USA,
1985, 87 min
Shown in 1985
CREDITS
- dir
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Robert N. Zagone
- scr
-
Robert N. Zagone
- cast
-
Danny Glover, Joe Bellan, Bob Sarlatte, Victor Wong, Jane Dornacker, Christa Victoria
-
COMMENTS
Robert N. Zagone in person.
Bay Area Filmmaker Robert Zagone starts his black, slightly bizarre adventure-comedy at full speed as a San Francisco morgue attendant opens a large drawer, a corpse rolls toward us and the soundtrack erupts with James Brown screaming, “I Feel Good!” In fact, the opening is a sly film joke, borrowing Citizen Kane’s newsreel-obituary structure to introduce the recently deceased Blaxploitation filmmaker Apples Finnerty (sort of a cross between Jack Hill and Oscar Micheaux) with a series of tearful “reminiscences” by various producers, agents and actors—not one of whom isn’t secretly glad to be rid of the guy. The real joke is that Apples isn’t dead at all—he’s just trying to turn his poverty-struck life around by taking a new identity—but the laughter fades a bit when Apples discovers that someone has taken out a contract on him. With a new girlfriend in tow, Apples sets out to get things straight. A stellar cast of Bay Area performers features Danny Glover (Places in the Heart, Witness) as Apples, plus Joe Bellan, Marc Hayashi (Chan Is Missing), Jane Dornacker (The Right Stuff) and comedian Bob Sarlatte.
—Michael Goodwin
FACTOID #273
In 2006 the Festival widened its scope, screening films at seven satellite venues throughout the city including an arts venue (Intersection for the Arts), a pub (Edinburgh Castle) and a fire station (San Francisco Fire Station #7).
