it would play in some theatres, including my theatre, the NuWilshire in Santa Monica, continuously for more than a year.   If you've listened to the whole series on the 1980s movies of Miramax Films, there are two things I hope you take away. First, I hope you discovered at least one film you hadn't heard of before and you might be interested in searching out. The second is the reminder that neither Bob nor Harvey Weinstein will profit in any way if you give any of the movies talked about in this series a chance. They sold Miramax to Disney in June 1993. They left Miramax in September 2005. Many of the contracts for the movies the company released in the 80s and 90s expired decades ago, with the rights reverting back to their original producers, none of whom made any deals with the Weinsteins once they got their rights back.   Harvey Weinstein is currently serving a 23 year prison sentence in upstate New York after being found guilty in 2020 of two sexual assaults. Once he completes that sentence, he'll be spending another 16 years in prison in California, after he was convicted of three sexual assaults that happened in Los Angeles between 2004 and 2013. And if the 71 year old makes it to 107 years old, he may have to serve time in England for two sexual assaults that happened in August 1996. That case is still working its way through the British legal system.   Bob Weinstein has kept a low profile since his brother's proclivities first became public knowledge in October 2017, although he would also be accused of sexual harassment by a show runner for the brothers' Spike TV-aired adaptation of the Stephen King novel The Mist, several days after the bombshell articles came out about his brother. However, Bob's lawyer, the powerful attorney to the stars Bert Fields, deny the allegations, and it appears nothing has occurred legally since the accusations were made.   A few weeks after the start of the MeToo movement that sparked up in the aftermath of the accusations of his brother's actions, Bob Weinstein denied having any knowledge of the nearly thirty years of documented sexual abuse at the hands of his brother, but did allow to an interviewer for The Hollywood Reporter that he had barely spoken to Harvey over the previous five years, saying he could no longer take Harvey's cheating, lying and general attitude towards everyone.   And with that, we conclude our journey with Miramax Films. While I am sure Bob and Harvey will likely pop up again in future episodes, they'll be minor characters at best, and we'll never have to focus on anything they did ever again.   Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again soon, when Episode 119 is released.   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 finally complete our mini-series on the 1980s movies released by Miramax Films in 1989, a year that included sex, lies, and videotape, and My Left Foot. ----more---- 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.   On this episode, we complete our look back at the 1980s theatrical releases for Miramax Films. And, for the final time, a reminder that we are not celebrating Bob and Harvey Weinstein, but reminiscing about the movies they had no involvement in making. We cannot talk about cinema in the 1980s without talking about Miramax, and I really wanted to get it out of the way, once and for all.   As we left Part 4, Miramax was on its way to winning its first Academy Award, Billie August's Pelle the Conquerer, the Scandinavian film that would be second film in a row from Denmark that would win for Best Foreign Language Film.   In fact, the first two films Miramax would release in 1989, the Australian film Warm Night on a Slow Moving Train and the Anthony Perkins slasher film Edge of Sanity, would not arrive in theatres until the Friday after the Academy Awards ceremony that year, which was being held on the last Wednesday in March.   Warm Nights on a Slow Moving Train stars Wendy Hughes, the talented Australian actress who, sadly, is best remembered today as Lt. Commander Nella Daren, one of Captain Jean-Luc Picard's few love interests, on a 1993 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, as Jenny, a prostitute working a weekend train to Sydney, who is seduced by a man on the train, unaware that he plans on tricking her to kill someone for him. Colin Friels, another great Aussie actor who unfortunately is best known for playing the corrupt head of Strack Industries in Sam Raimi's Darkman, plays the unnamed man who will do anything to get what he wants.   Director Bob Ellis and his co-screenwriter Denny Lawrence came up with the idea for the film while they themselves were traveling on a weekend train to Sydney, with the idea that each client the call girl met on the train would represent some part of the Australian male.   Funding the $2.5m film was really simple… provided they cast Hughes in the lead role. Ellis and Lawrence weren't against Hughes as an actress. Any film would be lucky to have her in the lead. They just felt she she didn't have the right kind of sex appeal for this specific character.   Miramax would open the film in six theatres, including the Cineplex Beverly Center in Los Angeles and the Fashion Village 8 in Orlando, on March 31st. There were two versions of the movie prepared, one that ran 130 minutes and the other just 91. Miramax would go with the 91 minute version of the film for the American release, and most of the critics would note how clunky and confusing the film felt, although one critic for the Village Voice would have some kind words for Ms. Hughes' performance.   Whether it was because moviegoers were too busy seeing the winners of the just announced Academy Awards, including Best Picture winner Rain Man, or because this weekend was also the opening weekend of the new Major League Baseball season, or just turned off by the reviews, attendance at the theatres playing Warm Nights on a Slow Moving Train was as empty as a train dining car at three in the morning. The Beverly Center alone would account for a third of the movie's opening weekend gross of $19,268. After a second weekend at the same six theatres pocketing just $14,382, this train stalled out, never to arrive at another station.   Their other March 31st release, Edge of Sanity, is notable for two things and only two things: it would be the first film Miramax would release under their genre specialty label, Millimeter Films, which would eventually evolve into Dimension Films in the next decade, and it would be the final feature film to star Anthony Perkins before his passing in 1992.   The film is yet another retelling of the classic 1886 Robert Louis Stevenson story The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, with the bonus story twist that Hyde was actually Jack the Ripper. As Jekyll, Perkins looks exactly as you'd expect a mid-fifties Norman Bates to look. As Hyde, Perkins is made to look like he's a backup keyboardist for the first Nine Inch Nails tour. Head Like a Hole would have been an appropriate song for the end credits, had the song or Pretty Hate Machine been released by that time, with its lyrics about bowing down before the one you serve and getting what you deserve.   Edge of Sanity would open in Atlanta and Indianapolis on March 31st. And like so many other Miramax releases in the 1980s, they did not initially announce any grosses for the film. That is, until its fourth weekend of release, when the film's theatre count had fallen to just six, down from the previous week's previously unannounced 35, grossing just $9,832. Miramax would not release grosses for the film again, with a final total of just $102,219.   Now when I started this series, I said that none of the films Miramax released in the 1980s were made by Miramax, but this next film would become the closest they would get during the decade.   In July 1961, John Profumo was the Secretary of State for War in the conservative government of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, when the married Profumo began a sexual relationship with a nineteen-year-old model named Christine Keeler. The affair was very short-lived, either ending, depending on the source, in August 1961 or December 1961. Unbeknownst to Profumo, Keeler was also having an affair with Yevgeny Ivanov, a senior naval attache at the Soviet Embassy at the same time.   No one was the wiser on any of this until December 1962, when a shooting incident involving two other men Keeler had been involved with led the press to start looking into Keeler's life. While it was never proven that his affair with Keeler was responsible for any breaches of national security, John Profumo was forced to resign from his position in June 1963, and the scandal would take down most of the Torie government with him. Prime Minister Macmillan would resign due to “health reasons” in October 1963, and the Labour Party would take control of the British government when the next elections were held in October 1964.   Scandal was originally planned in the mid-1980s as a three-part, five-hour miniseries by Australian screenwriter Michael Thomas and American music producer turned movie producer Joe Boyd. The BBC would commit to finance a two-part, three-hour miniseries,  until someone at the network found an old memo from the time of the Profumo scandal that forbade them from making any productions about it. Channel 4, which had been producing quality shows and movies for several years since their start in 1982, was approached, but rejected the series on the grounds of taste.   Palace Pictures, a British production company who had already produced three films for Neil Jordan including Mona Lisa, was willing to finance the script, provided it could be whittled down to a two hour movie. Originally budgeted at 3.2m British pounds, the costs would rise as they started the casting process.  John Hurt, twice Oscar-nominated for his roles in Midnight Express and The Elephant Man, would sign on to play Stephen Ward, a British osteopath who acted as Christine Keeler's… well… pimp, for lack of a better word. Ian McKellen, a respected actor on British stages and screens but still years away from finding mainstream global success in the X-Men movies, would sign on to play John Profumo. Joanne Whaley, who had filmed the yet to be released at that time Willow with her soon to be husband Val Kilmer, would get her first starring role as Keeler, and Bridget Fonda, who was quickly making a name for herself in the film world after being featured in Aria, would play Mandy Rice-Davies, the best friend and co-worker of Keeler's.   