Word: topor
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Accused, screenwriter Tom Topor and director Jonathan Kaplan imagine a worst-case scenario that poses all of these questions and plays them out in a moral twilight zone where ambiguity gives way to atrocity. The movie boasts a daring, acute performance by Jodie Foster as Sarah, the coarse-mouthed waitress with the SXY SADI license plate, who can fist her face into a pugnacious sulk or vamp persuasively enough to steam your specs. In the process, The Accused has defied Hollywood odds to become an autumn hit, earning $18 million in its first 24 days of release. It has also...
...room together. It's not inhuman, which is why it's so scary." By then, the moviegoer -- a witness-voyeur, just like the bystanders -- is ready to have his prejudices twisted from compassion to horror. "We wanted to lull the audience and then turn things around," Topor explains. "We were saying, 'As a spectator, you're part of the problem. What would you have done...
...some blame women for getting raped. Topor recalls that "the middle-aged mother of one of my friends saw the movie and said to me, 'Obviously she deserved it.' " Says Gail Abarbanel of the Rape Treatment Center at Santa Monica Hospital in California: "I haven't seen a single rape case with multiple assailants in which anyone has tried to stop it. And research indicates that the more people around, the less anyone takes responsibility...
...rape case has yet been prosecuted under a criminal-solicitation law. "A lawyer told me that a conviction such as the one in the film would probably be thrown out," says Topor. "But we were just raising it as one possible interpretation and using it to make a point. And the law says that anyone who encourages a crime is culpable. We all depend on each other to act when we get into trouble." And that applies to good Germans in the Nazi era or nice guys sitting in a bar. "If you and I abdicate," says Topor...
...best, Nuts is a picture that has much to say about the corrupting power of possessive love. But as adapted for Streisand by Tom Topor and veteran Screenwriters Darryl Ponicsan and Alvin Sargent, it too often surrenders to the banalities of its genre. For Nuts exemplifies one kind of Hollywood high-mindedness: the "I'm O.K. Because Society Says I'm Not O.K." movie. The protagonist is not insane, merely misunderstood by those who impose rules she refuses to play by. Every time an authority figure declares she is incompetent, her sanity is supposed to be affirmed. This...