Main Cast: John Cusack, Jack Warden, Chazz Palminteri, Joe Viterelli, Jennifer Tilly, Dianne Wiest
Release Year: 1994
Country: US
Run Time: 99 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Bullets Over Broadway is a Woody Allen romp that, as the title suggests, combines gangsters with show business at the height of the Roaring Twenties. David Shayne (John Cusack) is a straight-arrow playwright who plans to stand firm against compromising his work, but quickly abandons that stance when his producer (Jack Warden) finds a backer to mount his show on Broadway. There's just one catch, however: the backer is a mobster (Joe Viterelli) who sees Shayne's play as a vehicle for his dizzy, talent-free girlfriend, Olive (Jennifer Tilly). Shayne also has to deal with the demands of veteran theatre diva Helen Sinclair (Dianne Wiest) and is shocked to discover that Olive's hitman bodyguard, Cheech (Chazz Palminteri), is probably a better playwright than he is, as he secretly revises Shayne's work when he sits in on rehearsals. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide
Review
In another of Woody Allen's homages to the Jazz Age, a mobster-turned-thespian, played exquisitely by Chazz Palmenteri, steals the show. With its pleasantly preposterous script, Bullets Over Broadway solidly exemplified Allen's 1990s comeback. As is often the case in Allen's films, the protagonist is a struggling artist. Allen often casts himself as this character; here, John Cusack gets the role, and, like such other Allen stand-ins as Kenneth Branagh in Celebrity, his mimicking of Allen's mannerisms is an acquired taste. Oscar-nominated Jennifer Tilly is fabulously bimboesque, also Oscar-nominated Palmenteri is wondrous as the inspired bodyguard who rewrites the script, and the cast is filled with Allen's usual assortment of beautifully turned small roles and oddball characters. Dianne Wiest won her second Oscar for an Allen film (the first came eight years earlier for Hannah and Her Sisters) as a stage diva whose "Don't speak!" joined the ranks of classic movie lines. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
Mary-Louise Parker - Ellen; Rob Reiner - Sheldon Flender; Harvey Fierstein - Sid Loomis; Jim Broadbent - Warner Purcell; Tracey Ullman - Eden Brent; Frank Aquilino - Hood; Gene Canfield - Waterfront Hood; Victor Colicchio - Waterfront Hood; Charles Cragin - Rifkin; Tony Darrow - Aldo; John di Benedetto - Waterfront Hood; John Doumanian - Backstage Well-Wisher; Annie Joe Edwards - Venus; Lou Eppolito - Waterfront Hood; Dayle Haddon - Backstage Well-Wisher; Paul Herman - Maitre d'; Debi Mazar - Vi; Brian McConnachie - Mitch Sabine; Fran McGee - Movie Theatre Victim; Peter McRobbie - Man at Theatre; Stacey Nelkin - Rita; Ken Roberts - Theatre Well-Wisher; Tony Sirico - Rocco; Margaret Sophie Stein - Lili; John Ventimiglia - Waterfront Hood; Benay Venuta - Theatre Well-Wisher; Alan Arkin; Tony Conforti - Waterfront Hood; Carl Reiner; Peter Castellotti - Waterfront Hood; Howard Erskine - Theatre Well-Wisher; Edie Falco - Lorna
Credit
Tom Warren - Art Director, Thomas A. Reilly - Associate Producer, Juliet Taylor - Casting, Graciela Daniele - Choreography, Charles H. Joffe - Co-producer, Jack Rollins - Co-producer, Helen Robin - Co-producer, Letty Aronson - Co-producer, Jeffrey Kurland - Costume Designer, Richard Patrick - First Assistant Director, Thomas A. Reilly - First Assistant Director, Woody Allen - Director, Susan E. Morse - Editor, Jean Doumanian - Executive Producer, J.E. Beaucaire - Executive Producer, Frank Graziadei - Musical Direction/Supervision, Joseph Campayno - Makeup, Santo Loquasto - Production Designer, Carlo Di Palma - Cinematographer, Jonathan Filley - Production Manager, Helen Robin - Production Manager, Robert Greenhut - Producer, Susan Bode-Tyson - Set Designer, Amy Marshall - Set Designer, Woody Allen - Screenwriter, Douglas McGrath - Screenwriter
The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards including Allen and co-writer Douglas McGrath for original screenplay, Allen for director and Tilly and Palminteri for Supporting Actress and Actor respectively. Wiest won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance.
In 1928, David Shayne (John Cusack) is an idealistic young playwright newly arrived on Broadway. In order to gain financing for his play, God of Our Fathers, he agrees to hire Olive Neal (Jennifer Tilly), the actress/girlfriend of a gangster. She is demanding and talentless, but her gangster escort Cheech (Chazz Palminteri) turns out to be a genius, who constantly comes up with excellent ideas for revising the play. As the players prepare for opening night, Shayne is soon in over his head claiming Cheech's rewrites as his own, cheating on his partner Ellen (Mary-Louise Parker) with the show's seductive, alcoholic leading lady Helen Sinclair (Dianne Wiest), and facing his leading man, a compulsive eater (Jim Broadbent), beginning an affair with Olive.
