Film critic Pauline Kael wrote in her review, "If John Huston's name were not on Prizzi's Honor, I'd have thought a fresh, new talent had burst on the scene, and he'd certainly be the hottest new director in Hollywood." The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences were in agreement: the film was nominated for eight Academy Awards: Best Picture, Director (for Huston), Actor in a Leading Role (Jack Nicholson), Actor in a Supporting Role (William Hickey), Actress in a Supporting Role (Anjelica Huston), Costume Design (Donfeld), Editing (Rudi and Kaja Fehr), and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium (Richard Condon and Janet Roach). Prizzi's Honor was released on Jto universal acclaim. Huston used old friends and co-workers: his former secretary, Ann Selepegno played the Don's wife his first script girl on The Maltese Falcon (1941), Meta Wilde, was script supervisor, and Rudi Fehr, who was the editor on Key Largo (1948) came out of retirement and worked with his daughter, Kaja (now an editor on Desperate Housewives). Not only was Prizzi's Honor a family affair, with Huston casting his daughter, Anjelica and Jack Nicholson, but it was a reunion of sorts as well. I said that I often carried Maerose through to dessert." Jack said that he generally dropped Charley Partanna toward dinnertime. There were elements of the hit-man in Jack at the time and I didn't want to be around him too much. Said Anjelica, "I don't endorse the idea that actors should live their parts, but in spite of oneself, it sometimes does follow you home. "Just then my father entered the room, and said, 'Well, what do you think about making the ruffle in Schiaparelli pink?' That was the moment I knew there was no separation in how we saw the character."Īnjelica Huston and Jack Nicholson, who had lived together for several years, found that working together all day and going home to be together all night would be difficult, so they lived in different hotels while on location in Brooklyn. She told the designer it would be interesting to take off the ruffle and drape it in Schiaparelli pink. "It was up to us to get our accents down, so Jack went to the Brooklyn betting shops and I went to a Brooklyn church." During preproduction she was in the costume department trying on a black designer dress from the fifties with a frilly taffeta piece that came over the shoulder. She worked hard to get her characterization of a mafia daughter right. Huston's daughter, Anjelica, was cast in the role of Maerose Prizzi. John said, 'It's a very funny story, what's wrong with you?' And Jack said, 'It's a comedy?' He never thought that until he heard it out loud." "Jack took the first reading and as soon as I read my line, 'What kind of creep wouldn't catch a baby?' we're all laughing and Jack goes, 'This is funny.' And we go, 'Yeah'. Kathleen Turner remembered their first reading of the script. Once 20th Century Fox gave Prizzi's Honor (1985) the green light, Huston found that his star Jack Nicholson had the same problem with the script as the studio heads. Have you ever tried explaining a joke to someone?" They all miss the point, of course, that the picture is a comedy, a fact very hard to get over. All of which serves to demonstrate to what low depths the intelligentsia of the present masters of our great industry have fallen. Not even Jack Nicholson, say they, could make lovable a man who would kill his wife for money. Foreman thought he was in a position to play the studios off against one another. "There is immediate enthusiasm and it would seem that only the price had to be negotiated. As Lawrence Grobel wrote in his book, The Hustons, "By mid-March 1984 John wrote to Janet Roach in exasperation over the way the studios had received Prizzi's Honor, "The script has had the craziest reception I have ever known," he said. He convinced Condon and screenwriter Janet Roach to do a script which would then be shopped around to the studios. Huston had found a subject in the novel Prizzi's Honor, a story of mafia, hit men and questionable loyalties, by Richard Condon, who had previously written The Manchurian Candidate. But his spirit and his creativity remained strong and he wanted to make another film. Age and emphysema had made him frail and he required an oxygen tank much of the time. By the mid-1980's, legendary director John Huston was nearing the end of his life.
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