A Matter of Degrees | |
---|---|
Directed by | W.T. Morgan |
Screenplay by | Randall Poster Jack Mason W.T. Morgan |
Produced by | Roy Kissin Randall Poster |
Starring | Arye Gross Judith Hoag Tom Sizemore John Doe |
Cinematography | Paul Ryan |
Edited by | Curtiss Clayton |
Production companies | Backbeat Productions Fox Lorber Features |
Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 88 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
A Matter of Degrees is a 1990 American comedy film directed by W.T. Morgan, written by Morgan, Randall Poster, and Jack Mason, and produced by Poster and Kissin. The film stars Arye Gross, Judith Hoag (in her film debut), Tom Sizemore, and Wendell Pierce. John Doe has a featured role. The film was released on September 13, 1991, by 20th Century Fox. [1] [2]
As a baby in a playpen, Max Glass screams when his parents suggest he'll grow up to become a lawyer. Twenty years later, he is a graduating senior at an unnamed college in Providence, Rhode Island who is struggling to figure out his future. He doesn't want to go to law school and is disappointed to get an acceptance letter from Columbia University, which throws him into an existential crisis.
Max is an indifferent student who lives with two quirky roommates—Kate Blum and Zeno Stefanos. He spends much of his time at the college's progressive rock station, WXOX, hanging out with his friend, Wells Dennard. Other DJs include Moonboy and Bambi. WXOX's main disc jockey and founder, Peter Downs, is a hero to Max. The station is threatened by developers who wish to raze it and the surrounding block. Peter initially battles against this, but then surrenders to the inevitable and leaves town.
Max continues to fight against the developers, thereby angering the college's administration and risking his chances of graduating. He also runs into trouble with the police after he breaks into the apartment of Lisa, with whom he had had a brief affair.
Wells and Katie participate in the college's commencement, but Max disrupts the ceremony by taking over WXOX and blasting his anti-corporate message over a public-address speaker. His final message is, "Rock and roll can save you." The film ends with him in the radio station's studio and his future is uncertain.
The film was largely shot on the Brown University campus [3] and its story was inspired by the switch of WBRU, a Brown station, from a free-form format to a commercial one. [4]
The film features appearances from members of rock bands, such as John Doe of X (in the role of Peter Downs) and Fred Schneider and Kate Pierson of The B-52's (as DJs Moonboy and Bambi). [5] John F. Kennedy Jr. also makes a brief cameo as a guitar playing coed at a party. [1]
A Matter of Degrees had its world premiere at the 1990 Sundance Film Festival. [2] It also screened at the Chicago International Film Festival in October 1990. [6] It was given a limited release in the United States on September 13, 1991. [7]
Marc Savlov of the Austin Chronicle reviewed the film positively and awarded it 3 and 1/2 stars out of 5. [8] He wrote its depiction of young people caught between their college years and the adult world was accurate and relatable, and noted the film "continues mining [the] vein of early-90s, twenty-something angst, though Morgan is less of a cynic than many of his indie contemporaries." [8]
Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote the film "drifts with Max from classroom to junkyard to corporate party, touching all the bases of a counterculture on the verge of extinction but still clinging to a distinctive world view", [1] but noted, "The best of A Matter of Degrees is merely atmospheric and anecdotal. And a lot of it has the drifting feel of a good-natured anecdote without an ending." [1]
The B-52s, originally presented as the B-52's, are an American new wave band formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1976. The original lineup consisted of Fred Schneider, Kate Pierson, Cindy Wilson, Ricky Wilson (guitar), and Keith Strickland. Ricky Wilson died of AIDS-related illness in 1985, and Strickland switched from drums to lead guitar. The band has also added various members for albums and live performances.
Catherine Elizabeth Pierson is an American singer, lyricist, and founding member of the B-52s. She plays guitar, bass and various keyboard instruments. In the early years, as well as being a vocalist, Pierson was the main keyboard player and performed on a keyboard bass during live shows and on many of the band's recordings, taking on a role usually filled by a bass guitar player, which differentiated the band from their contemporaries. This, along with Pierson's distinctive wide-ranging singing voice, remains a trademark of the B-52s' unique sound. Pierson has also collaborated with many other artists including the Ramones, Iggy Pop and R.E.M. Pierson possesses a mezzo-soprano vocal range.
Frederick William Schneider III is an American singer-songwriter and frontman of the rock band the B-52's, of which he is a founding member. Schneider is well known for his sprechgesang, which he developed from reciting poetry over guitars.
Bambi, a Life in the Woods is a 1923 Austrian coming-of-age novel written by Felix Salten, and originally published in Berlin by Ullstein Verlag. The novel traces the life of Bambi, a male roe deer, from his birth through childhood, the loss of his mother, the finding of a mate, the lessons he learns from his father, and the experience he gains about the dangers posed by human hunters in the forest. It is also, in its most complete translation, seen as a parable of the dangers and persecution faced by Jews in Europe.
Thomas Edward Sizemore Jr. was an American actor. Born in Detroit, Michigan, he started his career with supporting appearances in Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Lock Up (1989), and Blue Steel (1990). These appearances led to more prominent roles in films like Passenger 57 (1992), True Romance (1993), Striking Distance (1993), Natural Born Killers (1994), Strange Days (1995), Heat (1995), and The Relic (1997).
From Dusk till Dawn is a 1996 American action horror film directed by Robert Rodriguez and written by Quentin Tarantino from a concept and story by Robert Kurtzman. Starring Harvey Keitel, George Clooney, Tarantino, Ernest Liu, and Juliette Lewis, the plot follows a pair of American criminal brothers who take a family as hostages in order to cross into Mexico, but ultimately find themselves trapped in a saloon frequented by vampires.
