John Waters mixed do-it-yourself moviemaking with don’t-try-this-at-home mayhem to produce the ultimate and most fiercely independent film. Made for $12,000, Pink Flamingos premiered at the Baltimore Film Festival 50 years ago. The cult masterwork replaced Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo as the midnight movie in residence at Elgin Theater in Manhattan and set high and low standards for no-budget motion picture filmmaking.
While the extremely low-budget Plan 9 from Outer Space is renowned as the worst film ever made, Pink Flamingos has a street rep as the raunchiest. Ed Wood’s sci-fi horror mashup cost $60,000 to make, which by 1956 standards is still five times the budget Waters spent. And this from an NYU film school reject who stole textbooks and sold them back to the college bookstore, and went to sleazy exploitation movies more often than going to class.
“I went to New York University, very briefly,” Waters is quoted on Dreamlandnews.
While the extremely low-budget Plan 9 from Outer Space is renowned as the worst film ever made, Pink Flamingos has a street rep as the raunchiest. Ed Wood’s sci-fi horror mashup cost $60,000 to make, which by 1956 standards is still five times the budget Waters spent. And this from an NYU film school reject who stole textbooks and sold them back to the college bookstore, and went to sleazy exploitation movies more often than going to class.
“I went to New York University, very briefly,” Waters is quoted on Dreamlandnews.
- 3/30/2022
- by David Crow
- Den of Geek
Stars: Divine, Tab Hunter, Edith Massey, David Samson, Mary Garlington, Ken King | Written and Directed by John Waters
After his prolific 1970s, enfant terrible John Waters directed only two films in the 1980s, at each end of the decade. They were also his two most mainstream and – relatively speaking – palatable works. One was 1988’s Hairspray, and the other was Polyester, made in 1981.
Waters’ muse Divine plays Francine Fishpaw, a middle-aged housewife who’s married to a wealthy porn cinema owner, Elmer (David Samson). They have two teenage kids: the uncontrollable and self-destructive Lu-lu (Mary Garlington), and Dexter (Ken King), whose frustrated foot fetish leads him to a stint in prison after a rampage as the “Baltimore Foot Stomper”.
Like most Waters flicks, there’s no real plot, just a melting pot of outrageous characters doing hideous things to each other. Francine is the glue that holds the tenable parts of the family together.
After his prolific 1970s, enfant terrible John Waters directed only two films in the 1980s, at each end of the decade. They were also his two most mainstream and – relatively speaking – palatable works. One was 1988’s Hairspray, and the other was Polyester, made in 1981.
Waters’ muse Divine plays Francine Fishpaw, a middle-aged housewife who’s married to a wealthy porn cinema owner, Elmer (David Samson). They have two teenage kids: the uncontrollable and self-destructive Lu-lu (Mary Garlington), and Dexter (Ken King), whose frustrated foot fetish leads him to a stint in prison after a rampage as the “Baltimore Foot Stomper”.
Like most Waters flicks, there’s no real plot, just a melting pot of outrageous characters doing hideous things to each other. Francine is the glue that holds the tenable parts of the family together.
- 10/10/2019
- by Rupert Harvey
- Nerdly
The Criterion Collection is going bowling. Michael Moore’s Oscar-winning documentary “Bowling for Columbine” will be released on DVD and Blu-ray by the Collection this June, ditto “Manila in the Claws of Light,” “El Sur,” “Female Trouble,” and a new edition of Ingmar Bergman’s “The Virgin Spring.”
16 years later, Moore’s take on America’s gun culture in general and the aftermath of the school shooting at Columbine in particular feels more relevant than ever, making this new release nothing if not timely. More information — and, as ever, cover art — below.
Manila in the Claws of Light
“Lino Brocka broke through to international acclaim with this candid portrait of 1970s Manila, the second film in the director’s turn to more serious-minded filmmaking after building a career on mainstream films he described as ‘soaps.’ A young fisherman from a provincial village arrives in the capital on a quest to track down his girlfriend,...
16 years later, Moore’s take on America’s gun culture in general and the aftermath of the school shooting at Columbine in particular feels more relevant than ever, making this new release nothing if not timely. More information — and, as ever, cover art — below.
