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20 years ago - October 20, 1995

Get Shorty
Author Elmore Leonard’s first two crime novels in the 1960s were made into movies, but for the next two decades, productions of his novels failed to make it to the big screen. Get Shorty was written in 1990 and tells the tale of loan shark Chili Palmer, who turns a Hollywood debt collection into a career in the movies. John Travolta stars as Palmer, along with Gene Hackman, Rene Russo, Delroy Lindo, Danny DeVito, Dennis Farina, and James Gandolfini as a stuntman/bodyguard named Bear. This was Travolta’s next film after receiving an Oscar nomination for Pulp Fiction, and he would go on to win the Golden Globe for his role in Get Shorty. For me, this is one of Dennis Farina’s two best movie roles (the other one being Snatch in 2000). The movie also succeeded both at poking fun at Hollywood and the moviemaking process but also being sincere in the appreciation of the great films Hollywood has produced over the decades. Critics and audiences gave positive reviews to this crime comedy. Get Shorty opened at #1, knocking Se7en out of the top spot for the first time in its five weeks in theaters, with $12.7 million on 1,612 screens. It went on to earn $72 million, putting it among the top 20 box office earners released that year. This year’s success enabled Travolta to continue landing big movies with Broken Arrow and Face/Off. He returned as Palmer in the sequel Be Cool in 2005, which was was not as successful or well received as its predecessor.

Now and Then
This ensemble comedy tells the coming of age of four girl friends and the drama in their lives. Gaby Hoffmann, Christina Ricci, Ashleigh Aston Moore, and Thora Birch play the younger selves and Demi Moore, Rosie O’Donnell, Rita Wilson, and Melanie Griffith play the adult versions of the characters. Reviews were poor, but writer I. Marlene King has gone on to be more successful as the writer and producer of ABC Family Channel’s tv series Pretty Little Liars. Now and Then opened at #2 with $7.4 million on 1,572 screens - a decent $4,732 per-site average. The movie eventually earned $27 million in the U.S.

Never Talk to Strangers
Rebecca De Mornay and Antonio Banderas star in this psychological thriller from prominent British theatre director Peter Hall. Dennis Miller and Harry Dean Stanton costar. Reviews were poor and audience interest was moderate. Banderas’s action film Assassins was in its third week of release and still did better than this movie at the box office. Never Talk to Strangers opened at #5 with $2.9 million on 1,510 screens and eventually only grossed $6.8 million in the U.S.

Mallrats
Kevin Smith came out of nowhere in late 1994 with Clerks, the movie he produced for less than $30,000 and that went on to earn over $3 million. His followup comedy Mallrats came to theaters almost a year to the day after Clerks was released, and features characters in the same universe. Then-professional skateboarder Jason Lee stars, along with Ben Affleck, 90210 star Shannen Doherty, Claire Forlani, Joey Lauren Adams, Jeremy London, Ethan Suplee, and Michael Rooker. Jason Mewes appears again as Jay with Smith’s Silent Bob. Stan Lee shows up in a cameo role. Unfortunately critics were not impressed, and this $6 million production wasn’t profitable. Mallrats opened at #13 with $1.1 million on 852 screens and only managed to gross $2.1 million in the U.S. Smith, however, had a big success with his third film Chasing Amy in 1997, starring Affleck and Adams, and has announced that filming for the Mallrats sequel will begin in early 2016 with the original cast.


25 years ago - October 19, 1990

Quigley Down Under
Tom Selleck was still riding a wave of popularity by the late 1980s, having concluded his run with Magnum, P.I. in 1988 and costarring in the hit Three Men and a Baby in 1987. In Quigley he once again combines charm and adventure, starring as a late-1800s American sharpshooter brought to Australia under false pretenses by the movie’s villain, played by Alan Rickman. Rickman, of course, also hit it big with Die Hard in 1988. Laura San Giacomo had also appeared in the blockbuster hit Pretty Woman earlier in 1990. Audiences did show up for the trio, but opening on only 996 screens, Quigley wasn’t able to take down Steven Seagal’s Marked For Death or last week’s opener Memphis Belle. Quigley Down Under opened at #3 with $3.8 million (a better average than #1 and #2), and went on to earn $21 million in the U.S.

Night of the Living Dead
Horror director George A. Romero set the standard for the zombie genre with his highly profitable 1968 original Night of the Living Dead. He made two more zombie movies in the series before writing this remake, directed by makeup artist and long time Romero collaborator John A. Russo. This version stars Tony Todd, Patricia Tallman, and Tom Towles. Comparisons to the original were expected but unfortunately negative, as critics felt it was a cash-grab copycat. Audiences put the movie at #6 for the weekend with $2.8 million on 1,544 screens, a very weak average. The remake earned $5.8 million in the U.S., significantly less than the original’s $12 million from two decades earlier.





White Palace
This passionate drama based on the novel by Glenn Savan stars Susan Sarandon as a 40-something waitress and James Spader a yuppie widower who have a steamy love affair. The older-woman-as-seductress had already been done notably in The Graduate, but maybe that was more acceptable during the sexual revolution and less so in the late 1980s. Of course, Sarandon had recently starred in a more comedic version of the role in Bull Durham, and Spader received accolades for Sex, Lies, and Videotape, so this wasn’t exactly shocking material for either of them to star in. Critics were unimpressed. White Palace opened at #13 with $1.0 million on 99 screens this weekend and later expanded to a peak of just under 900 screens, earning a total of $17.4 million.

Reversal of Fortune
In 1982, Newport, Rhode Island socialite Claus von Bulow was convicted of attempting to murder his wife Sunny with an insulin overdose. In 1984 he was able to reverse the conviction with the help of Alan Dershowitz. This 1990 dramatization (based on Dershowitz’s 1985 book) tells the story of the evidence, starring Jeremy Irons as Claus, Ron Silver as Dershowitz, and Glenn Close as Sunny, who narrates the movie from her vegetative state in the hospital. The movie was released on only 7 screens this weekend, expanding to 661 screens on November 9th. Audience interest was strong, giving it a $25,283 opening weekend per-site average. Critics also praised the movie, and Irons later won Best Actor at the Oscars for his role. Director Barbet Schroeder and screenwriter Nicholas Kazan were also nominated. The movie eventually earned $15.4 million in the U.S.


30 years ago - October 18, 1985

Re-Animator
While Commando was still at #1 at the box office on fifteen hundred screens, the only notable new release this week was this horror movie released on only 129 screens. Re-Animator stars Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, and Barbara Crampton in a tale about a medical student who develops a serum that brings dead tissue back to life, with disastrous effects. Re-Animator was made on an indie budget and though it approaches its horror straightforwardly, the movie could still qualify as a horror-comedy. The amount of blood and gore was just so over the top that it won over critics as the movie that went the extra mile in its genre. Peaking on only 185 screens during its run, Re-Animator made $2.0 million in the U.S., exceeding its $900,000 budget.


Come back next week for another installment of Marquee History!

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