To save money, Palace Pictures would sign thirty-year-old Scottish filmmaker Michael Caton-Jones to direct, after seeing a short film he had made called The Riveter. But even with the neophyte feature filmmaker, Palace still needed about $2.35m to be able to fully finance the film. And they knew exactly who to go to.   Stephen Woolley, the co-founder of Palace Pictures and the main producer on the film, would fly from London to New York City to personally pitch Harvey and Bob Weinstein. Woolley felt that of all the independent distributors in America, they would be the ones most attracted to the sexual and controversial nature of the story. A day later, Woolley was back on a plane to London. The Weinsteins had agreed to purchase the American distribution rights to Scandal for $2.35m.   The film would spend two months shooting in the London area through the summer of 1988. Christine Keeler had no interest in the film, and refused to meet the now Joanne Whaley-Kilmer to talk about the affair, but Mandy Rice-Davies was more than happy to Bridget Fonda about her life, although the meetings between the two women were so secret, they would not come out until Woolley eulogized Rice-Davies after her 2014 death.   Although Harvey and Bob would be given co-executive producers on the film, Miramax was not a production company on the film. This, however, did not stop Harvey from flying to London multiple times, usually when he was made aware of some sexy scene that was going to shoot the following day, and try to insinuate himself into the film's making. At one point, Woolley decided to take a weekend off from the production, and actually did put Harvey in charge. That weekend's shoot would include a skinny-dipping scene featuring the Christine Keeler character, but when Whaley-Kilmer learned Harvey was going to be there, she told the director that she could not do the nudity in the scene. Her new husband was objecting to it, she told them. Harvey, not skipping a beat, found a lookalike for the actress who would be willing to bare all as a body double, and the scene would begin shooting a few hours later. Whaley-Kilmer watched the shoot from just behind the camera, and stopped the shoot a few minutes later. She was not happy that the body double's posterior was notably larger than her own, and didn't want audiences to think she had that much junk in her trunk. The body double was paid for her day, and Whaley-Kilmer finished the rest of the scene herself.   Caton-Jones and his editing team worked on shaping the film through the fall, and would screen his first edit of the film for Palace Pictures and the Weinsteins in November 1988. And while Harvey was very happy with the cut, he still asked the production team for a different edit for American audiences, noting that most Americans had no idea who Profumo or Keeler or Rice-Davies were, and that Americans would need to understand the story more right out of the first frame. Caton-Jones didn't want to cut a single frame, but he would work with Harvey to build an American-friendly cut.   While he was in London in November 1988, he would meet with the producers of another British film that was in pre-production at the time that would become another important film to the growth of the company, but we're not quite at that part of the story yet. We'll circle around to that film soon.   One of the things Harvey was most looking forward to going in to 1989 was the expected battle with the MPAA ratings board over Scandal. Ever since he had seen the brouhaha over Angel Heart's X rating two years earlier, he had been looking for a similar battle. He thought he had it with Aria in 1988, but he knew he definitely had it now.   And he'd be right.   In early March, just a few weeks before the film's planned April 21st opening day, the MPAA slapped an X rating on Scandal. The MPAA usually does not tell filmmakers or distributors what needs to be cut, in order to avoid accusations of actual censorship, but according to Harvey, they told him exactly what needed to be cut to get an R: a two second shot during an orgy scene, where it appears two background characters are having unsimulated sex.   So what did Harvey do?   He spent weeks complaining to the press about MPAA censorship, generating millions in free publicity for the film, all the while already having a close-up shot of Joanne Whaley-Kilmer's Christine Keeler watching the orgy but not participating in it, ready to replace the objectionable shot.   A few weeks later, Miramax screened the “edited” film to the MPAA and secured the R rating, and the film would open on 94 screens, including 28 each in the New York City and Los Angeles metro regions, on April 28th.   And while the reviews for the film were mostly great, audiences were drawn to the film for the Miramax-manufactured controversy as well as the key art for the film, a picture of a potentially naked Joanne Whaley-Kilmer sitting backwards in a chair, a mimic of a very famous photo Christine Keeler herself took to promote a movie about the Profumo affair she appeared in a few years after the events. I'll have a picture of both the Scandal poster and the Christine Keeler photo on this episode's page at The80sMoviePodcast.com   Five other movies would open that weekend, including the James Belushi comedy K-9 and the Kevin Bacon drama Criminal Law, and Scandal, with $658k worth of ticket sales, would have the second best per screen average of the five new openers, just a few hundred dollars below the new Holly Hunter movie Miss Firecracker, which only opened on six screens.   In its second weekend, Scandal would expand its run to 214 playdates, and make its debut in the national top ten, coming in tenth place with $981k. That would be more than the second week of the Patrick Dempsey rom-com Loverboy, even though Loverboy was playing on 5x as many screens.   In weekend number three, Scandal would have its best overall gross and top ten placement, coming in seventh with $1.22m from 346 screens. Scandal would start to slowly fade after that, falling back out of the top ten in its sixth week, but Miramax would wisely keep the screen count under 375, because Scandal wasn't going to play well in all areas of the country. After nearly five months in theatres, Miramax would have its biggest film to date. Scandal would gross $8.8m.   The second release from Millimeter Films was The Return of the Swamp Thing. And if you needed a reason why the 1980s was not a good time for comic book movies, here you are. The Return of the Swamp Thing took most of what made the character interesting in his comic series, and most of what was good from the 1982 Wes Craven adaptation, and decided “Hey, you know what would bring the kids in? Camp! Camp unseen in a comic book adaptation since the 1960s Batman series. They loved it then, they'll love it now!”   They did not love it now.   Heather Locklear, between her stints on T.J. Hooker and Melrose Place, plays the step-daughter of Louis Jourdan's evil Dr. Arcane from the first film, who heads down to the Florida swaps to confront dear old once presumed dead stepdad. He in turns kidnaps his stepdaughter and decides to do some of his genetic experiments on her, until she is rescued by Swamp Thing, one of Dr. Arcane's former co-workers who got turned into the gooey anti-hero in the first movie.   The film co-stars Sarah Douglas from Superman 1 and 2 as Dr. Arcane's assistant, Dick Durock reprising his role as Swamp Thing from the first film, and 1980s B-movie goddess Monique Gabrielle as Miss Poinsettia.   For director Jim Wynorski, this was his sixth movie as a director, and at $3m, one of the highest budgeted movies he would ever make. He's directed 107 movies since 1984, most of them low budget direct to video movies with titles like The Bare Wench Project and Alabama Jones and the Busty Crusade, although he does have one genuine horror classic under his belt, the 1986 sci-fi tinged Chopping Maul with Kelli Maroney and Barbara Crampton.   Wynorski suggested in a late 1990s DVD commentary for the film that he didn't particularly enjoy making the film, and had a difficult time directing Louis Jourdan, to the point that outside of calling “action” and “cut,” the two didn't speak to each other by the end of the shoot.   The Return of Swamp Thing would open in 123 theatres in the United States on May 12th, including 28 in the New York City metro region, 26 in the Los Angeles area, 15 in Detroit, and a handful of theatres in Phoenix, San Francisco. And, strangely, the newspaper ads would include an actual positive quote from none other than Roger Ebert, who said on Siskel & Ebert that he enjoyed himself, and that it was good to have Swamp Thing back. Siskel would not reciprocate his balcony partner's thumb up. But Siskel was about the only person who was positive on the return of Swamp Thing, and that box office would suffer. In its first three days, the film would gross just $119,200. After a couple more dismal weeks in theatres, The Return of Swamp Thing would be pulled from distribution, with a final gross of just $275k.   Fun fact: The Return of Swamp Thing was produced by Michael E. Uslan, whose next production, another adaptation of a DC Comics character, would arrive in theatres not six weeks later and become the biggest film of the summer. In fact, Uslan has been a producer or executive producer on every Batman-related movie and television show since 1989, from Tim Burton to Christopher Nolan to Zack Snyder to Matt Reeves, and from LEGO movies to Joker. He also, because of his ownership of the movie rights to Swamp Thing, got the movie screen rights, but not the television screen rights, to John Constantine.   Miramax didn't have too much time to worry about The Return of Swamp Thing's release, as it was happening while the Brothers Weinstein were at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival. They had two primary goals at Cannes that year:   To buy American distribution rights to any movie that would increase their standing in the cinematic worldview, which they would achieve by picking up an Italian dramedy called, at the time, New Paradise Cinema, which was competing for the Palme D'Or with a Miramax pickup from Sundance back in January. Promote that very film, which did end up winning the Palme D'Or.   Ever since he was a kid, Steven Soderbergh wanted to be a filmmaker. Growing up in Baton Rouge, LA in the late 1970s, he would enroll in the LSU film animation class, even though he was only 15 and not yet a high school graduate. After graduating high school, he decided to move to Hollywood to break into the film industry, renting an above-garage room from Stephen Gyllenhaal, the filmmaker best known as the father of Jake and Maggie, but after a few freelance editing jobs, Soderbergh packed up his things and headed home to Baton Rouge.   