![]() And in Perfect from 1985, a reporter for Rolling Stone (John Travolta) has spent so much time delivering dirt on the beautiful people, that when he becomes enamored of a wary aerobics instructor (Jamie Lee Curtis), even as he tries to help tell her truth to the world, he is likely only abetting another betrayal. In Mike’s Murder from 1984, an ordinary woman (Debra Winger) who maintains sporadic contact with a former fling learns he has been murdered after he reached out to her for help, and in the course of piecing together the life he kept hidden from her, she becomes vulnerable to the same darkness that consumed him. Monday, November 8 th offers two mid-’80s Bridges stories, each in their own ways about characters pursuing a greater unknown that could very well lead to their own downfall. ![]() ![]() The China Syndrome would go on to be nominated for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and receive 5 Academy Award nominations, including Best Actor for Jack Lemmon and Best Actress for Jane Fonda. Walter Cronkite expressed interest in interviewing Bridges on the convergence, but the publicity-shy director declined, not wishing to give the appearance of using a national disaster to promote himself. Twelve days after its release, the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania suffered a partial meltdown and resultant radiation leak that mirrored the film’s fears, and increased public interest in seeing it. ![]() Initially, several pundits for the industry decried the film’s assertions as fiction and slander. Cook and documentarian Mike Gray, Bridges imagined a cautionary tale about the safety of nuclear power plants and the corporate impulse to publicly deny dangerous conditions, modeled on events that happened in the Dresden plant outside Chicago. Our tribute begins with Bridges’ fourth and most lauded film, 1979’s The China Syndrome, on Friday, November 5 th & Saturday, November 6 th. He would direct 7 more films and pen 4 for others during his career. After scripting well-received projects as The Appaloosa and Colossus: the Forbin Project, Bridges would make his first feature in 1970, The Baby Maker, from his own original screenplay. Bridges would adapt several short suspense stories for “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” which led to a 1963 Emmy nomination for his take on Ray Bradbury’s “The Jar,” and a 1966 Edgar award for scripting “An Unlocked Window.” (Anyone who’s seen that classic episode to this day still must get chills upon hearing, “You’re such a pretty nurse, Rita.”) His first directing job was a 1966 stage production of The Candied House, written by his lifetime companion Jack Larson. Throughout this first half of November, the New Beverly is bringing his films back to reacquaint audiences with one of the more empathetic observers of a generation.Īrkansas-born James Bridges made his way to Hollywood in 1956 with acting aspirations, and amassed small roles in genre fare before switching focus to writing after meeting actor/producer Norman Lloyd. Yet while elements of his films have become enshrined in our cultural lexicon, and his name graces one of the screening rooms at UCLA where he once taught, awareness of the films themselves and his auteurship has dissipated in the decades since his untimely death from cancer at 57 in 1993. For two decades, writer/director James Bridges and his films zeroed in on events and emotions that were affecting America.
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