Word: details
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Malle has attempted two things with this movie, and succeeded in at least one. In Pretty Baby, his last movie, he buried a potentially lurid story about teenage prostitution under a mountain of period detail, creating a fuzzily romantic picture-book of old New Orleans. Atlantic City is an equally memorable urban portrait, but this is clearly not a city Malle loves, and he serves it up with objective clarity, sharply focusing his lens on stupid people in ugly places doing evil things...
Malle animates his vision of a contemporary Gomorrah with an intelligent deployment of detail and hovering shots of inanimate scenes. Some of his ironic directorial comments are almost absurdist: After mob punks kill Joe for stealing their coke, his estranged wife Sally (Susan Sarandon) is left to dispose of the body. When she arrives at the hospital to take a look, there's a gala ceremony to christen its new "Frank Sinatra wing," and right down the hall from Joe's corpse peacock-plumed dancers are kicking their feet while a blow-dried singer (Robert Goulet) croons. "I'm glad...
...work?including stints with the Defense Department, Senator William Roth and Candidate John Connally?into the plum of his profession, presidential press secretary. Timothy McCarthy, 31, the son of a Chicago policeman, joined the Secret Service in 1972 and two years ago won assignment to the prestigious presidential protection detail...
...both cried and hugged each other and prayed." As McCarthy recovered from surgery, his superiors praised him for executing his mission perfectly. Said Jerry Parr, head of the presidential protection detail: "I think what Agent McCarthy did was most heroic." His eldest sister Laurie joked that "thousands of relatives" would soon be flying to Washington to see their "hero...
Though Williams' attorney refuses to detail his strategy, he will probably attempt to show that his client was the victim of entrapment, as defined by the Justice Department in 1981 guidelines to FBI agents: "Inducement or encouragement of an individual to engage in illegal activity in which he would otherwise not be disposed to engage." Key to this defense are tapes showing undercover agents coaching Williams to "come on strong" when he meets the ersatz Arab, telling him, "It's all bull. You gotta play and blow your horn...