Someone at Atco Records saw one of Soderbergh's short films, and hired him to direct a concert movie for one of their biggest bands at the time, Yes, who was enjoying a major comeback thanks to their 1983 triple platinum selling album, 90125. The concert film, called 9012Live, would premiere on MTV in late 1985, and it would be nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Long Form Music Video.   Soderbergh would use the money he earned from that project, $7,500, to make Winston, a 12 minute black and white short about sexual deception that he would, over the course of an eight day driving trip from Baton Rouge to Los Angeles, expand to a full length screen that he would call sex, lies and videotape. In later years, Soderbergh would admit that part of the story is autobiographical, but not the part you might think. Instead of the lead, Graham, an impotent but still sexually perverse late twentysomething who likes to tape women talking about their sexual fantasies for his own pleasure later, Soderbergh based the husband John, the unsophisticated lawyer who cheats on his wife with her sister, on himself, although there would be a bit of Graham that borrows from the filmmaker. Like his lead character, Soderbergh did sell off most of his possessions and hit the road to live a different life.   When he finished the script, he sent it out into the wilds of Hollywood. Morgan Mason, the son of actor James Mason and husband of Go-Go's lead singer Belinda Carlisle, would read it and sign on as an executive producer. Soderbergh had wanted to shoot the film in black and white, like he had with the Winston short that lead to the creation of this screenplay, but he and Mason had trouble getting anyone to commit to the project, even with only a projected budget of $200,000. For a hot moment, it looked like Universal might sign on to make the film, but they would eventually pass.   Robert Newmyer, who had left his job as a vice president of production and acquisitions at Columbia Pictures to start his own production company, signed on as a producer, and helped to convince Soderbergh to shoot the film in color, and cast some name actors in the leading roles. Once he acquiesced, Richard Branson's Virgin Vision agreed to put up $540k of the newly budgeted $1.2m film, while RCA/Columbia Home Video would put up the remaining $660k.   Soderbergh and his casting director, Deborah Aquila, would begin their casting search in New York, where they would meet with, amongst others, Andie MacDowell, who had already starred in two major Hollywood pictures, 1984's Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, and 1985's St. Elmo's Fire, but was still considered more of a top model than an actress, and Laura San Giacomo, who had recently graduated from the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama in Pittsburgh and would be making her feature debut. Moving on to Los Angeles, Soderbergh and Aquila would cast James Spader, who had made a name for himself as a mostly bad guy in 80s teen movies like Pretty in Pink and Less Than Zero, but had never been the lead in a drama like this. At Spader's suggestion, the pair met with Peter Gallagher, who was supposed to become a star nearly a decade earlier from his starring role in Taylor Hackford's The Idolmaker, but had mostly been playing supporting roles in television shows and movies for most of the decade.   In order to keep the budget down, Soderbergh, the producers, cinematographer Walt Lloyd and the four main cast members agreed to get paid their guild minimums in exchange for a 50/50 profit participation split with RCA/Columbia once the film recouped its costs.   The production would spend a week in rehearsals in Baton Rouge, before the thirty day shoot began on August 1st, 1988. On most days, the shoot was unbearable for many, as temperatures would reach as high as 110 degrees outside, but there were a couple days lost to what cinematographer Lloyd said was “biblical rains.” But the shoot completed as scheduled, and Soderbergh got to the task of editing right away. He knew he only had about eight weeks to get a cut ready if the film was going to be submitted to the 1989 U.S. Film Festival, now better known as Sundance. He did get a temporary cut of the film ready for submission, with a not quite final sound mix, and the film was accepted to the festival. It would make its world premiere on January 25th, 1989, in Park City UT, and as soon as the first screening was completed, the bids from distributors came rolling in. Larry Estes, the head of RCA/Columbia Home Video, would field more than a dozen submissions before the end of the night, but only one distributor was ready to make a deal right then and there.   Bob Weinstein wasn't totally sold on the film, but he loved the ending, and he loved that the word “sex” not only was in the title but lead the title. He knew that title alone would sell the movie. Harvey, who was still in New York the next morning, called Estes to make an appointment to meet in 24 hours. When he and Estes met, he brought with him three poster mockups the marketing department had prepared, and told Estes he wasn't going to go back to New York until he had a contract signed, and vowed to beat any other deal offered by $100,000. Island Pictures, who had made their name releasing movies like Stop Making Sense, Kiss of the Spider-Woman, The Trip to Bountiful and She's Gotta Have It, offered $1m for the distribution rights, plus a 30% distribution fee and a guaranteed $1m prints and advertising budget. Estes called Harvey up and told him what it would take to make the deal. $1.1m for the distribution rights, which needed to paid up front, a $1m P&A budget, to be put in escrow upon the signing of the contract until the film was released, a 30% distribution fee, no cutting of the film whatsoever once Soderbergh turns in his final cut, they would need to provide financial information for the films costs and returns once a month because of the profit participation contracts, and the Weinsteins would have to hire Ira Deutchman, who had spent nearly 15 years in the independent film world, doing marketing for Cinema 5, co-founding United Artists Classics, and co-founding Cinecom Pictures before opening his own company to act as a producers rep and marketer. And the Weinsteins would not only have to do exactly what Deutchman wanted, they'd have to pay for his services too.   The contract was signed a few weeks later.   The first move Miramax would make was to get Soderbergh's final cut of the film entered into the Cannes Film Festival, where it would be accepted to compete in the main competition. Which you kind of already know what happened, because that's what I lead with. The film would win the Palme D'Or, and Spader would be awarded the festival's award for Best Actor. It was very rare at the time, and really still is, for any film to be awarded more than one prize, so winning two was really a coup for the film and for Miramax, especially when many critics attending the festival felt Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing was the better film.   In March, Miramax expected the film to make around $5-10m, which would net the company a small profit on the film. After Cannes, they were hopeful for a $15m gross.   They never expected what would happen next.   On August 4th, sex, lies, and videotape would open on four screens, at the Cinema Studio in New York City, and at the AMC Century 14, the Cineplex Beverly Center 13 and the Mann Westwood 4 in Los Angeles. Three prime theatres and the best they could do in one of the then most competitive zones in all America. Remember, it's still the Summer 1989 movie season, filled with hits like Batman, Dead Poets Society, Ghostbusters 2, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Lethal Weapon 2, Parenthood, Turner & Hooch, and When Harry Met Sally. An independent distributor even getting one screen at the least attractive theatre in Westwood was a major get. And despite the fact that this movie wasn't really a summertime movie per se, the film would gross an incredible $156k in its first weekend from just these four theatres. Its nearly $40k per screen average would be 5x higher than the next closest film, Parenthood.   In its second weekend, the film would expand to 28 theatres, and would bring in over $600k in ticket sales, its per screen average of $21,527 nearly triple its closest competitor, Parenthood again. The company would keep spending small, as it slowly expanded the film each successive week. Forty theatres in its third week, and 101 in its fourth. The numbers held strong, and in its fifth week, Labor Day weekend, the film would have its first big expansion, playing in 347 theatres. The film would enter the top ten for the first time, despite playing in 500 to 1500 fewer theatres than the other films in the top ten. In its ninth weekend, the film would expand to its biggest screen count, 534, before slowly drawing down as the other major Oscar contenders started their theatrical runs. The film would continue to play through the Oscar season of 1989, and when it finally left theatres in May 1989, its final gross would be an astounding $24.7m.   Now, remember a few moments ago when I said that Miramax needed to provide financial statements every month for the profit participation contracts of Soderbergh, the producers, the cinematographer and the four lead actors? The film was so profitable for everyone so quickly that RCA/Columbia made its first profit participation payouts on October 17th, barely ten weeks after the film's opening.   That same week, Soderbergh also made what was at the time the largest deal with a book publisher for the writer/director's annotated version of the screenplay, which would also include his notes created during the creation of the film. That $75,000 deal would be more than he got paid to make the movie as the writer and the director and the editor, not counting the profit participation checks.   During the awards season, sex, lies, and videotape was considered to be one of the Oscars front runners for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay and at least two acting nominations. The film would be nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress by the Golden Globes, and it would win the Spirit Awards for Best Picture, Soderbergh for Best Director, McDowell for Best Actress, and San Giacomo for Best Supporting Actress. But when the Academy Award nominations were announced, the film would only receive one nomination, for Best Original Screenplay. The same total and category as Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, which many people also felt had a chance for a Best Picture and Best Director nomination. Both films would lose out to Tom Shulman's screenplay for Dead Poet's Society.   