Sat, Jan 4, 1992
Tonight's programme is the first full-length portrait of controversial director Sam Peckinpah who died in 1984. His films included The Getaway and Straw Dogs, but he was most closely identified with westerns like The Wild Bunch, Ride the High Country, Guns in the Afternoon, and Pat Garrett. Combining the intensely violent with the deeply elegiac, Peckinpah did more than anyone to dramatise the death of the west. Actors Kris Kristofferson, James Coburn, Ali MacGraw, Jason Robards and other collaborators reflect on working with this unique maverick.
Sat, Jan 11, 1992
Joe Eszterhas is the highest paid screenwriter in the world. He got$3 million for his latest film Basic Instinct. He is also the most controversial writer in Hollywood - currently accusing his ex-agent of threatening to murder him, attacking the cult of the director and offering to do a complete rewrite halfway through shooting to appease protesters about Basic Instinct's lesbian killer. In tonight's programme, the basic instincts of a bestselling screenwriter are discussed by Eszterhas, his collaborators (directors Costa-Gavras and Norman Jewison) and his critics. Plus, French director Bertrand Blier on his latest surreal comedy Merci la vie.
Sat, Feb 1, 1992
Skip Lievsay discusses "designing sound" for the films Cape Fear, Matewan and Barton Fink. There's a profile of the film studios at Babelsberg in Berlin where Metropolis, The Blue Angel and Baron Munchhausen were made, and an interview with Wim Wenders, whose Until the End of the World was partly shot there last year. Also, how three first time writer-directors, whose new films were rejected by the usual British backers, raised their money in unusual ways. David Cohen (The Pleasure Principle) got his budget from his NatWest bank manager. Mark Peploe (Afraid of the Dark), raised European co-production money, and Mark Harmon took his Blame It on the Bellboy script to Disney.
Sat, Feb 8, 1992
A profile of macho maverick writer/director James Toback on the eve of the release of Bugsy (1991), a gangster film starring Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, for which he wrote the screenplay. Plus a look at French cinema, which is taking a leaf out of Hollywood's book and releasing four films about their colonial past in Indo-China - including Jean-Jacques Annaud's The Lover (1992) and Indochine (1992), starring Catherine Deneuve.
Sat, Feb 15, 1992
Writer/director Lawrence Kasdan talks about his new film, Grand Canyon (1991). Plus, Serbian film-maker Dusan Makavejev on the cinema of civil war; and Charles Bennett, who wrote Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929) in 1929, still writing in his 90s.
Sat, Feb 22, 1992
Featuring a report on director Robert Altman. After The Long Goodbye, M*A*S*H and Nashville, he has made The Player - a satire about the movie business. Plus the New York homicide cop who advises Hollywood writers on getting murder right on screen; and maverick film-maker Errol Morris.