| Released | 2007 | Rating (UK) | PG |
| Source of story | A short story by Stephen Vincent Benet, and a play by Archibald Macleish both called “The Devil and Daniel Webster”. | ||
| Writer/s script | Peter Dexter, Bill Condon, Nancy Cassaro | ||
| Writer/s story | Peter Dexter | ||
| Director | Harry Kirkpatrick (But actually Alec Baldwin who withdrew his name from the production.) | ||
| Starring | Alec Baldwin, Dan Aykroyd, Kim Cattrall, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Anthony Hopkins | ||
| Elevator Pitch | A struggling writer makes a pact with the devil in a moment of weakness, agreeing to sell his soul in payment for success. He is indeed successful, with money, fame and women but his books are crap and are disliked by those who know. He is not happy and appeals to his publisher Daniel Webster, who he suspects has also had a relationship with the devil, for help. | ||
| Content | Writers talk in a bar, often discussing their failures. Meetings with the devil, once resulting in sex. Scenes of the writer going up in the world, with his editor, with women, in his apartment and elsewhere, and finally in a sort of courtroom where he is tried for his soul. | ||
| A View | This film was shelved in 2001 after the company making it went bankrupt. It was bought and recut and released in 2007. The recut resulted in Baldwin having his name removed as director. I realise I am not viewing films as artworks, but more as a way of passing an hour or two, and this outing was not objectionable. But I am also a more or less unpublished writer and so I sympathised with the plot. | ||
A MOTION PICTURE LIST
A list to help you choose which movie to watch
Shortcut to Happiness
Discussion
No comments yet.