Joshua Then and Now | |
---|---|
Directed by | Ted Kotcheff |
Screenplay by | Mordecai Richler |
Based on | Joshua Then and Now by Mordecai Richler |
Produced by | Robert Lantos Stephen J. Roth |
Starring | James Woods Gabrielle Lazure Michael Sarrazin Linda Sorenson Alan Arkin Alan Scarfe Ken Campbell Alexander Knox Chuck Shamata Kate Trotter Robert Joy Harvey Atkin Paul Hecht Eric Kimmel |
Cinematography | François Protat |
Edited by | Ron Wisman |
Music by | Philippe Sarde |
Production company | |
Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
Release date | 17 May 1985 |
Running time | 118 minutes |
Country | Canada |
Language | English |
Budget | $10,940,00 |
Box office | $542,420 |
Joshua Then and Now is a 1985 Canadian film and a TV mini-series, adapted by Mordecai Richler from his semi-autobiographical novel Joshua Then and Now . James Woods starred as the adult Joshua, Gabrielle Lazure as his wife, and Alan Arkin as Joshua's father. It was directed by Ted Kotcheff who had previously directed Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz .
The film depicts Joshua growing up in his Montreal neighborhood, and then his adventures as a modestly successful writer. He marries the "golden shiksa" of his dreams, but eventually everything around him crumbles and he must act quickly to recover it all. A comedic drama, the film moves quickly without lingering for long on any incident and tells a connected complete narrative. Alan Arkin is frequently noted in reviews for an outstanding performance.
The cast included Michael Sarrazin as Kevin Hornby (Pauline's brother), Robert Joy as Colin Fraser (Pauline's first husband), Linda Sorenson as Esther Shapiro (Joshua's mother), Alan Scarfe as Jack Trimble, Ken Campbell as Sidney Murdoch, Kate Trotter as Jane Trimble, Alexander Knox as Senator Hornby, and Eric Kimmel as young Joshua. Filmed on location in Montreal, London, Brockville, and Ottawa, Ontario. Rated R. It has been transcribed to VHS (1986) and DVD-R (2016).
In 2023, Telefilm Canada announced that the film was one of 23 titles that will be digitally restored under its new Canadian Cinema Reignited program to preserve classic Canadian films. [2]
Joshua Shapiro, successful writer and pundit, in a hospital room, seems to have lost his wife and is in the middle of a sex scandal. Compelled to find meaning in his life, he reviews it from his youth to the present day.
Joshua grew up as a Jew in the working class St. Urbain Street area in Montreal. His upbringing was unusual because his father was a boxer who had become a gentle crook and his mother was a strip-tease dancer. Embarrassingly, she strips for his friends as part of a Bar Mitzvah party for him. Joshua's father is revealed to have a unique perspective on life, sex, and religion.
A trip to Spain as a young man is the impetus that sparks a career as a journalist and writer. In England in a momentary lapse of reason, Joshua forges letters about a (fake) homosexual affair with a British writer to sell to an American university archive. He meets an upper-class Canadian married to a poseur of a communist and steals her away to become his own wife. She is the daughter of a Canadian senator and Joshua's key into a level of society of which he is contemptuous.
In the meantime, Joshua's childhood friends have become successful in their own right. Some become targets for bizarre pranks as he settles various scores.
Joshua's conceited brother-in-law assumes a pivotal role in the novel as it is revealed that he is insecure and vulnerable. Neighbors in the wealthy cottage community around Lake Memphremagog lead him astray with dreadful consequences. Past indiscretions rear their ugly heads and Joshua must put together the shambles of his life.
Mordecai Richler wrote a screenplay based on his book Joshua Then and Now . [1] Ted Kotcheff, who directed a film based on Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz , was selected to direct. [3] Kotcheff was paid USD$500,000 for the film. [4]
Producers Robert Lantos and Stephen Roth decided to create both a film and miniseries to maximize the project's investment from Telefilm Canada. 20th Century Fox paid $2 million for the film's distribution rights and CBC Television gave additional investments. [5] The film received $3 million in funding from Telefilm. [1] $7.4 million was raised from Telefilm, CBC, and Fox, and an additional $1.8 million was raised by deferments and private investors. [6]
Kotcheff was paid USD$1 million, half in cash and the other in deferments, and Richler was paid USD$350,000. James Woods was paid USD$250,000 and Alan Arkin was paid USD$150,000. [7]
The film was shot from 7 August to 4 November 1984, at a cost of $10,940,000, after an initial budget of $9.2 million. Shooting was done Canada and the United Kingdom in Brockville, Montreal, and London. [1] Douglas Leiterman was the completion guarantor for the project and knew that the film was going to run over budget, but believed it would only be up to $800,000. [8]
Leiterman took control of the film away from the producers before editing. [9]
The runtime is 118 minutes, but a longer version with additional characters that runs at 126 minutes was shown at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival. [1] The film's ending was edited between its Cannes showing and North American release. [10]
The film was shown at the Cannes Film Festival on 17 May 1985, and Toronto Festival of Festivals on 5 September. 20th Century Fox distributed the film and opened in Toronto on 6 September, Montreal on 13 September, and New York on 20 September. [1] Lantos and Roth were the first Canadian producers to have two films shown at Cannes at the same time. [11]
A party was held for the film one day before Cannes at Moulin de Mougins with 140 people in attendance and at a cost of $15,000. [12]
The film received a negative response at Cannes, [13] but received a better response at the Toronto Festival of Festivals. [14] In order to become profitable Joshua Then and Now had to earn $20 million. [15]
Mordecai Richler was a Canadian writer. His best known works are The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959) and Barney's Version (1997). His 1970 novel St. Urbain's Horseman and 1989 novel Solomon Gursky Was Here were nominated for the Booker Prize. He is also well known for the Jacob Two-Two fantasy series for children. In addition to his fiction, Richler wrote numerous essays about the Jewish community in Canada, and about Canadian and Quebec nationalism. Richler's Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! (1992), a collection of essays about nationalism and anti-Semitism, generated considerable controversy.