John Nommensen Duchac, known professionally as John Doe, is an American singer, songwriter, actor, poet, guitarist and bass player. Doe co-founded LA punk band X, of which he is still an active member. His musical performances and compositions span rock, punk, country and folk music genres. As an actor, he has dozens of television appearances and several movies to his credit, including the role of Jeff Parker in the television series Roswell.
Cosmic Thing is the fifth studio album by American new wave band the B-52's, released in 1989 by Reprise Records. It contains the singles "Love Shack", "Roam" and "Deadbeat Club", which reached the Top 10, 20 and 30 of the US Billboard Hot 100 charts, respectively. The music video for "Love Shack" won the award for Best Group Video at the 1990 MTV Video Music Awards. Six of the album's songs were produced by Nile Rodgers in New York City, and the remaining four by Don Was in upstate New York.
Bambi is a 1942 American animated drama film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by RKO Radio Pictures. Loosely based on Felix Salten's 1923 novel Bambi, a Life in the Woods, the production was supervised by David D. Hand, and was directed by a team of sequence directors, including James Algar, Bill Roberts, Norman Wright, Sam Armstrong, Paul Satterfield, and Graham Heid.
Anthony Howard Goldwyn is an American actor, singer, producer, director, and political activist. He made his debut appearing as Darren in the slasher film Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986), and had his breakthrough for starring as Carl Bruner in the fantasy thriller film Ghost (1990), which earned him a nomination for the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor. He went on to star as Harold Nixon in the biographical film Nixon (1995), which earned him a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination, and as Neil Armstrong in the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon (1998).
Presumed Innocent is a 1990 American legal thriller film based on the 1987 novel of the same name by Scott Turow. Directed by Alan J. Pakula, and written by Pakula and Frank Pierson, it stars Harrison Ford, Brian Dennehy, Raúl Juliá, Bonnie Bedelia, Paul Winfield and Greta Scacchi. The film follows Rusty Sabich (Ford), a prosecutor who is charged with the murder of his colleague and mistress Carolyn Polhemus (Scacchi).
Other People's Money is a 1991 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Norman Jewison, starring Danny DeVito, Gregory Peck and Penelope Ann Miller. It was adapted by screenwriter Alvin Sargent from the 1989 play of the same name by Jerry Sterner.
Elias Koteas is a Canadian actor. He is known for playing Alvin "Al" Olinsky in the Chicago franchise, as well as appearing in lead and supporting roles in numerous films. He won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the film Ararat (2002). He appeared in such films as Some Kind of Wonderful (1987), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990), The Adjuster (1991), Exotica (1994), The Prophecy (1995), Crash (1996), Living Out Loud (1998), Fallen (1998), The Thin Red Line (1998), Harrison's Flowers (2002), Collateral Damage (2002), Shooter (2007), Zodiac (2007), Skinwalkers (2007), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), and Shutter Island (2010).
Bambi II is a 2006 American animated drama film directed by Brian Pimental and produced by the Australian office of Disneytoon Studios as a followup to the 1942 film Bambi. Animation production was done by DisneyToon Studios Sydney, Australia. It premiered in theaters in Argentina on January 26, 2006, before being released as a direct-to-video title in the United States on February 7, 2006.
Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare is a 1991 American slasher film and the sixth film in the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. It is a sequel to A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child and was originally intended to be the final installment of the series; Wes Craven's New Nightmare was released three years later but takes place outside the series canon. A canonical crossover/sequel, Freddy vs. Jason, was released in 2003. This was New Line Cinema's first 3D film release.
Go Fish is a 1994 American comedy drama film written by Guinevere Turner and Rose Troche and directed by Rose Troche. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1994, and was the first film to be sold to a distributor, Samuel Goldwyn, during that event for $450,000. The film was released during Pride Month in June 1994 and eventually grossed $2.5 million. The film was seen as groundbreaking for celebrating lesbian culture on all levels, and it launched the career of director Troche and Turner. Go Fish is said to have proved the marketability of lesbian issues for the film industry.
Kate Mailer is an American stage and film actress and daughter of American author-playwright Norman Mailer and third wife, journalist Lady Jeanne Campbell, daughter of the 11th Duke of Argyll and his first wife, The Honourable Janet Gladys Aitken. Her work includes roles on stage in the Anton Chekhov play The Cherry Orchard, and on film in Jean-Luc Godard's adaptation of the William Shakespeare play King Lear with Burgess Meredith (1987) and in W. T. Morgan's A Matter of Degrees with Arye Gross (1990). She has since become a writer.
Sweet Hearts Dance is a 1988 American comedy drama film directed by Robert Greenwald. The screenplay by Ernest Thompson centers on two small town couples, one married for several years and the other at the beginning of their relationship.
Balls Out is a 2014 American sports comedy film directed by Andrew Disney, based on a script by Bradley Jackson. The film stars Jake Lacy, Beck Bennett, Jay Pharoah, Nikki Reed, Kate McKinnon, DC Pierson, Nick Kocher, Brian McElhaney, Nick Rutherford and Gabriel Luna, and focuses on a group of college seniors that decide to form an intramural football team before graduating.
Lucia Aniello is an Italian-born American director, writer, and producer best known for her work on Hacks, for which she won multiple Emmy Awards, and Broad City. She has directed and written episodes of both shows, as well as the miniseries Time Traveling Bong and the 2017 film Rough Night.