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Some of My Best Friends Are... | |
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Directed by | Mervyn Nelson |
Written by | Mervyn Nelson |
Produced by | John Lauricella Martin Richards |
Starring | Fannie Flagg Rue McClanahan Candy Darling |
Cinematography | Tony Mitchell |
Edited by | Richard Cadenas Angelo Ross |
Music by | Gordon Rose |
Distributed by | American International Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 110 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Some of My Best Friends Are... is a 1971 drama film written and directed by Mervyn Nelson and starring Fannie Flagg, Rue McClanahan, and Candy Darling.
On Christmas Eve 1971, in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, a group of gay men and lesbians meet at the mob-owned Blue Jay Bar to talk about their lives and relationships.
Vincent Canby, in an unfavorable review, called the movie "a second-rate spin-off from 'The Boys in the Band,'" with "hammy performances and a sentimental screenplay that sounds as if it had just been let out after 30 years in a closet":
When most of the characters in a movie are as full of dopey sentiments, as well as of self-hatred and of self-exploitation, as the movie that contains them, it's almost impossible to differentiate between an intentional second-rateness and serious moviemaking of no great quality. It's impossible, that is, until it becomes obvious that Mervyn Nelson, who both wrote the screenplay and directed the film, shares with his characters not only a large amount of boozy self-pity, but also the sort of romanticism that permits characters to define themselves—without irony—in the clichés of old-fashioned Hollywood soap opera. **** Better performances might possibly have given some life to such lines and situations, but under Mr. Nelson's solemn direction, they sound like parodies of real emotions. [1]
Eddi-Rue McClanahan was an American actress and comedian best known for her roles on television sitcoms, including Vivian Harmon on Maude (1972–78), Aunt Fran Crowley on Mama's Family (1983–84), and Blanche Devereaux on The Golden Girls (1985–92), and its spin-off series The Golden Palace (1992–93).
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Fannie Flagg is an American actress, comedian, and author. She is best known as a semi-regular panelist on the 1973–1982 versions of the game show Match Game and for the 1987 novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, which she adapted into the script for the 1991 motion picture Fried Green Tomatoes. She was nominated for an Academy Award for the screenplay adaptation. Flagg lives in California and Alabama.
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Vincent Canby was an American film and theatre critic who served as the chief film critic for The New York Times from 1969 until the early 1990s, then its chief theatre critic from 1994 until his death in 2000. He reviewed more than one thousand films during his tenure there.
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84 Charing Cross Road is a 1987 British-American drama film directed by David Jones, and starring Anne Bancroft, Anthony Hopkins, Judi Dench, Mercedes Ruehl, and Jean De Baer. It is produced by Bancroft's husband, Mel Brooks. The screenplay by Hugh Whitemore is based on a play by James Roose-Evans, which itself is an adaptation of the 1970 epistolary memoir of the same name by Helene Hanff — a compilation of letters between Hanff and Frank Doel dating from 1949 to 1968. Several characters who are not in the play were added for the film, including Hanff's Manhattan friends and Doel's wife Nora.
Carol Sobieski was an American screenwriter whose work included the scripts for Annie (1982) and Fried Green Tomatoes (1991).
Rusty: A Dog's Tale is a 1998 family film directed by Shuki Levy and starring Hal Holbrook and Rue McClanahan. The movie was produced by Saban Entertainment and distributed by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment under the CBS/Fox Video label.
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The 55th Street Playhouse—periodically referred to as the 55th Street Cinema and Europa Theatre—was a 253-seat movie house at 154 West 55th Street, Midtown Manhattan, New York City, that opened on May 20, 1927. Many classic art and foreign-language films, including those by Jean Cocteau, Sergei Eisenstein, Federico Fellini, Abel Gance, Fritz Lang, Josef Von Sternberg and Orson Welles, were featured at the theater. Later, Andy Warhol presented many of his notable films in this building in the late 1960s. Other notable films were also shown at the theater, including Boys in the Sand (1971) and Him (1974).