Full Cast And Crew

This week on the Full Cast And Crew Podcast we cruise the rain-slicked early 90's NYC streets and track down Paul Schrader's (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, American Gigolo) 1992 film 'Light Sleeper'. Fittingly, we're releasing this one at 2:43am on a Thursday morning, with our ears still ringing from the sound system at Area and our noses numbed with bad decisions. A Manhattan drug dealer with a wealthy clientele, John LeTour (Willem Dafoe) reevaluates both his trade and his life after discovering that his supplier, Ann (Susan Sarandon), is planning on quitting the business. When John runs into his old flame Marianne (Dana Delany), he sees reconnecting with her as a way to change for the better, but she is reluctant to rekindle the romance. Complicating John's life further is a series of drug-related murders that has the police pegging him as a suspect. Schrader called 'Light Sleeper' the last of his "Man In A Room' movies, along with Taxi Driver and American Gigolo; movies about isolated, alienated men occupying their single-room apartments and going slowly crazy with the dawning awareness of the dissatisfaction and ennui they are feeling.  Despite that wrist-slitting description, 'Light Sleeper' features some pitch-perfect performances from Willem Dafoe, Sarandon, David Clennon, Victor Garber, Delaney, Mary Beth Hurt, Jane Adams, a young Sam Rockwell, and David Spade as "theological cokehead".   'Light Sleeper' is like transporting yourself back to NYC in the late 80's and early 90's.  The restaurants, the coke, the bullshit clothes.  But all that is viewed, almost in real time, with an acerbic, probing eye that lets no one off the hook.  Featuring a soundtrack from The Call's Michael Been (1983's MTV-staple 'The Walls Came Down'), 'Light Sleeper' might not be a movie you're familiar with unless you came of age in the movie theaters of the 80's and 90's, but it's a perfect period piece and prescient about the downfalls and lies at the center of a life among "the beautiful people", with a sense of possible redemption at the end in the most unexpected of places. More about Light Sleeper here.  Paul Schrader's IMDB page here. Light Sleeper Full Cast & Crew page here Cinematographer Ed Lachman's IMDB page here Full Cast And Crew Podcast page here.

8 Aug 20191h 4min

Accompanied by their children (Dana Barron, Anthony Michael Hall), Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) and his wife, Ellen (Beverly D'Angelo), are driving from Illinois to a California amusement park. As Clark increasingly fixates on a beautiful woman driving a sports car, the Griswolds deal with car problems and the death of a family member...and a dog. They reach Los Angeles, but, when Clark worries that the trip is being derailed again, he acts impulsively to get his family to the park.   Vacation's IMDB Page:  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085995/ Chevy Chase Wiki:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevy_Chase Harold Ramis Wiki:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Ramis Subscribe to Full Cast And Crew Podcast here.

1 Aug 20191h 16min

The understated, minimalist 'Flash Gordon' showed admirable restraint in scenery, costuming, and acting.  JUST KIDDING, it's a completely over-the-top circus spectacle of indulgence and various aspects of a film crew working on movies with vastly different tones except they're all working on the same movie.  But FLASH means a lot to a lot of people, notably middle-aged white men who were 6 in 1980 and who embrace this movie tighter than they clutch their ticket to Autograph Alley at ComicCon to get a signed pic of  the guy who played '3rd Hawkman In Attack Scene' for $25.  So we try and plumb the depths, such as they are.

25 Jul 20191h 17min

Local Hero is a 1983 Scottish comedy-drama film written and directed by Bill Forsyth and starring Peter Riegert, Denis Lawson, Fulton Mackay and Burt Lancaster. Up-and-coming Houston oil executive "Mac" MacIntyre (Peter Riegert) gets more than he bargained for when a seemingly simple business trip to Scotland changes his outlook on life. Sent by his colorful boss (Burt Lancaster) to the small village of Ferness, Mac is looking to quickly buy out the townspeople so his company can build a new refinery. But after a taste of country life Mac begins to question whether he is on the right side of this transaction.

18 Jul 20191h 3min

We turned 40!  OK, 40 episodes but still, from the comfortable vantage point of wisdom and jaded experience, we look back on Bob Fosse's groundbreaking autobiographical takedown of the myths of himself, 1979's 'All That Jazz'.  Featuring the innovative "Fosse Time" editing, more iconic imagery (or "pretty pictures" as Fosse would call snapshots of his choreography) than you can shake a bowler hat at, and and unforgettable, iconic performance from Roy Scheider in yet ANOTHER role he lucked into (See our Jaws episode for the other).  ALSO: Rants n Raves, Headlines, and Latch Key TV for your listening pleasure.

11 Jul 20191h 12min

More cigarettes were consumed during the filming of Barbet Schroeder's 'Reversal Of Fortune' than during the filming of George Clooney's 'Goodnight And Good Luck'.  And that's saying something! Also: WOW that Felicity Huffman cameo hasn't aged well, has it?  Oh the irony.  Ron Silver acts the hell out of a pair of  eyeglasses, and Glenn Close is unreasonably good in a movie that's often as odd as its subject matter.  Ginger Prawns for everyone.  We still can't figure out who Bill Camp is in this movie; making Uta Hagen play the Maid role; and Fisher Stevens in the Ur-Fisher Stevens role, Julie Hagerty steps out of the Airplane! Cinematic Universe and MUCH MORE!

4 Jul 20191h 21min

Public Enemy's churning, propulsive 'Fight The Power" was like a Batman logo swirling in the air across America in 1989 as Spike Lee's 3rd feature 'Do The Right Thing' hit theaters to the kind of fearful white fright and tut tutting from "thinkers" and reviewers too hidebound in their own bubble to receive this transmission from a filmmaker perfectly formed to speak in his films in a way no mainstream writer and director had to date.  Hugely popular, controversial, conversation-starting 'Do The Right Thing' is a landmark American movie.  But it's also hilariously funny, remarkably even-handed and without conclusive answers in a way that still feels incredibly brave and realistic.  Pitched in a heightened color-scape and with indelible performances from a fantastic cast, 'Do The Right Thing' more than holds up today; it reminds us just how far we haven't come as a Nation in subsequent years.

27 Jun 20191h 28min

1987's 'Robocop' is a brilliantly dark and funny social satire about a far-off time when powerful corporations have undue influence over society and overly-militarized police forces terrorize innocent civilians.  GOOD THING THAT NEVER HAPPENED!  We dive into Paul Verhoeven before Joe Ezsterhas got his hooks in him and 'Showgirls' became synonymous with 'career-ending bomb', and not in a good way.

20 Jun 20191h 17min