The film follows one week in the life of 24-year-old Jamie Conway. Originally from Pennsylvania, Jamie works as a fact-checker for a major New York City magazine. His nights partying with his glib and wealthy best friend Tad and his addiction to cocaine have made Jamie frequently late for work and not finishing assignments on time. As a result, he is on the verge of getting fired by his stern boss, Clara Tillinghast.
His wife Amanda, a fast-rising model, has just left him. He is also still reeling from the death of his mother from cancer a year earlier, and actively follows a tabloid story about a pregnant woman in a coma, also frequently daydreaming that he can talk to the woman's "Coma Baby" while repeatedly asking him to come out of his mother's body. Jamie's story captures some of the glossy chaos and decadence of NYC nightlife during the 1980s, while also showing that he finds himself desperately trying to escape the pain in his life.
Jamie is asked to go on a date with Tad's cousin Vicky as a favor to Tad so he could, in turn, have a fling with a woman he claims is a Penthouse Pet. Jamie avoids phone calls from his younger brother Michael, who has come to the city to look for him, and goes out with Vicky, who is new in town, with both connecting easily and feeling comfortable around each other, which encourages Jamie to not use cocaine for a whole night, as long as Vicky is around. After acknowledging their mutual attraction, Vicky returns to her college dorm upstate, sharing a kiss with Jamie before leaving, and making him feel genuinely happy for the first time in years.
After getting fired from his job, Jamie goes on a further downward spiral with more substance and alcohol abuse. Jamie's maternal co-worker Megan attempts to help him find a new job, as well as open up during a dinner about his troubled life and the reason Amanda left him. Jamie reveals that he had a hard time adjusting to the big city at first, and balancing his marriage to Amanda, the death of his mother and his new job left him with writer's block (he has been trying to finish a novel for years) and a strained relation with Amanda, who was becoming famous as a model and abandoned him to pursue a more glamorous and upscaled life.
Michael arrives at his apartment and lets himself in, surprising Jamie when he comes in second. Jamie reacts angrily at Michael's claim that he has been ignoring his family since the death of their mother, and refuses to talk about his life or feelings. During the argument, Tad calls Jamie and asks him to come to a party, and when Jamie refuses Tad goads him revealing that the party is at Amanda's (and her new photographer husband) house in New York.
At the party, Tad is so intoxicated that he doesn't seem to realize that a woman he is flirting with is a man in drag. Jamie confronts Amanda and she repulses him by asking, "So, how's it going?". Jamie breaks down laughing uncontrollably at the question and retreats to the bathroom with Tad's help when his nose starts to bleed. He finally decides to open up and come clean with himself before he ends up either dead or in jail. Jamie phones Vicky using an adjacent phone to the bathroom and starts talking, revealing to Vicky that he and his brother Michael helped their dying mother kill herself to end her suffering. Vicky offers Jamie empathy and calm, and tells him to call her any time he needs to talk. Jamie then exits the bathroom and declines Tad's offer to spend more time together, declaring out loud "You know what I just realized? You and Amanda are perfect for each other", and leaving the party.
Jamie wanders the streets until dawn, when he stops by a big bakery's loading zone and trades his sunglasses for a baguette. He then walks down to the pier and stares at the city and the river, while thinking and deciding that today will be a better day to get his life back on track. As the story ends, a news clipping of the newborn "Coma Baby" is shown.
