Good Luck (1996 film)

Good Luck
	Movie Poster
Directed by	Richard LaBrie
Produced by	Shirley Honickman Hahn; Andrzej Kamrowski
Written by	Bob Comfort
Starring	Gregory Hines ; Vincent D'Onofrio ; Max Gail ; James Earl Jones ;
Music by	Tim Truman
Cinematography	Maximo Munzi
Edited by	Neil Grieve
Production; company	East-West Film Partners
Distributed by	Moki
Release date	March 7, 1997;
Running time	92 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$39,962

Last updated April 04, 2019

Good Luck is a 1996 American film directed by Richard LaBrie starring Gregory Hines and Vincent D'Onofrio as two physically disabled men who come together to challenge themselves out of their unsatisfactory lives.

The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.

Richard LaBrie is an American clinical psychologist and Emmy-nominated editor, director, producer, and writer.

Gregory Oliver Hines was an American dancer, actor, singer, and choreographer.

Plot

Hines plays a former dental student, Bern Lemley, who had to quit school just before finals because of a car accident that left him in a wheelchair. D'Onofrio plays a former pro football player, Ole Olezniak, who was blinded in a freak accident on the field. Before their accidents, Bern had been a tutor for Ole, and, after quitting his post-accident job as a denture technician, he approaches Ole about teaming up to enter a white-water rafting race on Oregon's Rogue River.

The Rogue River in southwestern Oregon in the United States flows about 215 miles (346 km) in a generally westward direction from the Cascade Range to the Pacific Ocean. Known for its salmon runs, whitewater rafting, and rugged scenery, it was one of the original eight rivers named in the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968. Beginning near Crater Lake, which occupies the caldera left by the explosive volcanic eruption of Mount Mazama, the river flows through the geologically young High Cascades and the older Western Cascades, another volcanic province. Further west, the river passes through multiple exotic terranes of the more ancient Klamath Mountains. In the Kalmiopsis Wilderness section of the Rogue basin are some of the world's best examples of rocks that form the Earth's mantle. Near the mouth of the river, the only dinosaur fragments ever discovered in Oregon were found in the Otter Point Formation, along the coast of Curry County.

Production

The film was shot in Coos Bay, Winchester Bay, and Portland, Oregon.^[1]

Coos Bay is a city located in Coos County, Oregon, United States, where the Coos River enters Coos Bay on the Pacific Ocean. The city borders the city of North Bend, and together they are often referred to as one entity called either Coos Bay-North Bend or Oregon's Bay Area. Coos Bay's population as of the 2010 census was 15,967 residents, making it the largest city on the Oregon Coast.

Winchester Bay is an unincorporated community in Douglas County, Oregon, United States. For statistical purposes, the United States Census Bureau has defined Winchester Bay as a census-designated place (CDP). The census definition of the area may not precisely correspond to local understanding of the area with the same name. The population of the CDP was 382 at the 2010 census. The community of Umpqua City was established in 1850.

Portland is the largest and most populous city in the U.S. state of Oregon and the seat of Multnomah County. It is a major port in the Willamette Valley region of the Pacific Northwest, at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers. As of 2017, Portland had an estimated population of 647,805, making it the 26th-largest city in the United States, and the second-most populous in the Pacific Northwest. Approximately 2.4 million people live in the Portland metropolitan statistical area (MSA), making it the 25th most populous MSA in the United States. Its Combined Statistical Area (CSA) ranks 18th-largest with a population of around 3.2 million. Approximately 60% of Oregon's population resides within the Portland metropolitan area.

Release

The movie had its world premiere at the 1996 Seattle Film Festival under the title The Ox and the Eye, presumably because of D'Onofrio's brute strength and Hines's ability to see. It has also been known as Guys Like Us and Gimps, a term Hines uses in the movie to refer to his and D'Onofrio's characters. It was shown as a sneak preview during the 1996 Summer Paralympics in Atlanta.^[2] It was released in theaters under its present title on March 7, 1997.

The Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF), held annually in Seattle, Washington since 1976, is among the top film festivals in North America. Audiences have grown steadily; the 2006 festival had 160,000 attendees. The SIFF runs for more than three weeks, in May/June, and features a diverse assortment of predominantly independent and foreign films, and a strong contingent of documentaries.

The 1996 Paralympic Games in Atlanta, USA were held from August 16 to 25. It was the first Paralympics to get mass media sponsorship, and had a budget of USD $81 million.

Reception

Emanuel Levy of Variety found the film to be "only a notch above the inspirational earnestness of a routine telepic", but praised it for the "strong rapport" between Hines and D'Onofrio.^[3] New York Times reviewer Lawrence Van Gelder called it a "sweet, modest clone" of other inspirational movies that surpassed expectations due to its excellent acting.^[4] Similarly, John Anderson of the Los Angeles Times noted the potentially melodramatic concept, but found it to be elevated by its performances.^[5] Leah Rozen of People gave the film a positive notice, calling it "a small picture with a huge heart."^[6] Entertainment Weekly gave it a "B+" grade and said it was a "quietly quirky movie" that "turns genuinely uplifting".^[7]

Variety is a weekly American entertainment trade magazine and website owned by Penske Media Corporation. It was founded by Sime Silverman in New York in 1905 as a weekly newspaper reporting on theater and vaudeville. In 1933 it added Daily Variety, based in Los Angeles, to cover the motion-picture industry. Variety.com features breaking entertainment news, reviews, box office results, cover stories, videos, photo galleries and more, plus a credits database, production charts and calendar, with archive content dating back to 1905.

Lawrence Ralph Van Gelder was an American journalist and instructor in journalism who worked at several different New York City-based newspapers in his long career. Until 2010, he was senior editor of the Arts and Leisure weekly section of The New York Times, as well as a film critic. Among the newspapers for which Van Gelder worked were the New York Daily Mirror, the New York Journal-American and the World-Journal-Tribune.

The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper which has been published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It has the fourth-largest circulation among United States newspapers, and is the largest U.S. newspaper not headquartered on the East Coast. The paper is known for its coverage of issues particularly salient to the U.S. West Coast, such as immigration trends and natural disasters. It has won more than 40 Pulitzer Prizes for its coverage of these and other issues. As of June 18, 2018, ownership of the paper is controlled by Patrick Soon-Shiong, and the executive editor is Norman Pearlstine.

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References

↑ "Filmed in Oregon 1908-2015" (PDF). Oregon Film Council. Oregon State Library. Retrieved December 27, 2015.
↑ "Good Luck", ABILITY Magazine , 1997 (interview of Hines, D'Onofrio, and Max Gail).
↑ "Review: 'Good Luck'", Variety , January 2, 1997.
↑ Lawrence Van Gelder, "Good Luck (1996): From Rage to Friendship", The New York Times , March 7, 1997.
↑ John Anderson, Loose, Irreverent Quality Helps Keep 'Luck' Afloat, Los Angeles Times , March 7, 1997.
↑ Leah Rozen, "Picks and Pans Review: Good Luck", People , March 24, 1997.
↑ Review of Good Luck, Entertainment Weekly , August 22, 1997.

External links

Good Luck on IMDb
Good Luck at Rotten Tomatoes

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[ORfilm-1] "Filmed in Oregon 1908-2015" (PDF). Oregon Film Council. Oregon State Library. Retrieved December 27, 2015.

[2] "Good Luck", ABILITY Magazine , 1997 (interview of Hines, D'Onofrio, and Max Gail).

[3] "Review: 'Good Luck'", Variety , January 2, 1997.

[4] Lawrence Van Gelder, "Good Luck (1996): From Rage to Friendship", The New York Times , March 7, 1997.

[5] John Anderson, Loose, Irreverent Quality Helps Keep 'Luck' Afloat, Los Angeles Times , March 7, 1997.

[6] Leah Rozen, "Picks and Pans Review: Good Luck", People , March 24, 1997.

[7] Review of Good Luck, Entertainment Weekly , August 22, 1997.