Manila in the Claws of Light
“Lino Brocka broke through to international acclaim with this candid portrait of 1970s Manila, the second film in the director’s turn to more serious-minded filmmaking after building a career on mainstream films he described as ‘soaps.’ A young fisherman from a provincial village arrives in the capital on a quest to track down his girlfriend,...
- 3/15/2018
- by Michael Nordine
- Indiewire
The "perfect" nuclear family gets a blood-stained twist as only John Waters can provide in Serial Mom, and Scream Factory is releasing the cult 1994 film on a Collector's Edition Blu-ray that would meet even Beverly Sutphin's high standards. To celebrate the new home media release, we've been provided with three Blu-ray copies to give away to lucky Daily Dead readers.
————
Prize Details: (3) Winners will receive (1) Collector's Edition Blu-ray copy of Serial Mom.
How to Enter: We're giving Daily Dead readers multiple chances to enter and win:
1. Instagram: Following us on Instagram during the contest period will give you an automatic contest entry. Make sure to follow us at:
https://www.instagram.com/dailydead/
2. Email: For a chance to win via email, send an email to contest@dailydead.com with the subject “Serial Mom Contest”. Be sure to include your name and mailing address.
Entry Details: The contest will end at...
————
Prize Details: (3) Winners will receive (1) Collector's Edition Blu-ray copy of Serial Mom.
How to Enter: We're giving Daily Dead readers multiple chances to enter and win:
1. Instagram: Following us on Instagram during the contest period will give you an automatic contest entry. Make sure to follow us at:
https://www.instagram.com/dailydead/
2. Email: For a chance to win via email, send an email to contest@dailydead.com with the subject “Serial Mom Contest”. Be sure to include your name and mailing address.
Entry Details: The contest will end at...
- 5/6/2017
- by Derek Anderson
- DailyDead
On May 9th, Scream Factory is going to remind viewers why you don't dare cross Beverly Sutphin with their Collector's Edition Blu-ray release of John Waters' Serial Mom, and we have high-def clips and a trailer that tease what to expect from the new home media release.
Serial Mom Collector's Edition Blu-ray: "Every woman wants to be wanted… just not for Murder One!
Director John Waters (Pink Flamingos, Hairspray) brings his twisted cinematic vision to the seemingly mundane world of suburbia in Serial Mom, an outrageous dark comedy starring Kathleen Turner (Body Heat, Romancing The Stone).
Beverly (Turner) is the perfect happy homemaker. Along with her doting husband Eugene (Sam Waterston) and two children, Misty (Ricki Lake) and Chip (Matthew Lillard), she lives a life straight out of Good Housekeeping. But this nuclear family just might explode when Beverly's fascination with serial killers collides with her ever-so-proper code of...
Serial Mom Collector's Edition Blu-ray: "Every woman wants to be wanted… just not for Murder One!
Director John Waters (Pink Flamingos, Hairspray) brings his twisted cinematic vision to the seemingly mundane world of suburbia in Serial Mom, an outrageous dark comedy starring Kathleen Turner (Body Heat, Romancing The Stone).
Beverly (Turner) is the perfect happy homemaker. Along with her doting husband Eugene (Sam Waterston) and two children, Misty (Ricki Lake) and Chip (Matthew Lillard), she lives a life straight out of Good Housekeeping. But this nuclear family just might explode when Beverly's fascination with serial killers collides with her ever-so-proper code of...
- 5/6/2017
- by Derek Anderson
- DailyDead
From the opening of Multiple Maniacs when Mr. David introduces us to Lady Divine’s Cavalcade of Perversion are we being introduced to John Waters’ own perversion? And how long do we want to stay? Divine’s entrance is as an engorged Elizabeth Taylor bathed in shimmering white light furthering the early mystique of Divine and her Cavacade. From robbing to rosaries, movie posters to murder John Waters is “performing acts” as we have truly entered Waters’ World.
“Produced, directed, written, filmed, and edited by John Waters” – auteur: check. Multiple Maniacs is not a high-budget film and was certainly never screened before the hours of midnight in the 1970’s. Waters made the film for $5000 borrowed from his father also borrowing the land surrounding their house to set the film. During the making of his first film, Mondo Trasho, he was arrested by the police so the early scenes of Multiple Maniacs...
