The free film series "The Screening Room: Classics, Crowd-Pleasers, Cult Favorites and Neglected Gems" will celebrate the 30th anniversary of Peter O’Toole’s Oscar-nominated work in Richard Rush’s thought-provoking and wickedly funny exploration of illusion and reality, "The Stunt Man."
The critically acclaimed, audaciously original comedy-drama will be screened at 7 p.m. Tuesday, June 8, at the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library, 350 N. Wood Ave., downtown Florence.
The storyline of "The Stunt Man" focuses on a fugitive from the law (played by Steve Railsback of "Helter Skelter" fame) who finds temporary refuge on a movie set where a slyly manipulative director (played by O’Toole) takes advantage of the young man’s desperate situation by hiring him to perform dangerous stunts in World War I combat scenes.
Directed by Rush ("Getting Straight," "Freebie and the Bean"), the offbeat tale of friendship, loyalty, art and artifice also stars Barbara Hershey (as the leading lady caught between her devotion to the director and her romantic attachment to the fugitive), Allen Garfield, Alex Rocco, Sharon Farrell, Adam Roarke, Philip Bruns and veteran Hollywood stunt performer Whitey Hughes.
Rated R for adult language, violence, brief nudity and sexual content, "The Stunt Man" earned Oscar nominations for Best Actor (O’Toole), Best Director (Rush) and Best Adapted Screenplay (by Rush and Lawrence B. Marcus).
"The Screening Room" is sponsored by the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library and Pillar of Fire. The series is organized and hosted by film historian and Pillar of Fire founder Terry Pace, who teaches English at UNA.
Later in June, the series will present a 60th-anniversary screening of Sir Carol Reed’s post-World War II thriller "The Third Man" (1950, starring Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Trevor Howard and Orson Welles), at 7 p.m. Thursday, June 17, and a 70th-anniversary screening of Walt Disney’s animated classic "Pinocchio" (1940) at 2 p.m. Sunday, June 27.
All "Screening Room" programs are free and open to the public. For details, call the library at (256) 764-6564 or Pillar of Fire at (256) 366-4512, or e-mail pillaroffire@bellsouth.net.
“If God could do the tricks that we can do, he’d be a happy man!” – Eli Cross (Peter O’Toole) in Richard Rush’s "The Stunt Man" (1980)
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