DON’T LOOK BACK is a straight-to-HBO movie, but I thought it might be worth watching because it’s directed by Geoff Murphy (THE QUIET EARTH) between his two great sequels, UNDER SIEGE 2: DARK TERRITORY and FORTRESS 2, and it’s written by Tom Epperson & Billy Bob Thornton & William Petrowitch. The latter doesn’t have any other credits, but the first two of course wrote ONE FALSE MOVE (and later THE GIFT, CAMOUFLAGE and JAYNE MANSFIELD’S CAR). Thornton (DEAD MAN) is also in the movie as one of the villains, and this was his last movie before making SLING BLADE and becoming famous and shit.
Jesse Parish (Eric Stoltz, THE FLY II) is an L.A. deadbeat and heroin enthusiast who carries around a guitar case and occasionally strums. One night while broke and in withdrawal he witnesses a drug deal going sour in a parked car. Skipper (Dwight Yoakam, RED ROCK WEST) shoots at a guy and then chases after him, leaving a flung-open briefcase spewing money unattended. Jesse sneaks over, scoops it up, runs off. I like how Skipper yells “Hey! What the fuck are you doing?” like he caught somebody keying his car or something. Jesse escapes using Donkey Kong tactics (rolling garbage cans down a hill at him), but Skipper hears somebody yell his name. (read the rest of this shit…)
ONE FALSE MOVE was the Summer of ’92’s little crime movie that could. Like POISON IVY’s Katt Shea, director Carl Franklin was an actor turned director of Roger Corman productions (NOWHERE TO RUN, EYE OF THE EAGLE 2: INSIDE THE ENEMY, FULL FATHOM FIVE). Here he moved into the film festival/arthouse side of the indie world, having come across a hot screenplay from the new writing team of Billy Bob Thornton (an actor who had been in HUNTER’S BLOOD, GOING OVERBOARD, CHOPPER CHICKS IN ZOMBIETOWN, an episode of Knots Landing, etc.) & Tom Epperson.
Thornton told Entertainment Weekly at the time that they’d been trying to get it made for five years. He said the studios “all pounced on it” but then decided they couldn’t make it because “it didn’t have a rocket launcher or an oversized baby.*” Instead it was produced independently through I.R.S. Media (hip record label and makers of Cynthia Rothrock’s RAGE AND HONOR I & II), completing it in May of ’91. It sat on a shelf for a year except for playing some film festivals, where it was well received enough that the producer convinced I.R.S. to release it in a few cities on May 8, 1992, ostensibly to get review quotes for the VHS cover. It did better than they expected, though, and eventually expanded to 51 markets. (read the rest of this shit…)
The year was 2000. For the the third year in a row, Sam Raimi released a “this is the more serious Sam Raimi” type of movie. Though it combines a thriller story with southern gothic atmosphere and some supernatural elements, it’s his only movie to date that seems in a similar mode to A SIMPLE PLAN. And the script is by that film’s co-star Billy Bob Thornton, along with his long time writing partner Tom Epperson. The two had broken through as writers with ONE FALSE MOVE (starring Bill Paxton), followed by the lesser known A FAMILY THING and DON’T LOOK BACK. On the DVD extras for THE GIFT, star Cate Blanchett says that Thornton told her about the script while they were filming PUSHING TIN together. If it was his idea to cast her in the lead, good idea, Billy Bob.
Blanchett (not long after her first Oscar nomination for ELIZABETH) plays Annie Wilson, a widow raising three boys in a small town in Georgia. The titular gift is her clairvoyance, inherited from her grandmother (Rosemary Harris, UNCLE VANYA), which she uses to make a living, seeing clients in her home. She’s very helpful and beloved by most of the town, though treated with suspicion and superstition by a few assholes. (read the rest of this shit…)
I wonder if they considered Leslie Nielsen for THE BOONDOCK SAINTS?
FROM THE OUTLAW VAULTS: I never get to take Martin Luther King Day off at my job, but I’m gonna simulate taking a day off here on outlawvern.com by posting an old review of a Leslie Nielsen movie you never heard of. This is a review I came across on my hard drive that I wrote two years ago shortly after Nielsen’s death, but never quite finished or posted. It’s not a movie I’m gonna go back and rewatch in order to complete the review, but I didn’t want to waste all that typing, either. So here it is.
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Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t find myself renting some 2001 Leslie Nielsen movie I never heard of. But the poor guy died recently and I happened to notice this one was written by Billy Bob Thornton (with his partner Tom Epperson and some guy who was in SPIDERBABY), so I wanted to see what the deal was.
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Recent commentary and jibber-jabber
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July 13, 1996
Jesse Parish (Eric Stoltz, THE FLY II) is an L.A. deadbeat and heroin enthusiast who carries around a guitar case and occasionally strums. One night while broke and in withdrawal he witnesses a drug deal going sour in a parked car. Skipper (Dwight Yoakam, RED ROCK WEST) shoots at a guy and then chases after him, leaving a flung-open briefcase spewing money unattended. Jesse sneaks over, scoops it up, runs off. I like how Skipper yells “Hey! What the fuck are you doing?” like he caught somebody keying his car or something. Jesse escapes using Donkey Kong tactics (rolling garbage cans down a hill at him), but Skipper hears somebody yell his name. (read the rest of this shit…)
ONE FALSE MOVE was the Summer of ’92’s little crime movie that could. Like 
Thornton told 
The year was 2000. For the the third year in a row, Sam Raimi released a “this is the more serious Sam Raimi” type of movie. Though it combines a thriller story with southern gothic atmosphere and some supernatural elements, it’s his only movie to date that seems in a similar mode to 
