Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982)

When I saw Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (a play by Ed Graczyk about the reunion of a James Dean fan club) on Broadway, Cher, Karen Black and Sandy Dennis stopped the performance midway through and herded the audience out to the New York street because of a bomb threat. Despite this eventful scare (and my Hello, Karen shout out during the quiet and orderly exit to which she responded Hello there - now keep moving) the performance finished with no loss of artistry or poignancy. This thought-provoking production (with a bullying theme that was ahead of its time) has pretty much been transferred from stage to screen intact by director Robert Altman and loses nothing - except the bomb scare in the middle.

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The Player (1992)

Only Robert Altman could make The Player, a film that has all the elements needed to market a film successfully (suspense, laughter, violence, hope, heart, nudity, sex, happy ending and no reality) but is quirkily unmarketable because it has none of the elements needed to market a film successfully - except big stars in cameos (Cher, Julia Roberts, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Pollack, Joel Grey, Bruce Willis, Sally Kellerman and Susan Sarandon to name a few). Tim Robbins, Greta Scaachi and Whoopi Goldberg are the real actors that spearhead the plot which contains a mystery (that is solved only if you pay real close attention) within a comedy that is not meant to be laugh out loud funny. Reality is so entwined with fantasy though that you can't help getting caught up in Altman's love affair with Hollywood.

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Foxes (1980)

Foxes is an honest (if nothing else) story of how four teenage girls (Jodie Foster, Cherie Currie, Marilyn Kagan, Kandice Stroh) survive against all odds, including drugs, alcohol, boys, abusive or absent fathers and, neglectful or cold mothers (one of the latter played by Sally Kellerman). This was director Adrian Lyne's first film about surviving against all odds (before Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct) and because of its almost documentarian feel works as a time capsule (if nothing else). Music from the film actually took in bigger consumer dollars in 1980 with Donna Summer's huge hit On The Radio, and semi-hits from producer Giorgio Moroder, Cher and Grammy-nominated Janis Ian, played a lot - um - on the radio.

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