Weeds (film)

Weeds
File:Weedsfilmposter.jpg Theatrical release poster
Directed by	John D. Hancock
Produced by	Bill Badalato
Written by	John D. Hancock Dorothy Tristan
Starring	Nick Nolte
Music by	Angelo Badalamenti Melissa Etheridge Orville Stoeber
Cinematography	Jan Weincke
Edited by	David Handman Jon Poll Chris Lebenzon
Distributed by	De Laurentiis Entertainment Group (DEG)
Release dates	October 16, 1987 (1987-10-16)
Running time	115 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Weeds is a 1987 American drama feature film about a prison inmate who writes a play that catches the attention of a visiting reporter. The film was directed by John D. Hancock, and stars Nick Nolte, Ernie Hudson, and Rita Taggart.

Plot

Lee Umstetter (Nick Nolte) is incarcerated in San Quentin for armed robbery, serving "life without possibility" (with no chance of parole). After two failed suicide attempts, Lee begins to read books from the prison library. He attends a performance of Waiting for Godot given for the prisoners and is deeply moved. He begins to write plays about imprisonment and then stages them, too.

One is a social-protest musical extravaganza about life in the penitentiary. It attracts visitors and earns Lee the regard of a San Francisco theatre reviewer (Rita Taggart) who persuades the governor to release him.

Lee organises an acting troupe made up of former convicts: a shoplifter (William Forsythe), a murderer (Ernie Hudson), an embezzler (Lane Smith), a pimp (John Toles-Bey), a flasher (Mark Rolston), and others.

Lee's work doesn't make the same impact outside the prison as it did inside. Touring in a camper, with no money, the men are torn by impulses to revert to their former criminal behaviour.

Production

The New Yorker's film critic Pauline Kael observed, "The film is about their efforts to become professional men of the theatre. It's about the ways in which working together changes them and the ways in which it doesn't."

Hancock, who was the director of the San Francisco Actors Workshop, did some work with the convict Rick Cluchey and his San Quentin Drama Group (whose late 1960s show The Cage toured the US and Europe). The film grew out of Hancock's contact with Cluchey's company and out of his and Dorothy Tristan's research into other prison theatre groups.

Reception

The movie received mixed reviews.

The movie was a moderate success at the box office.

It did well on VHS.

External links

• Weeds at IMDb