The Big Brass Ring
The Big Brass Ring | |
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Directed by | George Hickenlooper |
Written by | Orson Welles Oja Kodar F. X. Feeney George Hickenlooper |
Produced by | Donald Zuckerman Andrew Pfeffer |
Cinematography | Kramer Morgenthau |
Edited by | Jim Makiej |
Music by | Thomas Morse |
Distributed by | Millennium Films |
Release date |
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Running time | 104 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $7,000,000 (estimated) |
The Big Brass Ring is a 1999
Plot
The story concerns the darker side of a political campaign trail in Missouri. A gubernatorial candidate, Blake Pellarin, is making a campaign stop in St. Louis when his old mentor, Kim Minnaker, resurfaces. Minnaker left the country after a scandal, but now is working on a memoir and evidently possesses compromising photos of Pellarin that could end his hopes of becoming governor and, beyond that, President of the United States.
Pellarin is already juggling the pressures of a political race with a frayed relationship with his wife Dinah, a wealthy woman with a drinking problem, and an affair with Cela, a worldly journalist. He endeavors to learn what kind of blackmail Minnaker has in store for him, as well as how it could affect his political future and his family.
Cast
- William Hurt as William Blake Pellarin
- Nigel Hawthorne as Kim Minnaker
- Irene Jacobas Cela Brandini
- Jefferson Mays as Garne Strickland
- Miranda Richardson as Dinah
Production
Welles had hoped to direct the film himself in the early 1980s, and to play the role of Minnaker (not least as he has been a "New Deal" Democrat close to
However, Hickenlooper made substantial changes from the Welles script (published in 1987 by the Santa Teresa Press, Santa Barbara, California). Welles's script concerned Senator Pellarin, a Democratic presidential candidate in 1984 (closely modeled on Senator Gary Hart), and his troubled relationship with his disgraced homosexual mentor Kim Minnaker, a one-time Roosevelt New Deal Democrat who was now living in exile as advisor to the corrupt government of an unnamed African dictatorship. Hickenlooper retained the basic concept, but instead recast Pellarin as a candidate for Governor of Missouri, and Minnaker as living in Cuba, while much of the dialogue was rewritten and reinterpreted. None of Welles's satire of Reagan-era politics was retained in the final film, while a number of key scenes, like a charged confrontation between Pellarin and Minnaker on a Ferris wheel, were also omitted.[3]
References
- ^ "The Big Brass Ring (1999) - IMDb". IMDb.
- ^ Jonathan Rosenbaum, "Afterword", Orson Welles and Oja Kodar, The Big Brass Ring, Edited by James Pepper. (Santa Teresa Press, Santa Barbara, California, 1991)
- ^ Orson Welles and Oja Kodar, The Big Brass Ring, Edited by James Pepper. (Santa Teresa Press, Santa Barbara, California, 1991)
External links
- The Big Brass Ring at IMDb
- The Big Brass Ring at Rotten Tomatoes