“Produced, directed, written, filmed, and edited by John Waters” – auteur: check. Multiple Maniacs is not a high-budget film and was certainly never screened before the hours of midnight in the 1970’s. Waters made the film for $5000 borrowed from his father also borrowing the land surrounding their house to set the film. During the making of his first film, Mondo Trasho, he was arrested by the police so the early scenes of Multiple Maniacs...
- 3/22/2017
- by Mark Hurne
- CriterionCast
Multiple Maniacs
Blu-ray
1970 / Black and White /96 Min. / 1:66 / Street Date March 21, 2017
Starring: Divine, David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce and Mink Stole.
Cinematography: John Waters
Film Editor: John Waters
Written by John Waters
Produced by John Waters
Directed by John Waters
Andy Warhol was nothing if not a multi-media maven. Along with his ubiquitous silkscreens and sculpture, he embraced movie-making beginning as early as 1963 with such literal-minded efforts as Haircut (a haircut) and Taylor Mead’s Ass (one hour of exactly what you think) and pretty much closed shop with 1968’s Lonesome Cowboys, a 109 minute western satire that, of all his films, came closest to approximating a traditional tinseltown production.
Essentially Warhol was parodying the Hollywood studio system, rounding up his acolytes and hangers-on, from supermodels to pushers, and casting them as regular performers in a series of deadpan documentaries. Meanwhile in the wilds of Baltimore, Warhol fan John Waters...
Blu-ray
1970 / Black and White /96 Min. / 1:66 / Street Date March 21, 2017
Starring: Divine, David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce and Mink Stole.
Cinematography: John Waters
Film Editor: John Waters
Written by John Waters
Produced by John Waters
Directed by John Waters
Andy Warhol was nothing if not a multi-media maven. Along with his ubiquitous silkscreens and sculpture, he embraced movie-making beginning as early as 1963 with such literal-minded efforts as Haircut (a haircut) and Taylor Mead’s Ass (one hour of exactly what you think) and pretty much closed shop with 1968’s Lonesome Cowboys, a 109 minute western satire that, of all his films, came closest to approximating a traditional tinseltown production.
Essentially Warhol was parodying the Hollywood studio system, rounding up his acolytes and hangers-on, from supermodels to pushers, and casting them as regular performers in a series of deadpan documentaries. Meanwhile in the wilds of Baltimore, Warhol fan John Waters...
- 3/20/2017
- by Charlie Largent
- Trailers from Hell
Last month, The Criterion Collection finally announced their forthcoming release of Richard Linklater‘s The Before Trilogy and now with the announcement of their March titles, a few more highly-requested titles will be coming to the collection. Perhaps the most sought-after, Michelangelo Antonioni‘s English-language debut and counterculture landmark Blow-Up, will be arriving on the line-up.
Also coming is the previously teased 45 Years from Andrew Haigh, one of the finest films of last year (featuring an incredible, outside-the-box cover), as well as Hal Ashby‘s Being There, John Waters‘ Multiple Maniacs, which recently got a restored theatrical run, and Felipe Cazals‘ Canoa: A Shameful Memory.
Notable special features include a new documentaries on Blow-Up, Being There, and 45 Years, audio commentaries from Haigh and Waters, as well as a Guillermo del Toro introduction for Canoa, and a talk between the director and Alfonso Cuarón. Check out the full details for each release after the artwork.
Also coming is the previously teased 45 Years from Andrew Haigh, one of the finest films of last year (featuring an incredible, outside-the-box cover), as well as Hal Ashby‘s Being There, John Waters‘ Multiple Maniacs, which recently got a restored theatrical run, and Felipe Cazals‘ Canoa: A Shameful Memory.
Notable special features include a new documentaries on Blow-Up, Being There, and 45 Years, audio commentaries from Haigh and Waters, as well as a Guillermo del Toro introduction for Canoa, and a talk between the director and Alfonso Cuarón. Check out the full details for each release after the artwork.
- 12/15/2016
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
"It's even weirder now than it ever was," John Waters says, reflecting on his newly restored, resplendently profane Multiple Maniacs. "When I was watching it again recently, I was thinking, 'No wonder my parents were uptight.' But I'm proud of it."
