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12 Episodes 1991 - 1992
Episode 1
The weekly cinema magazine starts a second series on board a Mediterranean liner, for an exclusive interview with Roman Polanski at work on his new erotic thriller Bitter Moon. Also, do writers need directors? Four British writers who have recently directed their own screenplays, including Hanif Kureishi, talk about their move from behind the typewriter to behind the camera. Plus, Kathryn Bigelow explains how she planned Point Break's amazing 90-second bank robbery sequence.
Episode 2
The Fisher King, Dead Again, Shattered and Regarding Henry all feature characters who have lost their memories. Moving Pictures talks to the writers, directors and producers of this spate of films, including Fisher King director Terry Gilliam. And a look at the life and work of Oscar Micheaux, a black writer/producer/director who made more than 40 features between 1910 and the 1940s. Plus Werner Herzog, maverick of the German cinema, on why he risks life and limb making movies in some of the world's most dangerous terrain.
Episode 3
First -time director Barry Sonnenfeld talks about his $35 million comedy based on the cult cartoons of Charles Addams, The Addams Family, starring Anjelica Huston. Plus a profile of Samuel Z. Arkoff, the legendary B-movie producer who gave Corman, Coppola, Scorsese, Woody Allen and John Milius their breaks. And Australian director Jocelyn Moorhouse talks about her first film.
Episode 4
Steven Soderbergh, director of the award-winning Sex, Lies and Videotape, has just completed his long-awaited second feature. Refusing lucrative offers from Hollywood for big-budget studio projects, Soderbergh opted instead for Kafka, a black-and-white film starring Jeremy Irons. Soderbergh and his collaborators talk exclusively to Moving Pictures about life after Sex. Plus an affectionate look at a family whose experience spans the postwar British cinema - the Thomases. Jeremy Thomas produced Bertolucci's Oscar-laden Last Emperor; his father Ralph directed Dirk Bogarde in the Doctor films, while uncle Gerald was responsible for the Carry On cycle.
Episode 5
Tonight's programme is the first full-length portrait of controversial director Sam Peckinpah who died in 1984. His films included The Getaway and Straw Dogs, but he was most closely identified with westerns like The Wild Bunch, Ride the High Country, Guns in the Afternoon, and Pat Garrett. Combining the intensely violent with the deeply elegiac, Peckinpah did more than anyone to dramatise the death of the west. Actors Kris Kristofferson, James Coburn, Ali MacGraw, Jason Robards and other collaborators reflect on working with this unique maverick.
Episode 6
Joe Eszterhas is the highest paid screenwriter in the world. He got$3 million for his latest film Basic Instinct. He is also the most controversial writer in Hollywood - currently accusing his ex-agent of threatening to murder him, attacking the cult of the director and offering to do a complete rewrite halfway through shooting to appease protesters about Basic Instinct's lesbian killer. In tonight's programme, the basic instincts of a bestselling screenwriter are discussed by Eszterhas, his collaborators (directors Costa-Gavras and Norman Jewison) and his critics. Plus, French director Bertrand Blier on his latest surreal comedy Merci la vie.
Episode 7
Alex Cox reports from Dallas on the controversy surrounding Oliver Stone's new film about the Kennedy assassination, JFK. Plus a profile of producer Arnon Milchan, and a report from Moscow on the long unseen Soviet cinema of the 60s.
Episode 8
BBC2's weekly cinema night takes a look at transformation movies, and interviews Percy Adlon, director of the cult hit Bagdad Cafe. Plus why three directors regard 1930s French writer-director Jean Vigo as one of cinema's greatest film-makers.
Episode 9
Skip Lievsay discusses "designing sound" for the films Cape Fear, Matewan and Barton Fink. There's a profile of the film studios at Babelsberg in Berlin where Metropolis, The Blue Angel and Baron Munchhausen were made, and an interview with Wim Wenders, whose Until the End of the World was partly shot there last year. Also, how three first time writer-directors, whose new films were rejected by the usual British backers, raised their money in unusual ways. David Cohen (The Pleasure Principle) got his budget from his NatWest bank manager. Mark Peploe (Afraid of the Dark), raised European co-production money, and Mark Harmon took his Blame It on the Bellboy script to Disney.
Episode 10
A profile of macho maverick writer/director James Toback on the eve of the release of Bugsy (1991), a gangster film starring Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, for which he wrote the screenplay. Plus a look at French cinema, which is taking a leaf out of Hollywood's book and releasing four films about their colonial past in Indo-China - including Jean-Jacques Annaud's The Lover (1992) and Indochine (1992), starring Catherine Deneuve.
Episode 11
Writer/director Lawrence Kasdan talks about his new film, Grand Canyon (1991). Plus, Serbian film-maker Dusan Makavejev on the cinema of civil war; and Charles Bennett, who wrote Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929) in 1929, still writing in his 90s.
Episode 12
Featuring a report on director Robert Altman. After The Long Goodbye, M*A*S*H and Nashville, he has made The Player - a satire about the movie business. Plus the New York homicide cop who advises Hollywood writers on getting murder right on screen; and maverick film-maker Errol Morris.