Lawrence Kasdan makes an iconic directorial debut starring a steamy Hurt and Turner
Plus we announce a change in our publishing format
A QUICK NOTE FOR SUBSCRIBERS:
As things heat up on my television project, I want to make sure I am creating a constant stream of material for you here. Instead of saving up every entry for a long newsletter, I am going back to publishing one film at a time for a while. I’ll publish much more often, each time I get a review done, and that should create a more steady publishing rhythm. I am very aware that there are a number of you supporting this project, and I want to assure you that work will continue on it no matter what else I’m doing.
I will do a special issue in the near-future that collects several titles that I missed the first time around. There have been about 11 films so far that I did not include and the great part about this version of this project is that I can go back and drop them in for the archived version.
That said, let’s jump in with the last weekend in August 1981. We’re going to kick it off with a movie that was an important milestone for many of the artists involved…
AUGUST 28
Body Heat
William Hurt, Kathleen Turner, Richard Crenna, Ted Danson, J.A. Preston, Mickey Rourke, Kim Zimmer, Jane Hallaren, Lanna Saunders, Carola McGuinness, Michael Ryan, Larry Marko, Deborah Lucchesi, Lynn Hallowell, Thom Sharp, Ruth Thom, Diane Lewis, Robert Traynor, Meg Kasdan, Ruth P. Strahan, Filomena Triscari, Bruce A. Lee, Ramiro Velasco, Tomas Choy, Servio T. Moreno
cinematography by Richard H. Kline
music by John Barry
screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan
produced by Fred T. Gallo
directed by Lawrence Kasdan
Rated R
1 hr 53 mins
A lawyer falls into an affair with a married woman that leads to murder.
Like John Hughes, Lawrence Kasdan started his career in advertising. He worked in Detroit for a while, then moved to Los Angeles, where he wrote screenplays and tried to break into the business. Even with an agent, he had trouble getting a foot in the door, and he finally broke through when he optioned his spec screenplay The Bodyguard to Warner Bros in 1977. The film immediately entered development hell, where it languished for almost 15 years before finally being made and released in 1992. His next big spec was Continental Divide, a throwback to the screwball banter that Kasdan grew up loving, and that was the script that brought him together with Steven Spielberg, who wanted to produce the movie. Spielberg loved the way the film felt like it had the throwback energy of the ’30s and ‘40s, but in a contemporary framework, and that’s why Spielberg introduced Kasdan to George Lucas. He turned out to be the absolute perfect writer for Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Empire Strikes Back, and those films both feel like they positioned him as the right guy to try to bring film noir back to life with his first film as a director.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Last '80s Newsletter (You'll Ever Need) to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.