Richard Benjamin
Explore the personal and professional triumphs and challenges of actor Natalie Wood, which have often been overshadowed by her premature death.
The extraordinary life of Orson Welles (1915-1985), an enigma of Hollywood, an irreducible independent creator: a musical prodigy, an excellent painter, a master of theater and radio, a modern Shakespeare, a magician who was always searching for a new trick to surprise his audience, a romantic and legendary figure who lived only for cinema.
Henry Poole abandons his fiancée and family business to spend what he believes are his remaining days alone. The discovery of a 'miracle' by a nosy neighbor ruptures his solitude and restores his faith in life.
Fast forgery without mistakes. Shoplifting under pressure. Effective body disposal. The ability to multitask various felonies. These are just a few of the "talents" that mother-and-son grifters Sante and Kenny Kimes possess. Based on shocking true events, this flick takes you into the dark, sordid world of this deadly duo, from their bizarre relationship to their heinous crimes. It's no surprise that two-time Emmy winner Judy Davis earned a nomination for this performance.
Musical dancer on the way out (at 36) Paula McFadden had it swell with actor Tony DeSanti, but instead of taking her to Hollywood he gets a European movie part. He even sublets their (his) New York apartment to Elliot Garfield, who generously lets her stay, even keeping the master bedroom. Pragmatic pre-teen daughter Lucy soon takes to his charm, but Paula remains determined to hate all actors. Despite the stress of a Broadway Shakespeare lead he must play too queer for Frisco, he's determined to snatch romance from ingratitude.
Inspired by Neil Simon's early career experience as a junior writer for Your Show of Shows, the play focuses on Sid Caesar/Jackie Gleason-like Max Prince, the star of a weekly comedy-variety show circa 1953, and his staff, including Simon's alter-ego Lucas Brickman, who maintains a running commentary on the writing, fighting, and wacky antics which take place in the writers' room
Dr. Lionel Waddems (Bob Newhart), a golf fanatic. is put on trial for killing his golf partner (Played by Kelsey Grammer). The movie follows the trial in the news and features interviews by people who knew the men. It is based on 2 short stories "How Doc Waddems Finally Broke 100" and "The Heidi Bowl".
A group of French tourist's dream trip to Los Angeles turns into a nightmare when their Parisian tour guide goes bankrupt and abandons them.
From the director of “Made In America” and “The Money Pit” comes a hilarious look at one of the most expensive blunders in military history. Over 17 years and almost as many billion dollars have gone into devising the BFV (Bradley Fighting Vehicle). There's only one problem. . . it doesn't work.
This film tells the story of a successful writer called Harry Block, played by Allen himself, who draws inspiration from people he knows in real-life, and from events that happened to him, sometimes causing these people to become alienated from him as a result.
Connie Doyle is eighteen, pregnant and alone. She accidentally ends up on a train where she meets Hugh Winterbourne and his wife pregnant Patricia. The train wrecks and she wakes up in the hospital to find out that it's been assumed that she's Patricia. Hugh's mother takes her in and she falls in love with Hugh's brother Bill. Just when she thinks everything is going her way, her ex-boyfriend shows up.
Three young boys pool their money and pay V, a kindhearted prostitute, to strip for them. Afterward, she drives them home to the suburbs -- but then her car breaks down. It's just as well, though, because a mobster named Waltzer is after her, and V realizes the suburbs are the perfect place to hide. But things get a lot more complicated when V falls in love with Tom, a single father who is unaware of her real profession.
A young black woman discovers that her father was a sperm donor, and if that wasn't bad enough, he's white.
Fifteen-year-old Charlotte Flax is tired of her wacky mom moving their family to a different town any time she feels it is necessary. When they move to a small Massachusetts town and Mrs. Flax begins dating a shopkeeper, Charlotte and her 9-year-old sister, Kate, hope that they can finally settle down. But when Charlotte's attraction to an older man gets in the way, the family must learn to accept each other for who they truly are.
Officer Alex Kearney patrols an upscale neighborhood in Philadelphia, where he pulls over a well-connected white collar executive who promises to get even with the policeman. Soon, Kearney learns that he is off the cushy suburban beat and must now work in the deadliest precinct in Philly, where he is partnered with tough veteran cop Dennis Curran. Tensions are high between them, but Kearney soon proves he can play just as rough as the crooks.