In 1984, Robert Lawrence, a vice president at Columbia Pictures, championed Jay McInerney's novel against resistance from older executives.[2] He felt that the book spoke to his generation and described it as "Graduate, with a little bit of Lost Weekend".[2] The studio agreed to make the film with Jerry Weintraub producing and Joel Schumacher directing. McInerney wrote a draft of the screenplay and, soon afterward, Schumacher started rewriting it.[2] Actor Emilio Estevez was interested in adapting it into a film.[3] He met with McInerney while he was still working on the screenplay. Tom Cruise was offered first refusal on the script while McInerney and Schumacher were attempting to capture the novel's distinctive voice. McInerney, Cruise and Schumacher scouted locations in New York City and checked out the atmosphere of the club scenes described in the novel.[2] At one point, Judd Nelson, Estevez, Zach Galligan, Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon, and Rob Lowe were all considered for the role of Allagash.[3]
In 1985, Weintraub took the property to United Artists when he became chief executive there.[2] The film needed a new producer so Sydney Pollack and Mark Rosenberg took over. They hired writer Julie Hickson to write a script. Cruise and Schumacher grew tired of waiting for a workable script, but before they could be replaced, Weintraub left United Artists.[2] The project became entangled in a complicated settlement with the studio, months being lost before it finally stayed at United Artists. A decision was made to shoot the film in Toronto and cast an unknown in the leading role.[2]
Joyce Chopra was hired to co-write the script, with her husband Tom Cole, and also direct it. She had her agent send a copy of McInerney's novel to Michael J. Fox.[2] The actor won the leading role and, at his request, the part of Tad Allagash went to fellow Canadian Kiefer Sutherland.[4] Fox's casting increased the budget to $15million and principal photography was moved to New York City.[4] The producers hired a crew, many of whom had worked with Pollack, while Chopra brought along the cinematographer from her first film, Smooth Talk, James Glennon.[2]
Fox had to be back in Los Angeles to start taping his television series Family Ties by mid-July, giving Chopra only ten weeks to finish the film. Studio executives did not like what Chopra was shooting and, a week into filming, the studio's chairman and its president of production flew from L.A. to New York City to check on the film. Neither had read the script and both were unaware of how different it was from the novel.[2] McInerney has said that Cole wrote all the drugs out of the script while Cole said that he did this on instructions from Pollack, who was worried that the film would hurt Fox's wholesome image with audiences. Cole recalls, "There was definitely pressure and concern at that time about how Michael was seen by America."[2] The studio announced that "a more experienced director" was needed as a result of an impending strike by the Directors Guild of America. On the short list of possible replacements were Ulu Grosbard, Bruce Beresford, and James Bridges.[2] Bridges received a call on a Friday that the film was in trouble, read the novel that night, and flew to New York City on Sunday. He agreed to direct if he could start from scratch and hire Gordon Willis as his cinematographer.[2]
In seven days, Bridges wrote a new draft bringing back the darker elements of the novel such as the main character's heavy drinking and drug abuse and replaced six actors, casting instead Jason Robards, John Houseman, Swoosie Kurtz, Frances Sternhagen, and Tracy Pollan, while keeping Sutherland and Dianne Wiest.[2] The new cast members read the novel because there was no script at the time. The strike forced the production to shoot in seven weeks and use McInerney's first draft, which Bridges liked the best.[4] Bridges worked on the script on weekends with McInerney, who was enlisted to help with revisions. The two agreed to share screenwriting credit but the Writers Guild of America decided to give it to McInerney only.[2]
The cocaine that Fox snorts in the film was a prop called milk sugar.[2] The filmmakers shot two different endings—one where Fox's character decides to start his life all over but is vague with what he specifically plans to do and an alternative one, to please the studio, where he has finished writing a novel to be called Bright Lights, Big City with a new girlfriend who is proud of what he has written.[2]
Reception
Bright Lights, Big City was released on April 1, 1988, in 1,196 theaters, and grossed USD $5.1million during its opening weekend. It was a box office bomb, making $16.1million domestically, well below its budget of $25million.[5]
