Saint Jack (film)

Saint Jack
Directed by	Peter Bogdanovich
Screenplay by	Peter Bogdanovich Howard Sackler Paul Theroux
Based on	Saint Jack by Paul Theroux
Produced by	Roger Corman
Starring	Ben Gazzara Denholm Elliott George Lazenby
Cinematography	Robby Müller
Edited by	William C. Carruth
Distributed by	New World Pictures
Release date	April 27, 1979 (1979-04-27)
Running time	112 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$2 million

Saint Jack is a 1979 crime drama 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.

Plot

Jack, an American pimp in Singapore, goes to the airport to pick up a British accountant for his Chinese 'boss'. The boss he only associates with to cover his real business, pimping, from the authorities. He takes William, the accountant, to his hotel, then to a bar where British expats mingle. He meets a john, who he takes to a brothel, together with William, who only really wants a game of squash. Returning, they are chased by Chinese triads, who resent Jack. The next day they find one of Jack's Chinese friends has been murdered, as a warning.

Cast

• Ben Gazzara as Jack Flowers
• Denholm Elliott as William Leigh
• James Villiers as Frogget
• Joss Ackland as Yardley
• Rodney Bewes as Smale
• Mark Kingston as Mr. Yates
• Lisa Lu as Mrs. Yates
• Monika Subramaniam as Monika
• Judy Lim as Judy
• George Lazenby as Senator
• Peter Bogdanovich as Eddie Schuman
• Joseph Noël as Gopi

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.

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") 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. 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."

Critical 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." Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic described Saint Jack as 'otiose and odious'.

External links

• Saint Jack at IMDb
• Saint Jack at Rotten Tomatoes