Word: wittliff
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Mebbe not. Yet Lonesome Dove rides rings around the overstuffed soap operas that usually pass for "epics" along Broadcast Row. Larry McMurtry's fat novel has been brought to TV -- by writer Bill Wittliff and director Simon Wincer -- with sweep, intelligence and sheer storytelling drive. Firmly anchoring the film is Robert Duvall's moving performance as the wry, philosophical ex-lawman Augustus McCrae. Tommy Lee Jones provides stern counterpoint as McCrae's partner, Woodrow F. Call. Dozens of finely etched characters surround them: a roguish ex-Ranger turned gambler (Robert Urich); a prostitute looking for escape (Diane Lane); a wimpy...
Until a climax too calculated to stir the emotions, Screenwriter William D Wittliff and Director Richard Pearce navigate a careful, dogged course between tract and treacle. In this near-miss movie Shepard is once again the icon of incorruptibility who refuses to claim the center of a film. Toward the end of Country Shepard's character disappears, with little explanation, in what may be a gentlemanly bow to Jessica Lange, a flinty, landsomely wasted matriarch. Mother ones, meet Ma Joad. -By Richard Corliss...
Written by William D. Wittliff...
RAGGEDY MAN Directed by Jack Fisk Screenplay by William D. Wittliff...
What to make of this slice of American pie, this pastoral adagio, this memoir-nightmare? Writer Wittliff has drawn the film's setting and tone from his childhood in a small Texas town off the gulf. Nita Longley (Sissy Spacek), a divorced woman with two sons, works in an isolated house as the town's switchboard operator. She meets a fresh-faced sailor (handsomely played by Eric Roberts); there is a tender affair, another man (Sam Shepard), a pair of resentful layabouts, an abrupt slash of melodrama. Except for the denouement, Raggedy Man proceeds with the even pace...