The success of sex, lies, and videotape would launch Steven Soderbergh into one of the quirkiest Hollywood careers ever seen, including becoming the first and only director ever to be nominated twice for Best Director in the same year by the Motion Picture Academy, the Golden Globes and the Directors Guild of America, in 2001 for directing Erin Brockovich and Traffic. He would win the Oscar for directing Traffic.   Lost in the excitement of sex, lies, and videotape was The Little Thief, a French movie that had an unfortunate start as the screenplay François Truffaut was working on when he passed away in 1984 at the age of just 52.   Directed by Claude Miller, whose principal mentor was Truffaut, The Little Thief starred seventeen year old Charlotte Gainsbourg as Janine, a young woman in post-World War II France who commits a series of larcenies to support her dreams of becoming wealthy.   The film was a modest success in France when it opened in December 1988, but its American release date of August 25th, 1989, was set months in advance. So when it was obvious sex, lies, and videotape was going to be a bigger hit than they originally anticipated, it was too late for Miramax to pause the release of The Little Thief.   Opening at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas in New York City, and buoyed by favorable reviews from every major critic in town, The Little Thief would see $39,931 worth of ticket sales in its first seven days, setting a new house record at the theatre for the year. In its second week, the gross would only drop $47. For the entire week. And when it opened at the Royal Theatre in West Los Angeles, its opening week gross of $30,654 would also set a new house record for the year.   The film would expand slowly but surely over the next several weeks, often in single screen playdates in major markets, but it would never play on more than twenty-four screens in any given week. And after four months in theatres, The Little Thief, the last movie created one of the greatest film writers the world had ever seen, would only gross $1.056m in the United States.   The next three releases from Miramax were all sent out under the Millimeter Films banner.   The first, a supernatural erotic drama called The Girl in a Swing, was about an English antiques dealer who travels to Copenhagen where he meets and falls in love with a mysterious German-born secretary, whom he marries, only to discover a darker side to his new bride. Rupert Frazer, who played Christian Bale's dad in Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun, plays the antique dealer, while Meg Tilly the mysterious new bride.   Filmed over a five week schedule in London and Copenhagen during May and June 1988, some online sources say the film first opened somewhere in California in December 1988, but I cannot find a single theatre not only in California but anywhere in the United States that played the film before its September 29th, 1989 opening date.   Roger Ebert didn't like the film, and wished Meg Tilly's “genuinely original performance” was in a better movie. Opening in 26 theatres, including six theatres each in New York City and Los Angeles, and spurred on by an intriguing key art for the film that featured a presumed naked Tilly on a swing looking seductively at the camera while a notice underneath her warns that No One Under 18 Will Be Admitted To The Theatre, The Girl in a Swing would gross $102k, good enough for 35th place nationally that week. And that's about the best it would do. The film would limp along, moving from market to market over the course of the next three months, and when its theatrical run was complete, it could only manage about $747k in ticket sales.   We'll quickly burn through the next two Millimeter Films releases, which came out a week apart from each other and didn't amount to much.   Animal Behavior was a rather unfunny comedy featuring some very good actors who probably signed on for a very different movie than the one that came to be. Karen Allen, Miss Marion Ravenwood herself, stars as Alex, a biologist who, like Dr. Jane Goodall, develops a “new” way to communicate with chimpanzees via sign language. Armand Assante plays a cellist who pursues the good doctor, and Holly Hunter plays the cellist's neighbor, who Alex mistakes for his wife.   Animal Behavior was filmed in 1984, and 1985, and 1987, and 1988. The initial production was directed by Jenny Bowen with the assistance of Robert Redford and The Sundance Institute, thanks to her debut film, 1981's Street Music featuring Elizabeth Daily. It's unknown why Bowen and her cinematographer husband Richard Bowen left the project, but when filming resumed again and again and again, those scenes were directed by the film's producer, Kjehl Rasmussen.   Because Bowen was not a member of the DGA at the time, she was not able to petition the guild for the use of the Alan Smithee pseudonym, a process that is automatically triggered whenever a director is let go of a project and filming continues with its producer taking the reigns as director. But she was able to get the production to use a pseudonym anyway for the director's credit, H. Anne Riley, while also giving Richard Bowen a pseudonym of his own for his work on the film, David Spellvin.   Opening on 24 screens on October 27th, Animal Behavior would come in 50th place in its opening weekend, grossing just $20,361. The New York film critics ripped the film apart, and there wouldn't be a second weekend for the film.   The following Friday, November 3rd, saw the release of The Stepfather II, a rushed together sequel to 1987's The Stepfather, which itself wasn't a big hit in theatres but found a very quick and receptive audience on cable.   Despite dying at the end of the first film, Terry O'Quinn's Jerry is somehow still alive, and institutionalized in Northern Washington state. He escapes and heads down to Los Angeles, where he assumes the identity of a recently deceased publisher, Gene Clifford, but instead passes himself off as a psychiatrist. Jerry, now Gene, begins to court his neighbor Carol, and the whole crazy story plays out again. Meg Foster plays the neighbor Carol, and Jonathan Brandis is her son.    Director Jeff Burr had made a name for himself with his 1987 horror anthology film From a Whisper to a Scream, featuring Vincent Price, Clu Gulager and Terry Kiser, and from all accounts, had a very smooth shooting process with this film. The trouble began when he turned in his cut to the producers. The producers were happy with the film, but when they sent it to Miramax, the American distributors, they were rather unhappy with the almost bloodless slasher film. They demanded reshoots, which Burr and O'Quinn refused to participate in. They brought in a new director, Doug Campbell, to handle the reshoots, which are easy to spot in the final film because they look and feel completely different from the scenes they're spliced into.   When it opened, The Stepfather II actually grossed slightly more than the first film did, earning $279k from 100 screens, compared to $260k for The Stepfather from 105 screens. But unlike the first film, which had some decent reviews when it opened, the sequel was a complete mess. To this day, it's still one of the few films to have a 0% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and The Stepfather II would limp its way through theatres during the Christmas holiday season, ending its run with a $1.5m gross.   But it would be their final film of the decade that would dictate their course for at least the first part of the 1990s.   Remember when I said earlier in the episode that Harvey Weinstein meant with the producers of another British film while in London for Scandal? We're at that film now, a film you probably know.   My Left Foot.   By November 1988, actor Daniel Day-Lewis had starred in several movies including James Ivory's A Room With a View and Philip Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. He had even been the lead in a major Hollywood studio film, Pat O'Connor's Stars and Bars, a very good film that unfortunately got caught up in the brouhaha over the exit of the studio head who greenlit the film, David Puttnam.   The film's director, Jim Sheridan, had never directed a movie before. He had become involved in stage production during his time at the University College in Dublin in the late 1960s, where he worked with future filmmaker Neil Jordan, and had spent nearly a decade after graduation doing stage work in Ireland and Canada, before settling in New York City in the early 1980s. Sheridan would go to New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where one of his classmates was Spike Lee, and return to Ireland after graduating. He was nearly forty, married with two pre-teen daughters, and he needed to make a statement with his first film.   He would find that story in the autobiography of Irish writer and painter Christy Brown, whose spirit and creativity could not be contained by his severe cerebral palsy. Along with Irish actor and writer Shane Connaughton, Sheridan wrote a screenplay that could be a powerhouse film made on a very tight budget of less than a million dollars.   Daniel Day-Lewis was sent a copy of the script, in the hopes he would be intrigued enough to take almost no money to play a physically demanding role. He read the opening pages, which had the adult Christy Brown putting a record on a record player and dropping the needle on to the record with his left foot, and thought to himself it would be impossible to film. That intrigued him, and he signed on. But during filming in January and February of 1989, most of the scenes were shot using mirrors, as Day-Lewis couldn't do the scenes with his left foot. He could do them with his right foot, hence the mirrors.   As a method actor, Day-Lewis remained in character as Christy Brown for the entire two month shoot. From costume fittings and makeup in the morning, to getting the actor on set, to moving him around between shots, there were crew members assigned to assist the actor as if they were Christy Brown's caretakers themselves, including feeding him during breaks in shooting. A rumor debunked by the actor years later said Day-Lewis had broken two ribs during production because of how hunched down he needed to be in his crude prop wheelchair to properly play the character.   