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Saint Jack (film)

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Saint Jack
Directed byPeter Bogdanovich
Screenplay byPeter Bogdanovich
Howard Sackler
Paul Theroux
Based onSaint Jack
by Paul Theroux
Produced byRoger Corman
StarringBen Gazzara
Denholm Elliott
George Lazenby
CinematographyRobby Müller
Edited byWilliam C. Carruth
Distributed byNew World Pictures
Release date
  • April 27, 1979 (1979-04-27)
Running time
112 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$2 million[1]

Saint Jack is a 1979 crime comedy film directed by Peter Bogdanovich based on the 1973 novel Saint Jack. Ben Gazzara stars as Flowers in the film. The film also features Denholm Elliott and George Lazenby.

Cast

Film adaptation rights

Cybill Shepherd sued Playboy magazine after they published photos of her from The Last Picture Show. As part of the settlement, she got the rights to the novel Saint Jack, which she had wanted to make into a film ever since Orson Welles gave her a copy.[2]

Production

Saint Jack was shot entirely on location in various places in Singapore in May and June 1978. Places featured in the film include the former Empress Place hawker centre (now demolished) and Bugis Street. The local authorities knew about the book, hence the foreign production crew did not tell them that they were adapting it, fearing that they would not be permitted to shoot the film. Instead, they created a fake synopsis for a film called Jack of Hearts, (what the director called "a cross between Love Is a Many Splendored Thing and Pal Joey"[1]) and most of the Singaporeans involved in the production believed this was what they were making.

Release

The film was banned in Singapore and Malaysia on January 17, 1980. Singapore banned it "largely due to concerns that there would be excessive edits required to the scenes of nudity and some coarse language before it could be shown to a general audience", and lifted the ban only in March 2006.[3] It is now an M18-rated film.

Saint Jack was re-released in North America on DVD in 2001.

In an interview with The New York Times on 15 March 2006, Bogdanovich said "Saint Jack and They All Laughed were two of my best films but never received the kind of distribution they should have."[4]

Reception

Roger Ebert gave the film a four-star review. In praise of Gazzara's performance, he writes "sometimes a character in a movie inhabits his world so freely, so easily, that he creates it for us as well. Ben Gazzara does that in Saint Jack." He goes on to say "The film is by Peter Bogdanovich and what a revelation it is, coming after three expensive flops. But here everything is right again. Everything."[5]

References

  1. ^ a b Lee, Grant. (Aug 10, 1979). "Bogdanovich's Picture Show". Los Angeles Times. p. e16.
  2. ^ Mann, Roderick. (May 21, 1978). "The Upside-Down Views of Cybill Shepherd". Los Angeles Times. p. n37.
  3. ^ Suk-Wai, Cheong (29 March 2006). "Saint Elsewhere". The Straits Times. p. 5.
  4. ^ Ibid. (A search of The New York Times' archive on 29 March 2006 failed to find the text of the interview.)
  5. ^ Ebert, Roger (2007). Roger Ebert's Four Star Reviews--1967-2007. Kansas City: Andrew McMeel Publishing. p. 666. ISBN 978-0-7407-7179-8. Retrieved 21 September 2017.
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