The Golden Raspberry Awards is a parody award show honoring the worst of cinematic failures. Co-founded by UCLA film graduates and film industry veterans John J. B. Wilson and Mo Murphy, the Razzie Awards' satirical annual ceremony is preceded by its opposite, the Academy Awards, by four decades. The term raspberry is used in its irreverent sense, as in "blowing a raspberry". The statuette is a golf ball-sized raspberry atop a Super 8mm film reel atop a 35-millimeter film core with brown wood shelf paper glued and wrapped around it—sitting atop a jar lid spray-painted gold. The Golden Raspberry Foundation has claimed that the award "encourages well-known filmmakers and top-notch performers to own their bad."
An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn is a 1997 American mockumentary black comedy film directed by Arthur Hiller, written by Joe Eszterhas and starring Eric Idle as a director unfortunately named Alan Smithee, a traditional pseudonym used in Hollywood for directors disowning a project. The film follows Smithee as he steals the negatives to his latest film and goes on the run.
Bo Derek is an American actress and model. She is best known for her breakout role in the romantic comedy film 10 (1979). Her other credits include Richard Lang's A Change of Seasons (1980) and the ill-fated films Fantasies, Tarzan, the Ape Man, Bolero (1984), and Ghosts Can't Do It (1989), all four of which were directed by her first husband, John Derek. Widowed in 1998, she married actor John Corbett in 2020.
Yaphet Frederick Kotto was an American actor for film and television. He starred in the NBC television series Homicide: Life on the Street (1993–1999) as Lieutenant Al Giardello. His films include the science-fiction horror film Alien (1979), the science-fiction action film The Running Man (1987), the James Bond film Live and Let Die (1973) in which he portrayed the main villain Dr. Kananga, and the action comedy Midnight Run (1988) opposite Robert De Niro.
Mercury Rising is a 1998 American action thriller film starring Bruce Willis and Alec Baldwin. Directed by Harold Becker, the film is based on Ryne Douglas Pearson's 1996 novel originally published as Simple Simon, which was the working title of the film. Willis plays Art Jeffries, an undercover FBI agent who protects a nine-year-old autistic boy, Simon Lynch, who is targeted by government assassins after he cracks a top secret government code.
Midnight Run is a 1988 American action comedy film directed by Martin Brest and starring Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin. Yaphet Kotto, John Ashton, Dennis Farina, Joe Pantoliano, and Philip Baker Hall play supporting roles.
Daniel Lawrence Whitney, known professionally as Larry the Cable Guy, is an American stand-up comedian, actor, and former radio personality. He was one of the members of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, a comedy troupe which included Bill Engvall, Ron White, and Jeff Foxworthy.
The Razzie Award for Worst Actor is an award presented at the annual Golden Raspberry Awards to the worst actor of the previous year. The following is a list of nominees and recipients of that award, along with the film(s) for which they were nominated.
Blue Collar is a 1978 American crime drama film directed by Paul Schrader in his directorial debut. Written by Schrader and his brother Leonard, the film stars Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto. The film is both a critique of union practices and an examination of life in a working-class Rust Belt enclave.
Dirty Love is a 2005 American romantic comedy film written by and starring Jenny McCarthy and directed by John Mallory Asher. At the time of filming, McCarthy and Asher were married; they divorced the month the film was released. Playing heavily off McCarthy's reputation for toilet humor, the film received negative reviews from critics and received the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Picture, as well as Worst Screenplay, Worst Director, and Worst Actress for McCarthy.
Truck Turner, also known as Black Bullet, is a 1974 blaxploitation film, starring Isaac Hayes and Yaphet Kotto, and directed by Jonathan Kaplan. The screenplay was written by Michael Allin, Leigh Chapman, and Oscar Williams. Hayes also scored the music for the soundtrack. The film was released by American International Pictures as a double feature with Foxy Brown.
88 Minutes is a 2007 American thriller film directed by Jon Avnet and starring Al Pacino, Alicia Witt, Leelee Sobieski, William Forsythe, Deborah Kara Unger, Amy Brenneman, Neal McDonough and Benjamin McKenzie. In the film, famed forensic psychiatrist Dr. Jack Gramm (Pacino) is one of the most sought-after profilers in the world. His expert testimony resulted in the conviction of serial killer Jon Forster (McDonough). However, on the eve of Forster's execution, one of Gramm's students is murdered in a vicious copycat crime, and Gramm himself receives an ominous message informing him that he has 88 minutes to live. Filming began in the Vancouver area on October 8, 2005, and wrapped up in December 2005. In 2007 the film was released in various European countries.
Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector is a 2006 American comedy film starring American stand-up comedian Larry the Cable Guy. Larry, a municipal restaurant health inspector, is assigned a new rookie partner after recklessly closing restaurants for code violations, Amy Butlin, by his boss, Bart Tatlock. Together, Larry and Amy work to solve a series of food poisonings at four-star restaurants.
The Star Chamber is a 1983 American crime thriller film starring Michael Douglas, Hal Holbrook, Yaphet Kotto, Sharon Gless, James B. Sikking, and Joe Regalbuto. The film was written by Roderick Taylor and Peter Hyams and directed by Hyams. Its title is taken from the name of the Star Chamber, a 15th−17th-century English court.
Live and Let Die is a 1973 spy film. It is the eighth film in the James Bond series produced by Eon Productions, and the first to star Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. It was directed by Guy Hamilton and produced by Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, while Tom Mankiewicz wrote the script. Although the producers had approached Sean Connery to return after Diamonds Are Forever (1971), he declined and a search for a new actor led to Moore being signed.
Jennifer Ann McCarthy-Wahlberg is an American actress, model, and television personality. She began her career in 1993 as a nude model for Playboy magazine and was later named their Playmate of the Year. McCarthy then had a television and film acting career, beginning as a co-host on the MTV game show Singled Out (1995–1997) and afterwards starring in the eponymous sitcom Jenny (1997–1998), as well as films including BASEketball (1998), Scream 3 (2000), Dirty Love (2005), John Tucker Must Die (2006), and Santa Baby (2006). In 2013, she hosted her own television talk show The Jenny McCarthy Show, and became a co-host of the ABC talk show The View, appearing on the program until 2014. Since 2019, McCarthy has been a judge on the Fox musical competition show The Masked Singer.
The 28th Golden Raspberry Awards, or Razzies, were held on February 23, 2008, in Santa Monica, California to honor the worst films the film industry had to offer in 2007. The nominations were announced on January 21. In line with Razzies tradition, both the nominee announcements and ceremony preceded the corresponding Academy Awards functions by one day.
The Razzie Award for Worst Screen Combo is an award presented at the annual Golden Raspberry Awards to the worst movie pairing or cast of the past year. The following is a list of nominees and recipients of the awards, along with the film(s) for which they were nominated.
Badge of the Assassin is a 1985 television film starring James Woods, Yaphet Kotto and Alex Rocco. It was directed by Mel Damski. The film first aired on the Columbia Broadcasting System network on November 2, 1985. The film's production company was Blatt-Singer Productions.
The Happytime Murders is a 2018 American adult puppet buddy cop crime comedy film directed by Brian Henson and written by Todd Berger from a story by Berger and Dee Austin Robertson. The film stars Melissa McCarthy, Bill Barretta, Joel McHale, Maya Rudolph, Leslie David Baker, and Elizabeth Banks. Set in a world where humans and living puppets co-exist, the film follows a puppet private investigator and a human police detective who must solve a murder spree of retired sitcom stars.