The actor had done a lot of prep work to play the role, including spending time at the Sandymount School Clinic where the young Christy Brown got his education, and much of his performance was molded on those young people.   While Miramax had acquired the American distribution rights to the film before it went into production, and those funds went into the production of the film, the film was not produced by Miramax, nor were the Weinsteins given any kind of executive producer credit, as they were able to get themselves on Scandal.   My Left Foot would make its world premiere at the Montreal World Film Festival on September 4th, 1989, followed soon thereafter by screening at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 13th and the New York Film Festival on September 23rd. Across the board, critics and audiences were in love with the movie, and with Daniel Day-Lewis's performance. Jim Sheridan would receive a special prize at the Montreal World Film Festival for his direction, and Day-Lewis would win the festival's award for Best Actor. However, as the film played the festival circuit, another name would start to pop up. Brenda Fricker, a little known Irish actress who played Christy Brown's supportive but long-suffering mother Bridget, would pile up as many positive notices and awards as Day-Lewis. Although there was no Best Supporting Actress Award at the Montreal Film Festival, the judges felt her performance was deserving of some kind of attention, so they would create a Special Mention of the Jury Award to honor her.   Now, some sources online will tell you the film made its world premiere in Dublin on February 24th, 1989, based on a passage in a biography about Daniel Day-Lewis, but that would be impossible as the film would still be in production for two more days, and wasn't fully edited or scored by then.   I'm not sure when it first opened in the United Kingdom other than sometime in early 1990, but My Left Foot would have its commercial theatre debut in America on November 10th, when opened at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas in New York City and the Century City 14 in Los Angeles. Sheila Benson of the Los Angeles Times would, in the very opening paragraph of her review, note that one shouldn't see My Left Foot for some kind of moral uplift or spiritual merit badge, but because of your pure love of great moviemaking. Vincent Canby's review in the New York Times spends most of his words praising Day-Lewis and Sheridan for making a film that is polite and non-judgmental.    Interestingly, Miramax went with an ad campaign that completely excluded any explanation of who Christy Brown was or why the film is titled the way it is. 70% of the ad space is taken from pull quotes from many of the top critics of the day, 20% with the title of the film, and 10% with a picture of Daniel Day-Lewis, clean shaven and full tooth smile, which I don't recall happening once in the movie, next to an obviously added-in picture of one of his co-stars that is more camera-friendly than Brenda Fricker or Fiona Shaw.   Whatever reasons people went to see the film, they flocked to the two theatres playing the film that weekend. It's $20,582 per screen average would be second only to Kenneth Branagh's Henry V, which had opened two days earlier, earning slightly more than $1,000 per screen than My Left Foot.   In week two, My Left Foot would gross another $35,133 from those two theatres, and it would overtake Henry V for the highest per screen average. In week three, Thanksgiving weekend, both Henry V and My Left Foot saw a a double digit increase in grosses despite not adding any theatres, and the latter film would hold on to the highest per screen average again, although the difference would only be $302. And this would continue for weeks. In the film's sixth week of release, it would get a boost in attention by being awarded Best Film of the Year by the New York Film Critics Circle. Daniel Day-Lewis would be named Best Actor that week by both the New York critics and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, while Fricker would win the Best Supporting Actress award from the latter group.   But even then, Miramax refused to budge on expanding the film until its seventh week of release, Christmas weekend, when My Left Foot finally moved into cities like Chicago and San Francisco. Its $135k gross that weekend was good, but it was starting to lose ground to other Oscar hopefuls like Born on the Fourth of July, Driving Miss Daisy, Enemies: A Love Story, and Glory.   And even though the film continued to rack up award win after award win, nomination after nomination, from the Golden Globes and the Writers Guild and the National Society of Film Critics and the National Board of Review, Miramax still held firm on not expanding the film into more than 100 theatres nationwide until its 16th week in theatres, February 16th, 1990, two days after the announcement of the nominees for the 62nd Annual Academy Awards. While Daniel Day-Lewis's nomination for Best Actor was virtually assured and Brenda Fricker was practically a given, the film would pick up three other nominations, including surprise nominations for Best Picture and Best Director. Jim Sheridan and co-writer Shane Connaughton would also get picked for Best Adapted Screenplay.   Miramax also picked up a nomination for Best Original Screenplay for sex, lies, and videotape, and a Best Foreign Language Film nod for the Italian movie Cinema Paradiso, which, thanks to the specific rules for that category, a film could get a nomination before actually opening in theatres in America, which Miramax would rush to do with Paradiso the week after its nomination was announced.   The 62nd Academy Awards ceremony would be best remembered today as being the first Oscar show to be hosted by Billy Crystal, and for being considerably better than the previous year's ceremony, a mess of a show best remembered as being the one with a 12 minute opening musical segment that included Rob Lowe singing Proud Mary to an actress playing Snow White and another nine minute musical segment featuring a slew of expected future Oscar winners that, to date, feature exact zero Oscar nominees, both which rank as amongst the worst things to ever happen to the Oscars awards show.   The ceremony, held on March 26th, would see My Left Foot win two awards, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress, as well as Cinema Paradiso for Best Foreign Film. The following weekend, March 30th, would see Miramax expand My Left Foot to 510 theatres, its widest point of release, and see the film made the national top ten and earn more than a million dollars for its one and only time during its eight month run.   The film would lose steam pretty quickly after its post-win bump, but it would eek out a modest run that ended with $14.75m in ticket sales just in the United States. Not bad for a little Irish movie with no major stars that cost less than a million dollars to make.   Of course, the early 90s would see Miramax fly to unimagined heights. In all of the 80s, Miramax would release 39 movies. They would release 30 films alone in 1991. They would release the first movies from Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith. They'd release some of the best films from some of the best filmmakers in the world, including Woody Allen, Pedro Almadovar, Robert Altman, Bernardo Bertolucci, Atom Egoyan, Steven Frears, Peter Greenaway, Peter Jackson, Neil Jordan, Chen Kaige, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Lars von Trier, and Zhang Yimou. In 1993, the Mexican dramedy Like Water for Chocolate would become the highest grossing foreign language film ever released in America, and it would play in some theatres, including my theatre, the NuWilshire in Santa Monica, continuously for more than a year.   If you've listened to the whole series on the 1980s movies of Miramax Films, there are two things I hope you take away. First, I hope you discovered at least one film you hadn't heard of before and you might be interested in searching out. The second is the reminder that neither Bob nor Harvey Weinstein will profit in any way if you give any of the movies talked about in this series a chance. They sold Miramax to Disney in June 1993. They left Miramax in September 2005. Many of the contracts for the movies the company released in the 80s and 90s expired decades ago, with the rights reverting back to their original producers, none of whom made any deals with the Weinsteins once they got their rights back.   Harvey Weinstein is currently serving a 23 year prison sentence in upstate New York after being found guilty in 2020 of two sexual assaults. Once he completes that sentence, he'll be spending another 16 years in prison in California, after he was convicted of three sexual assaults that happened in Los Angeles between 2004 and 2013. And if the 71 year old makes it to 107 years old, he may have to serve time in England for two sexual assaults that happened in August 1996. That case is still working its way through the British legal system.   Bob Weinstein has kept a low profile since his brother's proclivities first became public knowledge in October 2017, although he would also be accused of sexual harassment by a show runner for the brothers' Spike TV-aired adaptation of the Stephen King novel The Mist, several days after the bombshell articles came out about his brother. However, Bob's lawyer, the powerful attorney to the stars Bert Fields, deny the allegations, and it appears nothing has occurred legally since the accusations were made.   A few weeks after the start of the MeToo movement that sparked up in the aftermath of the accusations of his brother's actions, Bob Weinstein denied having any knowledge of the nearly thirty years of documented sexual abuse at the hands of his brother, but did allow to an interviewer for The Hollywood Reporter that he had barely spoken to Harvey over the previous five years, saying he could no longer take Harvey's cheating, lying and general attitude towards everyone.   And with that, we conclude our journey with Miramax Films. While I am sure Bob and Harvey will likely pop up again in future episodes, they'll be minor characters at best, and we'll never have to focus on anything they did ever again.   Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again soon, when Episode 119 is released.   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.

