143 – The Muse (Focus Features – Part One)

We’re kicking off our May miniseries on Focus Features with the winner of our Listeners’ Choice poll, 1999′s The Muse. To kick things off, we’re looking at how Focus was birthed from the previous companies of USA Films, October Films, Gramercy Pictures and Good Machine. Written and directed by Albert Brooks, The Muse stars Sharon Stone as the titular eccentric tasked with reviving the career of a once-celebrated Hollywood screenwriter (also played by Brooks). The antics result in a slew of cameos, Andie MacDowell baking cookies, and multiple trips to an aquarium, and it all resulted in a Golden Globe nomination for Stone before Oscar looked elsewhere.

But that Globe nomination is now remembered as one of the many bumps in the history of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s practices, namely for the watches they received as part of Stone’s FYC campaign. This episode, we look at the lineup of films from the companies that merged into Focus Features, Brooks’ surprisingly limited Oscar history, and Stone’s ascension in the 1990s.

Topics also include our other Listeners’ Choice film options, the film’s datedness even for 1999, and Elton John’s abysmal original song for the film.

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