Tag: Tom Stoppard

385 – Billy Bathgate

We’re journeying back to the early 1990s this week to discuss the forgotten failure Billy Bathgate. Adapted from E.L. Doctorow’s Pulitzer finalist, the film cast Dustin Hoffman as real-life mobster Dutch Schultz opposite a Loren Dean as the fictionalized street kid who falls under his wing. With Bruce Willis in a supporting role at the peak of his fame and Oscar-winning director Robert Benton at the helm, the film ultimately bombed at the box office but earned Nicole Kidman her first Golden Globe nomination.

This episode, we talk about the much publicized clashing between Hoffman’s ego and his reunited director and we have a (gasp) triple Six Timers quiz for Hoffman, Dean, and Stanley Tucci. We also talk about the film’s mild approach to crime material, the 1991 Supporting Actress race, and Benton’s somewhat forgotten Oscar comeback Places in the Heart.

Topics also include Highlander 2: The Quickening, Hook‘s surprising Oscar nominations, and surprise Frances Conroy.

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341 – Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead (Festival Fever!)

estival Fever continues this week with a forgotten adaptation and the Venice Film Festival. Tom Stoppard earned his first Tony Award for Best Play for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, an absurdist spoof of Hamlet and various theatre tropes from the perspective of two of the Bard’s minor characters. A film version was long delayed before Stoppard took over the director’s chair himself for his debut. Casting young actors Gary Oldman and Tim Roth as the interchangeable twosome, the film earned the festival’s Golden Lion despite mild reviews.

This episode, we talk about the history of the Golden Lion and how we think this film joined those ranks. We also discuss Oldman and Roth’s breakthrough in Mike Leigh’s Meantime, their major successes immediately after Stoppard’s film, and Richard Dreyfuss’ broad performance as The Player.

Topics also include Chloe Zhao’s upcoming Hamnet, listeners not being able to tell us apart, and our favorite Golden Lion winners.

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002 – Tulip Fever

This week’s piece of failed awards bait is the 2017 costume drama/romantic “thriller” Tulip Fever, and by “2017,” we mean “filmed in 2014 and originally intended to be released at various times over the course of the next three years, only to finally limp into theaters after several waves of frantic test screenings, horrid buzz and derisive jokes.” From the director of The Other Boleyn Girl, people! How could it have all gone so very wrong?

Topics include: Dane DeHaan and baby pandas, Judi Dench running Goldman-Sachs-for-flowers, whether we’re living in a post-costume-drama world, whether this would have been Alicia Vikander’s Norbit, and how much would have been different if DreamWorks had been able to make this movie in 2004 as originally intended.

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