The Pope of Trash's 1970 feature stars his greatest muse, the raunchy drag queen Divine, as the ringleader of a homicidal sideshow called the Cavalcade of Perversion that sets up camp in — of course — Baltimore. Vulgarity ensues. The poster for the theatrical re-release, restored from film the director had kept in his closet,...
The Pope of Trash's 1970 feature stars his greatest muse, the raunchy drag queen Divine, as the ringleader of a homicidal sideshow called the Cavalcade of Perversion that sets up camp in — of course — Baltimore. Vulgarity ensues. The poster for the theatrical re-release, restored from film the director had kept in his closet,...
- 8/5/2016
- Rollingstone.com
Screened at the Toronto International Film Festival
The Tony-winning success of Hairspray might have made him a mainstream darling, but John Waters has returned to trashy form with what is unquestionably his most outrageous film since those heady Pink Flamingos days.
A giddy sex farce starring Tracey Ullman as a repressed Baltimore resident (where else?) who turns into a raging sex maniac after receiving a freak head injury, this overheated ode to depravity and general bad taste kicks some silly smut in the face of today's conservative-leaning, post-wardrobe-malfunction society.
Granted, Waters has problems keeping it up -- the content really struggles to sustain a feature-length format -- but the picture, wearing its NC-17 rating like a badge of dishonor, should nevertheless emerge as his best boxoffice bet since 1994's Serial Mom.
Ullman is Sylvia Stickles, a generally unhappy woman with a horny husband (Chris Isaak) and a go-go dancer daughter with ridiculously enlarged breasts (an unrecognizable Selma Blair) and a stage name of Ursula Udders, whose bouts of exhibitionism have landed her in home detention.
One day en route to her family-operated Pinewood Park and Pay convenience store, Sylvia sustains a smack in the head that turns her into a card-carrying sex addict around the same time she's spotted by writhing tow-truck driver Ray-Ray Perkins (Johnny Knoxville -- a Watersian name if there ever was one), who believes her to be the long-awaited 12th apostle of erotic awakening.
While Ray-Ray, whose battle cry is "Let's go sexin'!" inducts her into his inner circle of fetishists, Sylvia's mother, Big Ethel (Suzanne Shepherd), along with libido-hating neighbor Marge the Neuter (Mink Stole), launch a campaign to take back their neighborhood from all the disgusting deviants.
Taking his stylistic cue from cautionary movies like Reefer Madness and old high school health films, Waters also throws vintage sexploitation flicks and musty nudist camp clips into the naughty mix, while his longtime production designer Vincent Peranio heightens the kitschy landscape with suggestive-looking foliage.
Waters also spent a lot of time coming up with wacky euphemisms like "yodeling in the canyon," while Ullman's Stickles refers to a part of her anatomy as her "axis of evil."
There also seems to be nothing too taboo for the rest of his willing cast, which also includes Patricia Hearst (in her fifth Waters film) and David Hasselhoff in a sequence so tasteless the late Divine would have smiled approvingly.
Fine Line
Fine Line Features presents This Is That Killer Films/John Wells production
In association with City Light Pictures
A John Waters film
Credits:
Director-screenwriter: John Waters
Producers: Christine Vachon, Ted Hope
Executive Producers: Mark Ordesky, Mark Kaufman, Merideth Finn, John Wells, The Fisher Brothers
Director of photography: Steve Gainer
Production designer: Vincent Peranio
Editor: Jeffrey Wolf
Costume designer: Van Smith
Music: George S. Clinton
Music supervisor: Tracy McKnight
Cast:
Sylvia Stickles: Tracey Ullman
Ray-Ray Perkins: Johnny Knoxville
Caprice Stickles: Selma Blair
Vaughn Stickles: Chris Isaak
Big Ethel: Suzanne Shepherd
Marge the Neuter: Mink Stole
Paige: Patricia Hearst
Dora: Jackie Hoffman
Himself: David Hasselhoff
Running time -- 89 minutes
MPAA Rating: NC-17...