Hello! This week we chatted with comedian Paul Marsh about The Field, a 1990 film directed by Jim Sheridan that was based on a John B. Keane play about, well its about a field. It's a great film and we had a lovely time talking to Paul, so good we had to cut a load of extra bits out and stick them on the Patreon (along with all the other Film Club episodes), so if you want to listen to that / those the links are here -> STH..This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5645402/advertisement

Hello! This week we chatted with comedian Paul Marsh about The Field, a 1990 film directed by Jim Sheridan that was based on a John B. Keane play about, well its about a field. It's a great film and we had a lovely time talking to Paul, so good we had to cut a load of extra bits out and stick them on the Patreon (along with all the other Film Club episodes), so if you want to listen to that / those the links are here -> STH..This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5645402/advertisement

Irish streaming spending has reached €1.3 billion – that's according to a new survey conducted by Pure Telecom. We're joined by the famous Irish film director Jim Sheridan and Shane asked him if he thinks traditional tv is on the way out?

Irish streaming spending has reached €1.3 billion – that's according to a new survey conducted by Pure Telecom. We're joined by the famous Irish film director Jim Sheridan and Shane asked him if he thinks traditional tv is on the way out?

La comédienne belge âgée de 41 ans nous reçoit, à l'occasion de la sortie en salle le 10 mai du film La Fille d'Albino Rodrigue de Christine Dory, chez elle. Un appartement en forme de grand L avec une baie vitrée qui lui permet de voir l'eau. « J'ai l'impression de vivre sur un bateau ». Emilie Dequenne évoque son enfance dans un hameau non loin de la frontière française auprès d'un père menuisier et d'une mère dont la passion est le jardin, Au nom du père de Jim Sheridan et le génie de Daniel Day-Lewis, les séries télé AB Productions ou Sauvés par le gong qui ont marqué son adolescence, ses sorties en discothèque dans les Flandres, l'aventure Rosetta des frères Dardenne qui lance sa carrière, ses tournages avec André Téchiné, Joachim Lafosse, Emmanuel Mouret ou Lukas Dhont, le livre La Plage d'Ostende de Jacqueline Harpman, sa tendance à l'autosabotage, sa fascination pour David Bowie ou Stromae et son rapport compliqué à l'addiction.Elle revient aussi sur son goût précoce pour les films d'horreur : « C'était ma grande passion. J'allais chez ma tante ou chez mon oncle me faire des marathons avec ma cousine. Ils passaient au vidéoclub, ils nous faisaient le plein de friandises, de sucreries, de chips… Je crois que j'ai vu Les Griffes de la nuit, de Wes Craven, à 8 ans, L'Exorciste vers 10-12 ans. Plus j'en voyais, plus c'était amusant pour moi. »Depuis quatre saisons, la journaliste et productrice Géraldine Sarratia interroge la construction et les méandres du goût d'une personnalité. Qu'ils ou elles soient créateurs, artistes, cuisiniers ou intellectuels, tous convoquent leurs souvenirs d'enfance, tous évoquent la dimension sociale et culturelle de la construction d'un corpus de goûts, d'un ensemble de valeurs.Un podcast produit et présenté par Géraldine Sarratia (Genre idéal) préparé avec l'aide de Diane Lisarelli et Imène BenlachtarRéalisation : Guillaume GiraultMusique : Gotan Project Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

Honoring the life and art of Christy Brown can be done in a few ways. Aside from reading his books and seeing his art at a gallery, watching My Left Foot isn't a bad start. With moving performances and thoughtful direction from Jim Sheridan, this film is a great entry into the work of a genius whose physical barriers created an even greater depth to his already moving art. In this episode, Jon and Dan spitball ideas of how else Christy Brown's work could be honored in the 21st century.Recommended listening: Cripple ThreatNext episode: After Hours (1985)Contact us, follow us on social media, or buy some merch at linktr.ee/RuinedChildhoods

The Ghost Of Richard Harris tells the story of a once famous actor, poet, lover and singer, whose prodigious career was overshadowed by a reputation for drinking and riotous behavior, earning him the epithet 'hell raiser'. It is the story of a legendary Irishman, perhaps the greatest actor Ireland has produced, who still lives in the hearts of his countrymen. And it's the story of a father whose three sons still think about him every day, since his unexpected death twenty years ago. They are still in search of, and argue about, who he really was - a complex, flawed genius. This is also not a simple biographical documentary. It is a haunting of the people and places that were dear to Richard Harris and told in a unique way through unheard confessional interviews where Harris will again speak to his sons, family and friends. Directed by Adrian Sibley, this fascinating documentary features Harris' three sons: BAFTA Award-winning actor Jared Harris (Chernobyl, The Crown), actor Jamie Harris (Carnival Row, West Side Story) and director Damian Harris (Brave The Dark, Wilde Wedding). In addition, contributors include: Russell Crowe, Vanessa Redgrave, Dick Cavett, Jimmy Webb, Jim Sheridan, Stephen Rea, Phil Coulter, Noel Pearson, Malachy McCourt, Sandy Lieberson, Lelia Doolan & the late Elizabeth Harris.

Just in time for St. Patrick's Day, we revisit the 30th anniversary of one of the most memorable dramas recounting one of the darker periods in the ongoing conflict between the Irish and the British in the 20th Century.  This is the unforgettable story of Gerry Conlon, a young man from Belfast who was wrongly convicted and imprisoned for orchestrating the IRA bombing of a British pub in 1974, which resulted in several deaths.  His father Guiseppe is also imprisoned and we watch as father and son battle to earn their freedom along with getting to know each other - Gerry is played by Daniel Day-Lewis and Guiseppe is played by Pete Posthelwaite, both of whom earned Oscar nominations.  Also earning nominations were Emma Thompson who co-stars as the lead attorney representing the Conlons and the director of the film, Jim Sheridan.Host: Geoff Gershon  Editors: Geoff and Ella GershonProducer: Marlene Gershonhttps://livingforthecinema.com/Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/Living-for-the-Cinema-Podcast-101167838847578Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/livingforthecinema/Letterboxd:https://letterboxd.com/Living4Cinema/

Emer O'Neill joins The Group Chat to talk about racism in Ireland & the abuse she has received online for speaking out against a racist joke. She explains the importance of education & being aware of unconscious bias.Jim Sheridan joins to discuss Ireland's Oscar success with films like Colm Bairéad's An Cailín Ciúin & Martin McDonagh's The Banshees of Inisherin receiving nominations. He describes his experiences at the Oscars and how the industry has changed over the years.Later, Zara, Richard & Gavan explain why Paschal Donohoe finds himself in hot water in The Dáil. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kieran was joined on the show by world famous film director and long term Wicklow resident, John Boorman. Yesterday, he was honoured by Wicklow County Council with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Film director, Jim Sheridan also joined Kieran to discuss John Boorman's impact on Irish cinema...