It's a mixed bag in the age of illuminating DVD supplements, but First Works effectively demonstrates the early promise of 13 successful filmmakers. Culled from programs originally broadcast on Showtime in 1990, this crude compilation combines student films, early professional work, and interviews with now-famous directors at various stages of commercial and artistic achievement.
Roy Parmenter is an FBI agent in San Diego; 20 years ago his partner was killed by a Soviet spy, nicknamed Scuba, still at large. Scuba is now trying to extort the Soviets; to prove he's serious, he's killing their agents one by one, including "sleepers," agents under deep cover awaiting orders. Roy interviews a high school lad, Jeff Grant, an applicant to the Air Force Academy. In a routine background check, Roy discovers that Jeff's parents are sleepers. He must see if Jeff is also a spy, confront the parents yet protect them, and catch his nemesis. Meanwhile, the Soviets have sent their own spy-catcher, the loner Karpov, to reel in Scuba. Alliances shift; it's cat and mouse.
Trying to rescue her home planet from destruction, a gorgeous extraterrestrial named Celeste arrives on Earth and begins her scientific research. She woos quirky scientist Dr. Steve Mills, a widower with a young daughter. Before long, Celeste finds herself in love with Steve and her new life on Earth, where she experiences true intimacy for the first time. But when she loses sight of her mission, she begins to question where she belongs.
After being evicted from their Manhattan apartment, a couple buy what looks like the home of their dreams—only to find themselves saddled with a bank-account-draining nightmare. Struggling to keep their relationship together as their rambling mansion falls to pieces around them, the two watch in hilarious horror as everything—including the kitchen sink—disappears into the Money Pit.
Henry and Nicky are small town pals from blue collar families with only a short time before they ship off to World War II. Henry begins romancing new-to-town Caddie Winger, believing her to be wealthy. Mischievious and irresponsible, Nicky gets into trouble which forces the other two to become involved, testing their relationship, as well as the friendship between the boys.
Set in Kansas City in 1933, Eastwood plays a police lieutenant known simply by his last name, Speer. Reynolds plays a former cop turned private eye named Mike Murphy. Both Speer and Murphy served on the force together and were once good friends, but are now bitter enemies. When Murphy's partner is slain they team up again to fight the mob.
In quest of a wholesome place to live: at first the Webbers laugh at their neighbors when they leave L.A. for the mountains of Oregon. But when they recognize the same symptoms in their family that made the neighbors leave, they follow them. However their new domicile is a bit more apart from the civilization than expected. Even then it's not a paradise: their neighbors are weird, the next shop is miles away and their house lacks even the most basic comfort. How long will it take until they're packin' it in again?
New York City, 1954: Benjy Stone is the junior writer on the top rated variety/comedy show. His idol Alan Swann, an actor with a drinking problem, is to be that week's guest star.
After his family moves to a new house, a young boy discovers a mysterious book that details a curse hanging over the date of Saturday the 14th. Opening the book releases a band of monsters into the house and the family must join together to save themselves and their neighborhood.
The president (Bob Newhart) and his boozing wife (Madeline Kahn) go to Africa to bargain for their abducted daughter's (Gilda Radner) return.
A remake of 1944's Lon Chaney film Weird Woman (the first was Burn, Witch, Burn! in 1962) is more of a horror spoof, as three women use witchcraft to help their professor husbands further their careers. When a higher position becomes available in the university, they turn on each other, and no one is safe!
Jeff and Mari Thompson are contently married, but they are stunned to see many of their friends and neighbors going through separations and divorces. Seemingly surrounded by people with domestic problems, Jeff and Mari begin to question their own relationship.
Oregon, 1980: Jane, Elaine and Louise are all feeling the effects of inflation and cannot afford, as the title states, the high cost of living. Jane cannot afford a babysitter or get married and if she wants privacy with her boyfriend, she has to sleep in the car. Even worse, her war veteran father comes to live with her to turn her life upside down. Louise lives a happy life with her veterinarian husband, Albert. She runs an antique shop on the side, but since it doesn't take in any profit, the IRS considers it a hobby. She needs to come up with the money to keep it going, or she will be trouble with the IRS. Elaine's husband has left her for another woman and without any money. She is in a constant struggle with banks, power companies, and gas stations. She needs money to get by and also catches the eye of police officer Jack. The local mall is having a contest that features a giant money ball that states it will help fight the inflation...
