The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)

User Rating:

5.1/10   

Director:

Brian De Palma

Writers (WGA):

Michael Cristofer (screenplay)
Tom Wolfe (novel)

Release Date:

21 December 1990 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama

Tagline:

Take one Wall Street tycoon, his Fifth Avenue mistress, a reporter hungry for fame, and make the wrong turn in The Bronx...then sit back and watch the sparks fly.

Plot:

Financial "Master of the Universe" Sherman McCoy sees his life unravel when his mistress Maria Ruskin hits a black boy with his car...

Plot Keywords:

Tabloid | Accident | Journalist | Mistress | Revenge

Awards:

5 nominations

Cast

Tom Hanks	...	Sherman McCoy
Bruce Willis	...	Peter Fallow
Melanie Griffith	...	Maria Ruskin
Kim Cattrall	...	Judy McCoy
Saul Rubinek	...	Jed Kramer
Morgan Freeman	...	Judge Leonard White
John Hancock	...	Reverend Bacon
Kevin Dunn	...	Tom Killian
Clifton James	...	Albert Fox
Louis Giambalvo	...	Ray Andruitti
Barton Heyman	...	Det. Martin
Norman Parker	...	Det. Goldberg
Donald Moffat	...	Mr. McCoy
Alan King	...	Arthur Ruskin
Beth Broderick	...	Caroline Heftshank

MPAA:

Rated R for language.

Runtime:

125 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

70 mm 6-Track (70 mm prints) | Dolby (35 mm prints)

Certification:

Singapore:NC-16 | New Zealand:PG | Argentina:13 | Australia:M | Chile:14 | Finland:K-14 | France:U | Sweden:11 (video rating) | Sweden:7 | UK:15 | USA:R | Iceland:L

Filming Locations:

346 E 59th Street, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA

Company:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Trivia:

At the very beginning of the opening tracking shot, as the limousine carrying Bruce Willis enters the basement, director Brian DePalma is the first person seen on screen - as the security guard saying "Now arriving Area A" into a walkie-talkie. He hurries off-screen and is next seen seated on the rear of the golf-cart, behind Bruce Willis and Rita Wilson, still "talking" into his walkie-talkie. When the cart stops, DePalma once again runs off ahead of the actors. It was necessary to put himself into this sequence due to the logistics of directing the lengthy and complicated take, and in order to remain unrecognizable he shaved off his trademark beard.

Goofs:

Factual errors: When McCoy gets off the subway, we see he is riding the number 1 train and he gets off at 77th Street station. First of all, the number 1 train runs on the west side of Manhattan, no where near his Park Avenue residence on the east side, and second, there are no 77th Street stops on the number 1 line.

Quotes:

Peter Fallow: Caroline, you devil.
Caroline Heftshank: Peter, you pig!

Movie Connections:

Featured in Boffo! Tinseltown's Bombs and Blockbusters (2006)

Soundtrack:

Serenade in G (Eine kleine Nachtmusik)

Brilliant, under-rated movie

(NB - I have not read the book.) Unfairly chastised by the press on release, and too easy to tar as a weak link in De Palma's ouevre, BOTV is better than Wall Street, Working Girl et al. and is still very relevant.

This is an OTT opera where every character is a cynic trying to work an angle, and every action (in a complex story about contacts, smear campaigns, politics and pawns) has an obvious and (most of the time) greedy motivation. BOTV also confronts sex, racism and class clashes with a frankness that most Hollywood movies run a mile from - it is suprisingly frank in it's depiction of these (The exception being that the New York judge had to be, of course, black [Morgan Freeman]. This is something dramatists do to make some of their social opinions seem less controversial since they are being spouted by a man of colour in a white forum.)

On par with His Girl Friday and The Sweet Smell of Success, and possessing an oddball universe Preston Sturges would've been proud of creating, this film is all the more powerful when you actually live in a world kind of like this (and I meet these kinds of people all the time - this is REAL!).

PS - Half an hour was lopped off by the studio after disasterous preview screenings. This movie deserves a DVD director's cut release.