Email Author Peter Szatmary

1994 Stories by Peter Szatmary

• Walk on the Wilde Side

  published April 7, 1994

  In the months before August 1967, when his lover bludgeoned him to death with a hammer, Joe Orton had finally begun to make some theatrical waves.... More >>

• Hollywood Lives, Hollywood Lies

  published April 7, 1994

  Barry Levinson's 1992 fantasy Toys was an interesting flop. Who would have thought that the man who directed Bugsy, The Natural and Rain Man; who... More >>

• A Comedy of Marryment

  published March 31, 1994

  If real-life nuptials are even a quarter as funny as those portrayed in Four Weddings and a Funeral, get me to the church on time. Mike Newell's... More >>

• The Paper Delivers

  published March 24, 1994

  Two minor characters, veteran reporters on a big-city newspaper, are battling over turf on a late-breaking crime story. "You got the cops," one... More >>

• Crimes of the Hearty Har Hars

  published March 17, 1994

  It's a crapshoot when a domestic comedy begins with an old Southern woman's reading her husband a letter from her sister about so-and-so's... More >>

• 24 Lies Per Second

  published March 17, 1994

  East German newsreels and educational films can be funny, if a bit pathetically so. A miner supposedly digs four times his coal quota: "From this... More >>

• Burn, Lady, Burn!

  published March 10, 1994

  A woman condemned to be burned at the stake as a witch. A man so disappointed in the world that he demands to be hanged for a murder he didn't... More >>

• Barely Down Under

  published March 10, 1994

  If D.H. Lawrence ever were to get a film past the censors, Sirens might be it. Ripe with explicit nudity and suggestive encounters, the movie... More >>

• Yucking It Up

  published March 10, 1994

  As creator, writer, director and producer of the TV series WKRP in Cincinnati, Frank's Place and The Famous Teddy Z, Hugh Wilson took standard... More >>

• Love Is Murder

  published March 3, 1994

  Alan Bowne's 1987 Beirut, a futuristic AIDS morality play receiving its frank Houston premiere at Theater LaB, certainly hits the ground running.... More >>

• The Chips Are Down

  published March 3, 1994

  Instead of calling his latest sports screenplay Blue Chips, Ron Shelton (writer/director of Bull Durham and White Men Can't Jump) should've titled... More >>

• The Celluloid of the President

  published February 17, 1994

  What's remarkable about The War Room, D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus' Oscar-nominated, behind-the-scenes documentary on the Clinton campaign's... More >>

• Best-Laid Schemes

  published February 10, 1994

  If you're a regular theatergoer, every now and again you see a performance so complete, commanding, individual, that the player is a glorious... More >>

• It's All Great

  published February 10, 1994

  Shortly after the 1941 premiere of his classic Citizen Kane, Orson Welles was prevailed upon by Nelson Rockefeller, the State Department's... More >>

• Anything Goes?

  published February 10, 1994

  What's wrong with a movie musical? Everything, apparently. Preview audiences so hated the musical version of I'll Do Anything that mindful... More >>

• Dumb Guns

  published February 3, 1994

  If you wouldn't think twice about finding rap stars hanging out in a bar in the Amazon jungle, if you'd agree that a prudent way to make a... More >>

• Peter X

  published February 3, 1994

  An opening image in Stepping Razor -- Red X, a disappointing biography of reggae legend Peter Tosh, is graffiti on a Jamaican boulder reading "You... More >>

• Caesar in Sneakers

  published January 27, 1994

  "Mischief, thou art afoot," Marcus Antonius says after inciting his fellowmen. "Take thou what course thou wilt." The same goes for Main... More >>

• Into Africa

  published January 27, 1994

  Rice University professor and acclaimed writer Max Apple (author of two novels, Zip and The Propheteers, and two collections of short stories, The... More >>

• Fever Pitch

  published January 20, 1994

  Doors slammed in such a life-and-death fashion that they sound like pistol shots. Ringing phones that never shut up and bosomy beauties who never... More >>

• Stella

  published January 20, 1994

  The Museum of Fine Arts kicks off its Greek film festival in fine form with Stella (1955), a good old-fashioned melodrama about a small town's big... More >>

• Wrestling Ernest Hemingway

  published January 20, 1994

  If you want to see four old pros who really know what they're doing, watch Wrestling Ernest Hemingway, a small, touching movie about elderly... More >>

• A Star Is Porn

  published January 13, 1994

  "I am a person who's totally devoted to the subject of sex," proclaims Annie Sprinkle, former prostitute, porn star and pinup model now turned... More >>

• Last Call at Maud's

  published January 13, 1994

  Tired of the typical bar scene? Then check out Paris Poirier's Last Call at Maud's, a witty yet serious, entertaining yet informative, intimate... More >>

• Bad Behaviour

  published January 13, 1994

  There's a new kid on Mike Leigh's block. The British director of acutely funny, character-driven, improvised films (Nuts in May, Life is Sweet)... More >>