The film received mixed reviews from critics and has a 57% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 21 reviews. In his review for Newsweek, David Ansen wrote, "Bright Lights isn't an embarrassment, like Less Than Zero; it's a smooth, professional job. But when it's over you may shrug your shoulders and ask, "Is that all?"[6]Janet Maslin, wrote in her review for The New York Times, "Mr. Bridges may not have breathed fire into this material, but he has preserved most of its better qualities. He has treated it with intelligence, respect and no undue reverence, assembling a coherent film that resists any hint of exploitation".[7] In his review for The Washington Post, Hal Hinson criticized Fox's performance, stating that he "was the wrong actor for the job. Fox, who in The Secret of My Succe$s showed a gift for light comedy, is too stylized a performer for the heavier stuff; he has no natural weight. In addition, Fox shows a reluctance to let the audience see him in an unflattering light".[8] However, Roger Ebert praised the actor's performance: "Fox is very good in the central role (he has a long drunken monologue that is the best thing he has ever done in a movie)".[9]Time magazine's Richard Schickel felt that the film, "arrives... looking like something that has been kicking around too long in the dead-letter office".[10]
Home video
A special edition DVD version of Bright Lights, Big City was released on September 2, 2008. In her review for The Washington Post, Jen Chaney wrote, "In the end, that's what is most disappointing about this DVD. What could have become a compelling look at a seminal novel of the 1980s and its rocky path through Hollywood ends up being a rudimentary release with a couple of decent commentary tracks and two forgettable featurettes".[11]
Casualties of War is a 1989 American war drama film directed by Brian De Palma and written by David Rabe, based primarily on an article written by Daniel Lang for The New Yorker in 1969, which was later published as a book. The film stars Michael J. Fox and Sean Penn and is based on the events of the 1966 incident on Hill 192 during the Vietnam War, in which a Vietnamese woman was kidnapped from her village by a squad of American soldiers, who raped and murdered her. For the film, all names and some details of the true story were altered.
Jason Nelson Robards Jr. was an American actor. Known for his roles on stage and screen, he gained a reputation as an interpreter of the works of playwright Eugene O'Neill. Robards received numerous accolades and is one of 24 performers to have achieved the Triple Crown of Acting having earned competitive wins for two Academy Awards, a Tony Award, and an Emmy Award. He was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1979, earned the National Medal of Arts in 1997, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 1999.
John Barrett "Jay" McInerney Jr. is an American novelist, screenwriter, editor, and columnist. His novels include Bright Lights, Big City, Ransom, Story of My Life, Brightness Falls, and The Last of the Savages. He edited The Penguin Book of New American Voices, wrote the screenplay for the 1988 film adaptation of Bright Lights, Big City, and co-wrote the screenplay for the television film Gia, which starred Angelina Jolie. He was the wine columnist for House & Garden magazine, and his essays on wine have been collected in Bacchus & Me (2000) and A Hedonist in the Cellar (2006). His most recent novel is titled Bright, Precious Days, published in 2016. From April 2010 he was a wine columnist for The Wall Street Journal. In 2009, he published a book of short stories which spanned his entire career, titled How It Ended, which was named one of the 10 best books of the year by Janet Maslin of The New York Times.
Jingle All the Way is a 1996 American Christmas family comedy film directed by Brian Levant. It stars Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sinbad as two rival fathers, mattress salesman Howard Langston (Schwarzenegger) and postal worker Myron Larabee (Sinbad), both desperately trying to purchase a Turbo-Man action figure for their respective sons on a last-minute shopping spree on Christmas Eve. The film's title is borrowed from the lyrics of the popular Christmas song "Jingle Bells".
Joshua Ian Schwartz is an American screenwriter and television producer. He is best known for creating and executive producing the Fox teen drama series The O.C. which ran for 4 seasons. Schwartz is also known for developing The CW's series Gossip Girl based on the book of the same name and for co-creating NBC's action-comedy-spy series, Chuck.
Sam Prideaux Robards is an American actor. He is best known for his film roles in American Beauty (1999) and A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001). For his performance in the Broadway production of The Man Who Had All the Luck, he received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play.