Hoy desde la Semana Internacional de Cine de Valladolid, a punto de terminar. Con León Siminiani, Espiga de Oro al mejor cortometraje con "Arquitectura emocional. 1959". Con Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, Fernando Colomo y Andrés Vicente Gómez, Espigas de Honor del Festival. Con Trine Pill, directora de la película "Nothing". Y con Pablo de María y las primeras películas de Jim Sheridan. Escuchar audio

De película viaja a la ciudad Vallisoletana dónde desde el sábado pasado se celebra La 67 edición de la Semana Internacional de Cine, dónde nos recibe Javier Angulo director del festival, para hablar de una programación llena de un cine que conmueve y remueve sentimientos, de nombres consagrados y de autores debutantes. El cineasta Jim Sheridan autor de títulos como Mi pie izquierdo O En el nombre del padre, es una de las Espiga de Honor de esta edición, que tiene a Irlanda, su país natal, como invitado, antes pasará por el hotel Olid dónde nos encontramos con él. Hablamos con el reportero español Marc Marginedas, el primer cautivo en ser liberado y Albert Solé y Raúl Cuevas los directores de Regreso a Raqqa, la crónica de lo que ha sido posiblemente el secuestro más famoso de la historia, el de 19 periodistas y funcionarios de ONG de diferentes nacionalidades que fueron capturados por el Estado Islámico. No podían faltar las dos películas que llegan la semana a la cartelera y son las dos únicas que participan en la Sección Oficial de este año, No mires a los ojos de Felix Viscarret protagonizada por Paco león a los que escuchamos y Vasil la ópera prima de Avelina Prat protagonizada por Karra Elejalde, con ambos charlamos. Nos detenemos en l'inmesita la historia de un adolescente transexual en la Italia de los años 70. Pasa por la SEMINCI, Aunque fuera de concurso en la Sección Oficial, opta a la Espiga Arco Iris que reconoce la sensibilidad de las películas hacia el colectivo LGTBIQ+. Lugar privilegiado ocupa El cuarto pasajero de Alex de la Iglesia, con él hablamos de esta road movie, dónde nos muestra su lado más cómico y comercial protagonizado por Alberto San Juan, Blanca Suárez, Ernesto Alterio, Rubén Cortada y Carlos Areces. La cinta llega hoy a todas las salas Además, el resto de estrenos de cartelera, destacando Utama y el Oficio de aprender que nos comenta nuestra colaboradora Ángeles González Sinde, la actualidad cinematográfica desde la 67ª edición de la Seminci y las mejores series con Pedro Calvo, esta semana García. Todo esto y mucho más en De película, la madrugada del viernes al sábado de 00.05 a 02.00 h. Y siempre que quieras, en los podcasts de RTVE.es. Escuchar audio

Sergio Pérez entrevista al director de En el nombre del padre por motivo de la Espiga de Oro de Honor concedida por la SEMINCI.

Fue una de las estrellas más peculiares de la historia del cine, un tipo extravagante y juerguista pero también un excelente actor. Esta semana rendimos homenaje a Richard Harris, el protagonista de películas como 'Un hombre llamado caballo' o 'Camelot'. Y hace 60 años el mundo vivía una situación parecida a la actual con la guerra de Ucrania y la amenaza de una hecatombe nuclear. Fue la llamada "crisis de los misiles" que puso al mundo al borde de la Tercera Guerra Mundial. Os vamos a contar como ha reflejado el cine aquel episodio. Charlamos con el actor Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, protagonista de la película 'Un año, una noche' de Isaki Lacuesta que se acaba de estrenar, y en la sección de "Cine incómodo" vamos a revisar 'En el nombre del padre', la película de Jim Sheridan que contaba el caso de los Cuatro de Guilford, uno de los mayores errores judiciales de la historia de Gran Bretaña.

Jim Sheridan, a native of Rathmullen in Donegal, rose through the Garda ranks to become Chief Superintendent in Sligo-Leitrim. He was a Garda for almost 39 years, before retirement in 2002. And a FAI-winning captain with Finn Harps as well - he takes an emotional journey through his Garda career

MURDER AT THE COTTAGE shines a bright light on the events and investigation into the brutal killing of two days before Christmas in 1996 of French TV producer Sophie Toscan du Plantier at her holiday cottage in Schull, West Cork. In 2019, the key suspect, English journalist Ian Bailey – the first reporter on the scene – was found guilty in absentia by the French courts yet was never found guilty in Ireland, owing to a lack of reliable evidence. In the true crime docuseries, MURDER AT THE COTTAGE: THE SEARCH FOR JUSTICE FOR SOPHIE, Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker Jim Sheridan takes viewers on a journey of the unsolved case that has haunted West Cork for almost 25 years. Piecing together original evidence, never-before-seen footage and interviews with those closest to the case, Sheridan tries to make sense of what happened that night. Having successfully fought repeated extradition requests from the French authorities, Bailey still resides in West Cork and maintains his innocence to this day. Six-time Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker Jim Sheridan (My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father, The Boxer) joins us for a conversation on the haunting specter Sophie Toscan du Plantier's savage murder had in motivating him to make this docuseries, the complicated “suspect” that Ian Bailey became over the last two and a half years, the international political and judicial hand grenade that the case presented for France and Ireland, and the role that the local Irish police had in bolloxing the entire investigation into the victim's unsolved death. Watch Murder at the Cottage at: topic.com

Imprint Companion is the only podcast on the Australian Internet about "DVD Culture."Hang onto your slipcases because Alexei Toliopoulos (Finding Drago, Total Reboot) and Blake Howard (One Heat Minute) team up to unbox, unpack and unveil upcoming releases from Australia's brand new boutique Blu-Ray label Imprint Films. The second episode for the July Batch features in-depth reviews of Directed By Jim Sheridan: Four Irish Films (1989 – 1997) (Imprint Collection #138 – 141).Blake Howard - Twitter & One Heat Minute Website Alexei Toliopoulos - Twitter & Total RebootVisit imprintfilms.com.au Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/one-heat-minute-productions/exclusive-contentAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Imprint Companion is the only podcast on the Australian Internet about "DVD Culture."Hang onto your slipcases because Alexei Toliopoulos (Finding Drago, Total Reboot) and Blake Howard (One Heat Minute) team up to unbox, unpack and unveil upcoming releases from Australia's brand new boutique Blu-Ray label Imprint Films. The second episode for the July Batch features in-depth reviews of Directed By Jim Sheridan: Four Irish Films (1989 – 1997) (Imprint Collection #138 – 141).Blake Howard - Twitter & One Heat Minute Website Alexei Toliopoulos - Twitter & Total RebootVisit imprintfilms.com.au Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/imprint-companion/donations

David shares his love of Daniel Day Lewis by discussing Jim Sheridan's 1993 back pocket gem IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER with Devon 

This episode of The Passage to Profit Show features film producer, Michael Cerenize from The Stratagem Group, Rob Imbeault from Adapt Agritech and Somaya Oueslati and Hilda Bergman from Dripp & Dropp. Michael Cerenzie is the founder of The Stratagem Group, a collective of creative companies providing forward-thinking solutions in studio infrastructure, production service, content development, financing, and workforce development across the global media landscape. Stratagem’s portfolio of companies forms an integrated ecosystem that strategically drives, curates, and services film, television and digital streaming projects through every phase of the production pipeline. Through their proprietary assets and top-tier studio facilities, innovative production logistic services, and dedicated academic labor training, Stratagem meets global demand for content and talent. Michael has also developed, produced and financed dozens of films, both independently and in partnership with most major Hollywood studios, and collaborated with iconic filmmakers and an extensive list of Academy Award-winning and nominated actors. With over 20 years of experience in producing for theatre, films and television, he has collaborated with some of the most talented filmmakers in the business including Jim Sheridan, Robert Altman and Sidney Lumet. He has worked with an extensive list of Academy Award winning and nominated actors that include Philip Seymour Hoffman, James Franco, Matt Dillon, Albert Finney, Michael Shanon, Marisa Tomei, Amy Ryan, James Caan, Ethan Hawk, Bob Hoskins, Stellan Skarsgard, Natascha McHelhone and Gerard Depardieu. Read more at: https://stratagemgroup.ca/ Our Entrepreneur Presenters for July 10, 2022: Rob Imbeault is the Co-Founder of Adapt Agtech, which is building the largest mushroom-focused vertical farming network in the world. Adapt Agtech, provides a turn-key opportunity for container farming of edible and gourmet mushrooms. Adapt opens the door for new entrants to the farming industry and creates an opportunity for entrepreneurs while advancing access to a sustainable food supply. Mushrooms don’t need light! Solar-powered off-grid sustainable container farms produce food in locations and environments previously unavailable. Vertical and containerized farming has the opportunity to disrupt the status quo in food production. The pandemic may have had several economic repercussions globally owing to the disruption in supply chain and reduced availability of raw materials, but the farming market thrived during the crisis. Read more at: https://adapt.ag/ Somaya Oueslati and Hilda Bergman are the founders of Dripp & Dropp, offering protective covers around a patented design, enabling parents to always bring compact covers for strollers and car seats. Their unique fleece cover for car seats and strollers protects children from snow, heavy winds, as well as germs and viruses. A transparent window also gives easy access for the caregiver to keep an eye on the child. It comes in a small convenient pouch easy to hang on a stroller bar or small enough to fit in your everyday bag. Read more at: https://www.drippanddropp.com/ Visit