Old Mr. Parker has made millions inventing and selling games. At the beginning of the movie, he dies and his relatives gather for the reading of the will. However, Old Mr. Parker is a game player to the last, and his will stipulates a Scavenger Hunt to determine which relative will get the inheritance. The winner of the scavenger hunt gets all the money, the rest get nothing.
Dracula and Renefield relocate to 70's era New York in search of Cindy Sondheim (the reincarnation of Dracula's one true love, Mina Harker). "Trouble adjusting" is a wild understatement for the Count as he battles Cindy's psychiatrist, Jeffrey Rosenberg (a descendant of Van Helsing who changed his name for professional reasons?), who may almost certainly, possibly, may be in love with Cindy too.
Charley is a surgeon who's recently lost his wife; he embarks on a tragicomic romantic quest with one woman after another until he meets up with Ann, a singular woman, closer to his own age, who immediately and unexpectedly captures his heart.
Concert promoter Nick Loomis is sent to Sydney by his ex father-in-law and boss Garth Kingswood, and asked to deliver a briefcase to a foreigner. When the man is killed in the airport, Loomis ends up entangled in corporate spying and is forced to fight for his life with the help of Terry McKenna, a woman from Austin working for the Sydney Opera House.
Quark is an American science fiction situation comedy starring Richard Benjamin broadcast on NBC. The pilot first aired on May 7, 1977, and the series followed as a mid-season replacement in February 1978. The series was cancelled in April 1978. Quark was created by Buck Henry, co-creator of the spy spoof Get Smart. The show was set on a United Galaxy Sanitation Patrol Cruiser, an interstellar garbage scow operating out of United Galaxies Space Station Perma One in the year 2226. Adam Quark, the main character, works to clean up trash in space by collecting "space baggies" with his trusted and highly unusual crew. In its short run, Quark satirized such science fiction as Star Wars, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Flash Gordon. Three of the episodes were direct satires of Star Trek episodes. The series won one Emmy Award nomination, for costume designer Grady Hunt's work in the episode "All the Emperor's Quasi-Norms, Part 2". The complete series was released on DVD on October 14, 2008.
Lewis and Clark, aka The Sunshine Boys, were famous comedians during the vaudeville era, but off-stage they couldn't stand each other and haven't spoken in over 20 years of retirement. Willy Clark's nephew is the producer of a TV variety show that wants to feature a reunion of this classic duo. It is up to him to try to get the Sunshine Boys back together again.
A year after Sheila is killed in a hit-and-run, her multimillionaire husband invites a group of friends to spend a week on his yacht playing a scavenger hunt-style mystery game. The game turns out to be all too real and all too deadly.
During a session with his psychoanalyst, Alexander Portnoy rants about everything that is bothering him. His complaints include his childhood and his family with an emphasis on his mother, his sexual fantasies and the problems that he has with women, and his obsessive feelings about his Judaism.
Director Lawrence Turman's 1971 drama examines a young couple's unhappy marriage.
In the midst of the Cuban missile crisis, a mild-mannered professor decides to live out all of his daydreams, travelling across the country and adopting a different persona in each city.
Tina Balser is a bored New York housewife-mother married to Jonathan, a pompous, social-climbing lawyer who ridicules her in front of their children, criticizing everything she does or wears. She begins an affair with George Prager, a dashing, successful and blatantly sadistic writer.
A Jewish man and a jewish woman meet and while attracted to each other find that their worlds are very different. She is the archetypical Jewish-American-Princess, very emotionally involved with her parents world and the world they have created for her while he is much less dependent on his family. They begin an affair which brings more differences to the surface.
He & She is an American sitcom that aired on the CBS television network as part of its 1967-1968 lineup, originally sponsored by General Foods and Lever Brothers. He & She is widely considered to be ahead of its time by broadcast historians. Its sophisticated approach to comedy was viewed as opening doors to the groundbreaking MTM family of sitcoms of the 1970s, beginning with The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1970. The character of Oscar was openly the pattern for the Ted Baxter character, for which creator Leonard Stern granted permission. CBS aired reruns of He & She in prime time from June 1970 to September 1970.