Alan Wolf Arkin was an American actor and filmmaker. In a career spanning seven decades, he received numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Tony Award as well as nominations for six Emmy Awards.
William Theodore Kotcheff is a Bulgarian-Canadian film and television director, writer and producer, known primarily for his work on British and American television productions, such as Armchair Theatre and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. He directed numerous successful films including the Australian Wake in Fright (1971), action films such as the original Rambo movie First Blood (1982) and Uncommon Valor (1983), and comedies like Fun with Dick and Jane (1977), North Dallas Forty (1979), and Weekend at Bernie's (1989).
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz is a 1974 Canadian comedy-drama film directed by Ted Kotcheff and starring Richard Dreyfuss. It is based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Mordecai Richler.
The Decline of the American Empire is a 1986 Canadian sex comedy-drama film directed by Denys Arcand and starring Rémy Girard, Pierre Curzi and Dorothée Berryman. The film follows a group of intellectual friends from the Université de Montréal history department as they engage in a long dialogue about their sexual affairs, touching on issues of adultery, homosexuality, group sex, BDSM and prostitution. A number of characters associate self-indulgence with societal decline.
I've Heard the Mermaids Singing is a 1987 Canadian comedy-drama film directed by Patricia Rozema and starring Sheila McCarthy, Paule Baillargeon, and Ann-Marie MacDonald. It was the first English-language Canadian feature film to win an award at the Cannes Film Festival.
Richard Leiterman was a Canadian cinematographer, best known for documentary and feature film work in the 1960s and 1970s. His cinéma vérité, or direct camera, style helped define Canadian cinema at the time.
The Montreal World Film Festival was one of Canada's oldest international film festivals and the only competitive film festival in North America accredited by the FIAPF. The public festival, which was founded in 1977 as a replacement for the defunct Montreal International Film Festival (1960–68), is held annually in late August in the city of Montreal in Quebec. Unlike the Toronto International Film Festival, which has a greater focus on Canadian and other North American films, the Montreal World Film Festival has a larger diversity of films from all over the world. The festival was cancelled in 2019.
Winter Kept Us Warm is a Canadian romantic drama film, released in 1965. The title comes from the fifth line of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land.
Robert Lantos, CM is a Hungarian-Canadian film producer.
Joshua Then and Now is a Canadian novel written by Mordecai Richler, published in 1980 by McClelland and Stewart. A semi-autobiographical novel, the book is based his life on his neighborhood growing up in Montreal, Quebec, and tells of the life of a writer. Richler later adapted the novel into the feature film Joshua Then and Now, starring James Woods, Alan Arkin, and Gabrielle Lazure; directed by Ted Kotcheff who had previously directed Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.
Jean-Claude Lauzon was a Canadian filmmaker and screenwriter. Born to a working class family in Montreal, Quebec, Lauzon dropped out of high school and worked various jobs before studying film at the Université du Québec à Montréal. His two feature-length films, Night Zoo (1987) and Léolo (1992), established him as one of the most important Canadian directors of his generation. American film critic Roger Ebert wrote that "Lauzon is so motivated by his resentments and desires that everything he creates is pressed into the cause and filled with passion."
Wake in Fright is a 1971 Australian New Wave film directed by Ted Kotcheff, written by Evan Jones, and starring Gary Bond, Donald Pleasence, Chips Rafferty, Sylvia Kay and Jack Thompson. Based on Kenneth Cook's 1961 novel of the same name, it follows a young schoolteacher who descends into personal moral degradation after finding himself stranded in a brutal, menacing town in outback Australia.
In Praise of Older Women is a Canadian film directed by George Kaczender. It is based on Stephen Vizinczey's book In Praise of Older Women.
Bethune: The Making of a Hero is a 1990 biographical period drama film directed by Phillip Borsos. The film is about the life and death of Norman Bethune, a Canadian physician who served as a combat surgeon during the Chinese Civil War. The cast includes Donald Sutherland as Bethune, Helen Mirren as Frances Penny Bethune, Colm Feore as Chester Rice, and Anouk Aimée as Marie-France Coudaire.
John Kemeny was a Hungarian-Canadian film producer whom the Toronto Star called "the forgotten giant of Canadian film history and...the most successful producer in Canadian history." His production credits include The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Atlantic City, and Quest for Fire.
Kyle Thomas is a Canadian screenwriter, director, producer, and actor. His first feature film, The Valley Below, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2014. It garnered two Canadian Screen Award nominations in the categories of Best Supporting Actor for Kris Demeanor and Best Original Song for Dan Mangan's "Wants". The film received largely positive reviews from the Canadian media, including The Globe and Mail and the National Post, who called the film a "superb first feature".
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