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CS
Weekly Archive > DVD
of the Day > 11/10/06
A Concise History of the Unpredictable
by jason davis
Boffo! Tinseltown's Bombs and Blockbusters
Bill Couturié (also directed), Peter Bart
Based on the book Boffo!: How I Learned to Love the Blockbuster and Fear the Bomb by Peter Bart
 
 
A celebration of cinema's unpredictability, HBO's Boffo! gathers an esteemed coterie of studio heads, movie stars, and other industry notables to wax philosophically about their business' greatest successes and most embarrassing failures, all under the reign of Variety editor-in-chief and Boffo! author Peter Bart and co-writer/director Bill Couturié. Evoking screenwriter William Goldman's Hollywood aphorism that "No one knows anything," an (FX-)blood-splattered Richard Dreyfus recalls his certainty that Jaws would sink, while screenwriter Willard Huyck tries to discern when exactly open season began for Howard the Duck. Couturié assembles an engaging group of interviewees with memorable movie moments in this celebration of Variety's 100th anniversary. While director Penny Marshall and actor George Clooney liven up the proceedings with their humorous quips, Boffo!'s highlights belong to the wealth of personal anecdotes that fill out the 75-minute running time. Moments like producer Brian Grazer's scene-stealing account of his disappointment when Apollo 13 lost Oscar to Braveheart, and astronaut Jim Lovell's words of condolence on the occasion, simultaneously put the situation in context and remind the viewer that the magic on the movie screen is only the grand finale of an extraordinary illusion.
Boffo! Tinseltown's Bombs and Blockbusters
HBO Home Video
Not Rated; 75 min.
$24.98
Buy it now
Jason Davis is the DVD Manager for CS Weekly, a contributing editor for Creative Screenwriting Magazine, and has written for Cinescape.com, MSN.com, and created the TV series Studio 13, which ran on Lorne Michaels' Burly TV network. He lives in the small space left over by his ever-expanding library of books, movies, and music.
Boffo! Tinseltown's Bombs and Blockbusters courtesy HBO Home Video
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