This episode of The Passage to Profit Show features film producer, Michael Cerenize from The Stratagem Group, Rob Imbeault from Adapt Agritech and Somaya Oueslati and Hilda Bergman from Dripp & Dropp. Michael Cerenzie is the founder of The Stratagem Group, a collective of creative companies providing forward-thinking solutions in studio infrastructure, production service, content development, financing, and workforce development across the global media landscape. Stratagem’s portfolio of companies forms an integrated ecosystem that strategically drives, curates, and services film, television and digital streaming projects through every phase of the production pipeline. Through their proprietary assets and top-tier studio facilities, innovative production logistic services, and dedicated academic labor training, Stratagem meets global demand for content and talent. Michael has also developed, produced and financed dozens of films, both independently and in partnership with most major Hollywood studios, and collaborated with iconic filmmakers and an extensive list of Academy Award-winning and nominated actors. With over 20 years of experience in producing for theatre, films and television, he has collaborated with some of the most talented filmmakers in the business including Jim Sheridan, Robert Altman and Sidney Lumet. He has worked with an extensive list of Academy Award winning and nominated actors that include Philip Seymour Hoffman, James Franco, Matt Dillon, Albert Finney, Michael Shanon, Marisa Tomei, Amy Ryan, James Caan, Ethan Hawk, Bob Hoskins, Stellan Skarsgard, Natascha McHelhone and Gerard Depardieu. Read more at: https://stratagemgroup.ca/ Our Entrepreneur Presenters for July 10, 2022: Rob Imbeault is the Co-Founder of Adapt Agtech, which is building the largest mushroom-focused vertical farming network in the world. Adapt Agtech, provides a turn-key opportunity for container farming of edible and gourmet mushrooms. Adapt opens the door for new entrants to the farming industry and creates an opportunity for entrepreneurs while advancing access to a sustainable food supply. Mushrooms don’t need light! Solar-powered off-grid sustainable container farms produce food in locations and environments previously unavailable. Vertical and containerized farming has the opportunity to disrupt the status quo in food production. The pandemic may have had several economic repercussions globally owing to the disruption in supply chain and reduced availability of raw materials, but the farming market thrived during the crisis. Read more at: https://adapt.ag/ Somaya Oueslati and Hilda Bergman are the founders of Dripp & Dropp, offering protective covers around a patented design, enabling parents to always bring compact covers for strollers and car seats. Their unique fleece cover for car seats and strollers protects children from snow, heavy winds, as well as germs and viruses. A transparent window also gives easy access for the caregiver to keep an eye on the child. It comes in a small convenient pouch easy to hang on a stroller bar or small enough to fit in your everyday bag. Read more at: https://www.drippanddropp.com/ Visit

We return to our Daniel Day-Lewis Acteurist Oeuvre-view with 1996's The Crucible (directed by Nicholas Hytner with a screenplay by Arthur Miller, based on his 1953 play) and 1997's The Boxer, reuniting Day-Lewis with writer-director Jim Sheridan and writer Terry George from In the Name of the Father and returning to the subject of Northern Ireland and the Troubles. We discuss the ways in which The Crucible serves as a liberal allegory for McCarthyism and its depiction of the jouissance of hysteria and accusation, and then turn to The Boxer's examination of an impossible personal/political situation, which leads us to consider Day-Lewis's rare but memorable turns as a romantic hero. Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:    THE CRUCIBLE (1996) [dir. Nicholas Hytner] 0h 43m 01s:    THE BOXER (1997) [dir. Jim Sheridan] +++ * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise's latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating. * Check out Dave's new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

In this Daniel Day-Lewis Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode we look at two movies from 1993: Jim Sheridan's In the Name of the Father, about mid-70s English-Irish relations, anti-terrorist hysteria, and father-son relationships; and The Age of Innocence, Martin Scorsese's adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel about social mores in New York at the end of the 19th century. We discuss Scorsese's layered examination of romantic love and gender roles, and why Wharton's novel is ideal Scorsese source material; as well as Sheridan's layered examination of what it takes to challenge a corrupt system. If you're looking for layers and examinations, you can stop looking right now. Day-Lewis brings an array of relevant qualities to the roles, from clownishness, boyishness, and mania to contempt, frustration, and idealism.    Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:    IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER (1993) [dir. Jim Sheridan] 0h 42m 10s:    THE AGE OF INNOCENCE (1993) [dir. Martin Scorsese] +++ * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise's latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating. * Check out Dave's new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

Get Rich or Die Tryin' is a 2005 American hip-hop crime drama film starring rapper 50 Cent in his feature film acting debut. It was released on November 9, 2005, and was known as Locked and Loaded during production. Similar to the 2002 Eminem film 8 Mile, which it used as a template, it is based on 50 Cent's own life and was directed by Jim Sheridan. The name of the film is shared with 50 Cent's debut album of the same name. The film received negative reviews from critics, though 50 Cent's performance received praise.

En este episodio cubrimos los temas del alza de OPI durante la pandemia del Covid, del fenómeno creciente de niñas sicarias en México, un análisis del discurso empresarial de Paula Altavilla en Argentina y comentamos acerca de la película ¨En el nombre del padre¨ del director Jim Sheridan.

He once held a gun to Daniel Day Lewis' head, spent time ‘f”*king up' Richard Harris on the set of The Field, and he can't understand why everyone was so afraid of Harvey Weinstein. Jim Sheridan is not only one of the greatest film directors every to come out of Ireland (six-time Oscar-nominated), he also one of the most compelling characters Ive ever met. In his latest project, Murder at the Cottage, Jim sets out to try to make sense of what really happened in the case of Sophie Toscan du Plantier who was murdered at her holiday cottage in Schull, West Cork in 1996. Jim tells me about the personal tragedy and anger at the Irish justice system that drove him to make this show, and he also shares incredible stories of working with some of the world's best actors and producers. Comedy: Some well-known people get wind that a famous film director is on the episode and they leave some voicemails for him. Also, a sideways glance ai English Hooliganism, following the Euro 2021 final at Wembley. Enjoy!Mariomariorosenstock@gmail.comProduced by Patrick Haughey, AudioBrand | www.audiobrand.ie See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Today's episode is about good communicators, what makes them good and how we can use that information to improve our own performance. However, I'm not looking at politicians or performers, the people you usually expect to be great communicators; no, I'm looking at an economist, a professor of particle physicist and a clinical social worker. What do they do that we can copy? Simple! Referenced in this episode:https://play.acast.com/s/the-david-mcwilliams-podcasthttp://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/festivals/https://royalsociety.org/people/brian-cox-12855/https://www.ted.com/speakers/brene_brownhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pope%27s_Childrenhttps://www.janicefogarty.com/dont-waste-your-breath-get-your-best-message-acrossRecommended Reading:I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn't): Making the Journey from "What Will People Think?" to "I Am Enough" by Brene Brown (https://amzn.to/3nZgzwL)Gifts of Imperfection, The: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are by Brene Brown (https://amzn.to/3uKDrCs)The Generation Game by David McWilliams (https://amzn.to/3yJp578)The Pope's Children by David McWilliams - where we meet Breakfast Roll Man - (https://amzn.to/3hZxcpf)*Please note that these are my Amazon affiliate links and if you use one to purchase the products I recommend or anything else, your price won't change but I will receive a small commission. Thank you for your support.My Products:Don't Waste Your Breath guide on messaging (https://janicefogarty.podia.com/dont-waste-your-breath-get-your-best-message-across)How to be an Amazing Podcast Guest checklist (https://www.janicefogarty.com/how-to-be-an-amazing-podcast-guest)10 Places to get Publicity, Even with Zero Budget (https://www.janicefogarty.com/discover-10-places-to-get-free-publicity-even-though-you-have-zero-budget)Let's Connect!✔Join me on Pinterest

With four weeks left to meet his deadline, Taymur continues his trip around the globe in search of the next country that would be hospitable for ActNano. He's now heading to Japan, home of potential blockbuster customers, including Panasonic, Sony, and Toyota. Taymur brings ActNano's COO Jim Sheridan with him on his trip to Japan. Taymur and Jim have a week packed with meetings, but they must manage the challenging cultural formalities of doing business in Japan. Taymur captures his innermost thoughts in real-time by recording them in an audio diary. Hear his raw and unfiltered thoughts about what is happening – as it happens – for a real-time experience of what it is like to run a company. If you enjoy Follow The Leader, please subscribe and leave us a review. We would greatly appreciate it.