The Tony-winning success of Hairspray might have made him a mainstream darling, but John Waters has returned to trashy form with what is unquestionably his most outrageous film since those heady Pink Flamingos days.
A giddy sex farce starring Tracey Ullman as a repressed Baltimore resident (where else?) who turns into a raging sex maniac after receiving a freak head injury, this overheated ode to depravity and general bad taste kicks some silly smut in the face of today's conservative-leaning, post-wardrobe-malfunction society.
Granted, Waters has problems keeping it up -- the content really struggles to sustain a feature-length format -- but the picture, wearing its NC-17 rating like a badge of dishonor, should nevertheless emerge as his best boxoffice bet since 1994's Serial Mom.
Ullman is Sylvia Stickles, a generally unhappy woman with a horny husband (Chris Isaak) and a go-go dancer daughter with ridiculously enlarged breasts (an unrecognizable Selma Blair) and a stage name of Ursula Udders, whose bouts of exhibitionism have landed her in home detention.
One day en route to her family-operated Pinewood Park and Pay convenience store, Sylvia sustains a smack in the head that turns her into a card-carrying sex addict around the same time she's spotted by writhing tow-truck driver Ray-Ray Perkins (Johnny Knoxville -- a Watersian name if there ever was one), who believes her to be the long-awaited 12th apostle of erotic awakening.
While Ray-Ray, whose battle cry is "Let's go sexin'!" inducts her into his inner circle of fetishists, Sylvia's mother, Big Ethel (Suzanne Shepherd), along with libido-hating neighbor Marge the Neuter (Mink Stole), launch a campaign to take back their neighborhood from all the disgusting deviants.
Taking his stylistic cue from cautionary movies like Reefer Madness and old high school health films, Waters also throws vintage sexploitation flicks and musty nudist camp clips into the naughty mix, while his longtime production designer Vincent Peranio heightens the kitschy landscape with suggestive-looking foliage.
Waters also spent a lot of time coming up with wacky euphemisms like "yodeling in the canyon," while Ullman's Stickles refers to a part of her anatomy as her "axis of evil."
There also seems to be nothing too taboo for the rest of his willing cast, which also includes Patricia Hearst (in her fifth Waters film) and David Hasselhoff in a sequence so tasteless the late Divine would have smiled approvingly.
Fine Line
Fine Line Features presents This Is That Killer Films/John Wells production
In association with City Light Pictures
A John Waters film
Credits:
Director-screenwriter: John Waters
Producers: Christine Vachon, Ted Hope
Executive Producers: Mark Ordesky, Mark Kaufman, Merideth Finn, John Wells, The Fisher Brothers
Director of photography: Steve Gainer
Production designer: Vincent Peranio
Editor: Jeffrey Wolf
Costume designer: Van Smith
Music: George S. Clinton
Music supervisor: Tracy McKnight
Cast:
Sylvia Stickles: Tracey Ullman
Ray-Ray Perkins: Johnny Knoxville
Caprice Stickles: Selma Blair
Vaughn Stickles: Chris Isaak
Big Ethel: Suzanne Shepherd
Marge the Neuter: Mink Stole
Paige: Patricia Hearst
Dora: Jackie Hoffman
Himself: David Hasselhoff
Running time -- 89 minutes
MPAA Rating: NC-17...
- 9/13/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
There's something about his hometown of Baltimore that brings out the best in Barry Levinson's writing. He draws his Baltimore characters in fuller dimension and completely loses a strident tone that occasionally creeps into other scripts.
"Liberty Heights" is no exception. While at times almost too genteel for the serious social issues he tackles, the film is nevertheless an engrossing, heartfelt account of growing up in America at the midcentury mark.
Theatrical audiences most likely to appreciate this memoir are big-city adults, though word of mouth may well expand the film's market.
This is the fourth time Levinson has mined the obviously rich mother lode of his youth to create a memoir about his family and experiences growing up in Baltimore. The other three are the boisterous and comic "Diner" (1982), the quirky though uneven comedy "Tin Men" (1987) and his sublime account of the impact of the immigrant adventure on a large family in "Avalon" (1990).
