The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)

Financial "Master of the Universe" Sherman McCoy sees his life unravel when his mistress Maria Ruskin hits a black boy with his car. When yellow journalist Peter Fallow enflames public ... See full summary »

Director:

Brian De Palma

Writers:

Michael Cristofer (screenplay), Tom Wolfe (novel)

Stars:

Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Melanie Griffith

5 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
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

Storyline

Financial "Master of the Universe" Sherman McCoy sees his life unravel when his mistress Maria Ruskin hits a black boy with his car. When yellow journalist Peter Fallow enflames public opinion with a series of distorted tabloid articles on the accident, the case is seized upon by opportunists like Reverend Bacon and mayoral candidate D.A. Abe Weiss.

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Plot Keywords:

mistress | accident | journalist | tabloid | tracking shot | 

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Taglines:

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.

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Genres:

Comedy | Drama

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for language

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

21 December 1990 (USA)

Also Known As:

La hoguera de las vanidades

Filming Locations:

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

Box Office

Budget:

$47,000,000 (estimated)

Gross:

$15,691,192 (USA)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Warner Bros

Technical Specs

Runtime:

125 min

Sound Mix:

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

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Michelle Pfeiffer was reportedly the original choice to play the female lead by the studio and director Brian De Palma (who had directed several years before in Scarface). However she turned the role down.

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Goofs

While Reverend Bacon is accusing District Attorney Abe Weiss, the TV remote control that Weiss is using switches hands between shots.

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Quotes

Reverend Bacon: [about the incident with Henry Lamb] This is a tragedy! A fine young man has been struck down. God- fearing, church-going, never in trouble, graduating from high school, ready for college - and somebody comes along - some rich white people in a rich white man's car and wham! They run him down and never even stop. Now what are we going to do about these parking tickets?

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Connections

Referenced in Gossip Girl: Bonfire of the Vanity (2008)

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Soundtracks

"Let Jesus Fix It For You"
Written by Milton Biggham

User Reviews

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.