Email Author Peter Szatmary

1994 Stories by Peter Szatmary

• Robert's Rules of Fashion

  published December 22, 1994

  "Oh, this is a stag party," Robert Altman jokes as he enters a room full of male journalists gathered round a table for a Ready to Wear press... More >>

• Playing the Season

  published December 8, 1994

  Courtesy of the Houston theater scene, I received my Christmas presents early this year. And, I'm pleased to report, my stocking didn't contain... More >>

• Shame, Shame, Shame

  published December 8, 1994

  In the opening scene of A Low Down Dirty Shame, a maid rolls her cleaning cart down a hallway of an upscale high-rise hotel. Opening a door before... More >>

• An American Doll's House

  published December 1, 1994

  "But you see, I can't do any other work," observes Lulu Bett, a well-bred spinster confined to domesticity in small-town America, circa 1920.... More >>

• Woman Trouble

  published December 1, 1994

  You might not have noticed it, but in the last six months, the leading ranks of American film directors has grown by one. John Dahl is the most... More >>

• Mamet at the Movies

  published November 17, 1994

  When it comes to filmmaking, David Mamet is as hard to figure as the conflicted characters he writes about. In his screenplays that are remakes of... More >>

• Soul Music

  published November 10, 1994

  A floozy, preparing to host a cocktail party she's not at all ready for, nervously rehearses the social niceties she plans for one of her guests,... More >>

• No Punchin Judy

  published November 3, 1994

  The Stonewall riots, three days of uprisings in 1969 that helped launch the gay rights revolution, began hours after the funeral of Judy Garland.... More >>

• Not Much to Like

  published October 27, 1994

  Late in I Like It Like That, a smalltime ex-con shares a cup of ice cream with two of his children. It's the Bronx; they're on a stoop across the... More >>

• Marie or Maria?

  published October 20, 1994

  "The hills are alive with the sound of ... paper roses?" That's right, Marie Osmond -- who made her show business debut at age three on The Andy... More >>

• Good Wood

  published October 13, 1994

  "Visions are worth fighting for," a minor character informs a major one late in Tim Burton's visually striking, charmingly loopy Ed Wood, and we... More >>

• Song of India

  published October 6, 1994

  As the producing half of the famed Ivory/ Merchant moviemaking team, Ismail Merchant is responsible for creating the luminous look of such films... More >>

• Streep in the Wild

  published September 29, 1994

  Meryl Streep is as good as Arnold Schwarzenegger. I never thought I'd be saying this. But then again, I never thought that Streep, she of the... More >>

• Conversation Piece

  published September 15, 1994

  "Da rrrroongplatz? Oop da-doll! Du doppa da rektplatz! Dameetcha playzeer. Comintern. Police. Plop da chah." Believe it or not, you've just... More >>

• Lost in Africa

  published September 15, 1994

  What's Bruce Beresford, acclaimed director of Driving Miss Daisy, doing making a film in which an aged duchess is shown naked from behind as she... More >>

• Wagons Ho Hum

  published September 8, 1994

  John Candy galloping on horseback is not a pretty picture. Of course, it's not intended to be. But it's not an especially amusing picture, either.... More >>

• Coming Unraveled

  published September 1, 1994

  Upon its 1979 premiere, Michael Weller's Loose Ends was hailed by many as the most acute depiction of the Me Generation in American theater. After... More >>

• Queens of Australia

  published September 1, 1994

  Drag queens in the Outback, laddies. Wearing Scarlett O'Hara outfits and showing a Carmen Miranda flair. Lip-synching to the Village People, ABBA... More >>

• The Sick and the Dead

  published August 25, 1994

  Only in the movies could a therapist speak inconsiderately to a frayed patient, watch her commit suicide by jumping out his office window, quit... More >>

• Failed Quest

  published August 18, 1994

  An outdoor amphitheater in a deserted part of a beach community, caressed by lapping breezes from the Gulf of Mexico on a warm summer night with... More >>

• Cosmic Trash

  published August 18, 1994

  Jesus H. Christ! In Sincerity Forever, Mac Wellman's strenuous 1990 one-act satire about extremist thinking, the Son of God, toting staff and... More >>

• Animal Acts

  published August 11, 1994

  Following that great show biz tradition, a couple of long-ago Hollywood icons are making a comeback. After decades of being relegated to fond... More >>

• Out of Africa

  published August 4, 1994

  In Guelwaar, a Senegalese film director raised a Muslim takes on the Christian-Muslim conflict in Africa by focusing on a tiny Senegalese village... More >>

• Sadism by the Sea

  published July 28, 1994

  What's not to like in a musical in which a sadistic dentist wears motorcycle leathers, sniffs nitrous oxide like people inhale sinus medicine,... More >>

• Mother Love

  published July 28, 1994

  Apparently your mother liks to spend her time in a horizontal position," a doctor chides bedridden Susan in front of her home-from-college son... More >>