This story begins in fall 1954 and spends much of its time in Liberty Heights in northwest Baltimore, an almost exclusively Jewish area in those days. It is the year of school desegregation and teenagers' discovery of the automobile. With easier access to cars, young people crisscross the town, driving through the invisible lines separating Jews, blacks, Irish and Italians and playing havoc with class and religious divides.
Levinson tells three intertwining story lines involving the Kurtzman family. The youngest son Ben (Ben Foster), along with pals Sheldon (Evan Neuman) and Murray (Gerry Rosenthal), is discovering that the world is not all Jewish.
The school year marks Ben's first encounter with a black student. Sylvia (Rebekah Johnson), the pretty daughter of a doctor, fascinates him. And as he gets to know her, Ben becomes equally fascinated with black music, comics and other aspects of the culture.
His older brother Van (Adrien Brody) and his pals Yussel (David Krumholtz) and Alan (Kevin Sussman) drive into a gentile neighborhood to attend a Halloween party. There, Van becomes infatuated with Dubbie (Carolyn Murphy), a stunning, patrician blonde with Grace Kelly-like looks. Van also, unwittingly, becomes friends with her boyfriend, the hard-living, hard-drinking Trey (Justin Chambers), and finds himself embroiled in lives much more complicated than they appear.
The third and least successful story involves the boys' father, Nate (Joe Mantegna). A rundown burlesque house is a front for his real business -- the numbers racket. Only that business isn't bringing in enough revenue either. So Nate adds a bonus number to the system, which backfires when Little Melvin (Orlando Jones), a small-time black drug dealer, hits the bonus bet big. Nate can't pay him off so he tries to con him out of part of the payoff.
Levinson clearly is using these story lines to probe shifts in American mores during an era. Oddly though, he views these changes through rose-colored glasses. Or perhaps in Baltimore, the forces in opposition to such changes really were this benign.
Anti-Semitism appears in only its mildest form. The sole racial bigotry comes from Sylvia's father, who forbids her to see her white boyfriend outside of school. Even the Jewish gangster is a nice guy who refuses to resort to violence when Little Melvin kidnaps his son.
But the quality of Levinson's writing pulls us into each story. There is a richness to the details and his observations about these characters' lives that can't help but intrigue the viewer. And as a director, Levinson has cast his film with pure genius.
Foster and Brody give assured, relaxed performances as young men confronted with a changing world. Johnson lends dignity and self-reliance to Sylvia, making us believe she could defy her father. Murphy shows us a young woman who has learned to mask her confusion and emotional instability with an aloof manner. And Chambers allow us a peek at the torment under his wild-living rich-boy facade.
The adult characters, though, are problematic. While not quite cliches, they are not exactly fresh either. But Mantegna and Bebe Neuwirth, who plays his wife, do their utmost to humanize these familiar types
Cinematographer Chris Doyle shoots the nostalgia-tinged drama in lovely autumnal colors, though he perhaps lingers too lovingly on the period details in Vincent Peranio's production design.
There is a spiffiness to this design, which is justified by this being a film of memory. "Liberty Heights", narrated by Ben's character, is the story of a man looking back at a period in his life where everything is remembered as being brighter, cleaner and less troubling than it probably was.
LIBERTY HEIGHTS
Warner Bros.
Baltimore/Spring Creek Pictures
Producers: Barry Levinson, Paula Weinstein
Screenwriter-director: Barry Levinson
Executive producer: Patrick McCormick
Director of photography: Chris Doyle
Production designer: Vincent Peranio
Music: Andrea Morricone
Costume designer: Gloria Gresham
Editor: Stu Linder
Color/stereo
Cast:
Van: Adrien Brody
Ben: Ben Foster
Little Melvin: Orlando Jones
Ada: Bebe Neuwirth
Nate: Joe Mantegna
Sylvia: Rebekah Johnson
Trey: Justin Chambers
Dubbie: Carolyn Murphy
Running time -- 127 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
"Liberty Heights" is no exception. While at times almost too genteel for the serious social issues he tackles, the film is nevertheless an engrossing, heartfelt account of growing up in America at the midcentury mark.
Theatrical audiences most likely to appreciate this memoir are big-city adults, though word of mouth may well expand the film's market.
