LOVE AND DEATH ON LONG ISLAND
1997

May 27, 2001
Independent Film Channel

-->Written And Directed.....Richard Kwietniowski
-->Giles De'Ath.....John Hurt [Midnight Express, Alien, The Elephant Man, The Osterman Weekend, Space Balls, White Mischief, Aria, Scandal, Rob Roy, Dead Man, Contact]
-->Ronnie Bostock.....Jason Priestley [Beverly Hills 90210, Tombstone, Eye Of The Beholder, Homicide: The Movie]

A reclusive intellectual British novelist becomes obsessed with a good-looking American actor, who appears in trashy movies, and goes to America to try to seduce him.

Fantastic from start to finish. John Hurt is some kind of actor. He goes to the movies to see how E.M. Forrester is translated to film. By mistake he ends up in a film called HOT PANTS COLLEGE II, which makes PORKY'S look like POTEMKIN. He is about to walk out when Ronnie Bostock appears onscreen. Hurt is forced to follow his crush with schoolgirl abandon. He buys teen beat magazines (wrapped in auto magazines, of course). He buys his first television set and VCR. He has his housekeeper go home early so that he can work on the scrapbooks he's made. He flys to Long Island hoping to meet him.

Hurt is normal and nice and polite and pitch-perfect. Priestley is a good sport, playing a young actor easily swayed by a compliment. When the two of them get together for a story-meeting, it is hilarious. Catch this one.

8.80 A Critical Consensus
8.75 Ebert
8.75 Maltin
** Halliwells