The St. Valentine's Day Massacre is a 1967 American gangster film based on the 1929 mass murder of seven members of the Northside Gang on orders from Al Capone. The picture was directed by Roger Corman, written by Howard Browne, and starring Jason Robards as Capone, Ralph Meeker as Moran, George Segal as Peter Gusenberg, and David Canary as Frank Gusenberg.
Baazigar (transl. Gambler) is a 1993 Indian Hindi-language romantic thriller film directed by Abbas–Mustan and produced by Venus Movies. It stars Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol in lead roles, while Siddharth, Shilpa Shetty, Raakhee, Dalip Tahil, and Johnny Lever appear in supporting roles. Its soundtrack was composed by Anu Malik. The film follows a young man seeking to avenge the fall of his family by going on a murderous rampage.
Tender Is the Night is a 1962 American film directed by Henry King and starring Jennifer Jones and Jason Robards, Jr. King's last film, it is based on the 1934 novel of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
The "Literary Brat Pack" were a group of young American authors, including Bret Easton Ellis, Tama Janowitz, Jay McInerney and Jill Eisenstadt, who emerged on the East Coast of the United States in the 1980s. It is a twist on the same label that had previously been applied to a group of young American actors who frequently appeared together in teen-oriented coming-of-age films earlier that decade.
Bright Lights, Big City may refer to:
Bright Lights, Big City is a novel by American author Jay McInerney, published by Vintage Books on August 12, 1984. It is written about a character's time spent caught up in, and notably escaping from, the early 1980s New York City fast lane. The novel is written in the second person, an unusual narrative method in English language fiction.
Springtime in the Rockies is an American Technicolor musical comedy film released by Twentieth Century Fox in 1942. It stars Betty Grable, with support from John Payne, Carmen Miranda, Cesar Romero, Charlotte Greenwood, and Edward Everett Horton. Also appearing were Grable's future husband Harry James and his band. The director was Irving Cummings. The screenplay was based on the short story "Second Honeymoon" by Philip Wylie.
Blindfold is a 1966 American romantic comedy film co-written and directed by Philip Dunne that was his last feature film. It starred Rock Hudson in his 50th film and the first for his own film production company, Gibraltar Productions. It co-starred Claudia Cardinale, Jack Warden and Guy Stockwell. The film was distributed by Universal Pictures. It was based on Lucille Fletcher's 1960 novel of the same name. Sequences were filmed in Central Park in New York City and in Silver Springs, Florida.
Bright Lights, Big City is a rock musical with music, lyrics and book written by Scottish composer Paul Scott Goodman based on the 1984 novel by Jay McInerney. It follows a week in the life of Jamie, a successful young writer who loses himself in the chaos of 1980s New York City. The piece premiered Off-Broadway in New York City in 1999 and was revived in a small London production in 2010.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a 2011 American science fiction action film directed by Rupert Wyatt and written by the writing team of Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver. It is a reboot of the Planet of the Apes film series and is the seventh installment overall and the first in the reboot series. The film stars James Franco, Freida Pinto, John Lithgow, Brian Cox, Tom Felton, and Andy Serkis. In the film, Caesar (Serkis), a chimpanzee genetically enhanced and raised by chemist Will Rodman (Franco), goes from living in captivity to eventually leading an ape uprising against humanity.
Ted Kurdyla is an American film, television and stage producer.
Bright, Precious Days is a 2016 novel by American author Jay McInerney. It is his third novel about Corrine and Russell Calloway, a couple who live on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Like the previous two novels in the series, Bright, Precious Days is set against the backdrop of a historical event, in this case the Great Recession. The novel received mostly negative reviews.
"For Whom the Bell Tolls" was an American television play broadcast in two parts on March 12 and March 19, 1959, as part of the CBS television series, Playhouse 90. It is a television adaptation of the 1940 novel by Ernest Hemingway. John Frankenheimer was the director. The cast included Jason Robards, Maria Schell, and Maureen Stapleton.
Breaking and Entering is a 1988 novel by American writer Joy Williams.
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