This is the fourth time Levinson has mined the obviously rich mother lode of his youth to create a memoir about his family and experiences growing up in Baltimore. The other three are the boisterous and comic "Diner" (1982), the quirky though uneven comedy "Tin Men" (1987) and his sublime account of the impact of the immigrant adventure on a large family in "Avalon" (1990).
This story begins in fall 1954 and spends much of its time in Liberty Heights in northwest Baltimore, an almost exclusively Jewish area in those days. It is the year of school desegregation and teenagers' discovery of the automobile. With easier access to cars, young people crisscross the town, driving through the invisible lines separating Jews, blacks, Irish and Italians and playing havoc with class and religious divides.
Levinson tells three intertwining story lines involving the Kurtzman family. The youngest son Ben (Ben Foster), along with pals Sheldon (Evan Neuman) and Murray (Gerry Rosenthal), is discovering that the world is not all Jewish.
The school year marks Ben's first encounter with a black student. Sylvia (Rebekah Johnson), the pretty daughter of a doctor, fascinates him. And as he gets to know her, Ben becomes equally fascinated with black music, comics and other aspects of the culture.
His older brother Van (Adrien Brody) and his pals Yussel (David Krumholtz) and Alan (Kevin Sussman) drive into a gentile neighborhood to attend a Halloween party. There, Van becomes infatuated with Dubbie (Carolyn Murphy), a stunning, patrician blonde with Grace Kelly-like looks. Van also, unwittingly, becomes friends with her boyfriend, the hard-living, hard-drinking Trey (Justin Chambers), and finds himself embroiled in lives much more complicated than they appear.
The third and least successful story involves the boys' father, Nate (Joe Mantegna). A rundown burlesque house is a front for his real business -- the numbers racket. Only that business isn't bringing in enough revenue either. So Nate adds a bonus number to the system, which backfires when Little Melvin (Orlando Jones), a small-time black drug dealer, hits the bonus bet big. Nate can't pay him off so he tries to con him out of part of the payoff.
Levinson clearly is using these story lines to probe shifts in American mores during an era. Oddly though, he views these changes through rose-colored glasses. Or perhaps in Baltimore, the forces in opposition to such changes really were this benign.
Anti-Semitism appears in only its mildest form. The sole racial bigotry comes from Sylvia's father, who forbids her to see her white boyfriend outside of school. Even the Jewish gangster is a nice guy who refuses to resort to violence when Little Melvin kidnaps his son.
But the quality of Levinson's writing pulls us into each story. There is a richness to the details and his observations about these characters' lives that can't help but intrigue the viewer. And as a director, Levinson has cast his film with pure genius.
Foster and Brody give assured, relaxed performances as young men confronted with a changing world. Johnson lends dignity and self-reliance to Sylvia, making us believe she could defy her father. Murphy shows us a young woman who has learned to mask her confusion and emotional instability with an aloof manner. And Chambers allow us a peek at the torment under his wild-living rich-boy facade.
The adult characters, though, are problematic. While not quite cliches, they are not exactly fresh either. But Mantegna and Bebe Neuwirth, who plays his wife, do their utmost to humanize these familiar types
Cinematographer Chris Doyle shoots the nostalgia-tinged drama in lovely autumnal colors, though he perhaps lingers too lovingly on the period details in Vincent Peranio's production design.
There is a spiffiness to this design, which is justified by this being a film of memory. "Liberty Heights", narrated by Ben's character, is the story of a man looking back at a period in his life where everything is remembered as being brighter, cleaner and less troubling than it probably was.
LIBERTY HEIGHTS
Warner Bros.
Baltimore/Spring Creek Pictures
Producers: Barry Levinson, Paula Weinstein
Screenwriter-director: Barry Levinson
Executive producer: Patrick McCormick
Director of photography: Chris Doyle
Production designer: Vincent Peranio
Music: Andrea Morricone
Costume designer: Gloria Gresham
Editor: Stu Linder
Color/stereo
Cast:
Van: Adrien Brody
Ben: Ben Foster
Little Melvin: Orlando Jones
Ada: Bebe Neuwirth
Nate: Joe Mantegna
Sylvia: Rebekah Johnson
Trey: Justin Chambers
Dubbie: Carolyn Murphy
Running time -- 127 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 11/10/1999
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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