Boulevard of Broken Dreams (film)

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Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Directed by Pino Amenta
Written by Frank Howson
Produced byFrank Howson
Starring John Waters
Penelope Stewart
Kim Gyngell
Andrew McFarlane
Kevin Miles
Production
company
Distributed byHoyts
Release date
  • 1988 (1988)
CountryAustralia
Language English
BudgetAU$2 million [1] [2]
Box officeAU$126,359 (Australia) [3]

Boulevard of Broken Dreams is a 1988 Australian film. It was the first movie from Boulevard Films.

Contents

Plot

A successful Australian writer discovers he has cancer and returns home to Melbourne to be with his estranged wife and daughter.

Cast

Production

The film was inspired by the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story "Babylon Revisited". [4]

Producer-writer Frank Howson met Pino Amenta when discussing a possible mini-series about Les Darcy. That was never made but they decided to collaborate on this film. [1]

The original choice for the lead was John Hargreaves but when he was signed on another project Amenta suggested casting John Waters, who had just made Nancy Wake for the director. [4]

Howson later said, "It was the first film we'd done, and it was made with a lot of commercial requirements because we weren't in the position to just make a film and hope for the best. We set out to make a film that would do well here and internationally." [5]

Among these decisions was the ending. Originally, John Waters' character was to get on a plane to Los Angeles without anyone knowing that he returned home to die. In the final film, though, he was reunited with his wife and child. [5]

Howson placed a great emphasis on music for the movie:

We recorded a great deal of those songs in LA with people like Richie Havens, Dan Hill, and Marc Jordan. On most Australian productions, the soundtrack tends to be done last and usually at a stage when they have almost run out of money. It suffers as a result. To me, the soundtrack is one of the most important things for the emotional balance of a film. [6]

Soundtrack

The soundtrack album was released in 1988 through CBS. It earned songwriters Frank Howson, John Capek, Beeb Birtles and David Scofield a nomination for the 1989 ARIA Award for Best Original Soundtrack, Cast or Show Album.

Reception

John Waters earned an AFI Award for Best Actor and the film was popular enough for Boulevard Films to secure funding for a further five movies. [1] Reviews were mostly poor. [7]

According to Filmink "Melbourne has rarely looked more beautiful than in this movie, which has a fabulous cast and story full of potential... but is let down by its scripting." [8]

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References

  1. 1 2 3 David Stratton, The Avocado Plantation: Boom and Bust in the Australian Film Industry, Pan MacMillan, 1990 p198-200
  2. ↑ "Production Survey", Cinema Papers, September 1987 p67
  3. ↑ Australian Films at the Australian Box Office Archived 9 February 2014 at the Wayback Machine Report for Film Victoria
  4. 1 2 "Producer and Writer Frank Howson on Laura Branigan, the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, the Art of Creation and more…". Cult Film Alley. 13 July 2019.
  5. 1 2 Paul Kalina, "Boulevard Films", Cinema Papers, November 1989 p42-43
  6. ↑ Paul Kalina, "Frank Howson", Cinema Papers, November 1989 p46
  7. ↑ Paul Byrnes, 'Not just wet but dripping', The Sydney Morning Herald, 19 October 1988 accessed 17 October 2012
  8. ↑ Vagg, Stephen (21 February 2024). "Frank Howson: The Unsung Auteur". Filmink.
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