Willie & Phil
| Willie & Phil | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Paul Mazursky |
| Written by | Paul Mazursky |
| Starring | Michael Ontkean Margot Kidder Ray Sharkey |
| Cinematography | Sven Nykvist |
| Edited by | Donn Cambern |
| Music by | Claude Bolling |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
Release date |
|
Running time | 115 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $5.5 million[1] |
| Box office | $4,400,000[2] |
Willie & Phil is a 1980 film written and directed by Paul Mazursky, and starring Michael Ontkean, Margot Kidder, and Ray Sharkey.
Plot
The film is set in 1970s New York, amidst the counterculture chic of that era. Willie, a high school English teacher who plays jazz piano, and Phil, a fashion photographer, meet coming out of the Bleecker Street Cinema, where Jules et Jim has just been shown, and become friends. They both fall in love with Jeannette, a girl from Kentucky.
Cast
- Michael Ontkean - Willie Kaufman
- Margot Kidder - Jeannette Sutherland
- Ray Sharkey - Phil D'Amico
- Jan Miner - Maria Kaufman
- Tom Brennan - Sal Kaufman
- Julie Bovasso - Mrs. D'Amico
- Louis Guss - Mr. D'Amico
- Kathleen Maguire - Mrs. Sutherland
- Kaki Hunter - Patti Sutherland
- Kristine DeBell - Rena
- Jerry Hall - Karen
Critical responses
The film was reviewed by Pauline Kael in The New Yorker. "It could be that the theme of Jules et Jim, which preoccupies Mazursky - woman as the source of life and art, and woman as destroyer - is just what he can't handle. The ad for Willie & Phil does bring out the film's latent subject: we see the open mouth of a giant goddess who is holding two men in the palm of her hand. They reach up to her with their offerings - one with a bottle of wine, the other with a bunch of flowers. She may be breathing life into these dwarf suitors or preparing to devour them along with their gifts. Either way, she's a source of awe and terror. All through the picture, Mazursky has been trying to demystify what he experiences as mystifying. This movie is a little monument to screwed-up notions of what women are." [3]
References
- ^ Aubrey Solomon, Twentieth Century Fox: A Corporate and Financial History, Scarecrow Press, 1989 p259
- ^ "Willie & Phil (1980) - Box Office Mojo". www.boxofficemojo.com. Retrieved June 10, 2018.
- ^ Pauline Kael Taking It All In ISBN 0-7145-2841-2
