Line #5 Film/BulletsOverBroadway


1	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/BulletsOverBroadway_9452.jpeg]]
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3	This 1994 film is one of Creator/WoodyAllen's dramedies on the creative process.
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5	[[TheRoaringTwenties In the 1920s]], idealist playwright David Shayne (Creator/JohnCusack) moves to New York City to produce a play. He and his girlfriend Ellen (Mary-Louise Parker) fit in well enough in the show business world and David finds a mentor in Sheldon Flender (Creator/RobReiner), a bohemian artist who says that artists can get away with things normal people can't [[TrueArtIsIncomprehensible because artists live in their own moral universe]].
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7	With the help of his associate Julian Marx, David gets a play produced even though his last two endeavors were flops. Unfortunately there's a catch: the play is backed by Nick Valenti, the head of a violent [[TheMafia Mafia gang]]. Despite worries that he's selling out, David agrees to direct the play according to Valenti's conditions. The main condition being that Valenti's girlfriend Olive (Creator/JenniferTilly, who earned an UsefulNotes/AcademyAward nomination for her performance) receive a starring role in the play despite her terrible acting skills. Olive's hostile bodyguard Cheech (Chazz Palminteri) is required to sit in on rehearsals and guarantee that everyone treats her right.
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9	The rest of the cast is David's dream cast. He manages to persuade one-time legendary actress [[GrandeDame Helen Sinclair]] (Creator/DianneWiest in her second UsefulNotes/AcademyAward under Woody Allen) to play the lead role, but her overbearing personality and constant demand for script changes proves problematic. David also hires Warner Purcell (Jim Broadbent), an excellent performer with [[BigEater a serious eating addiction]].
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11	But the biggest problem is with the play itself. It is pretentious and badly written, so much so that Cheech starts making suggestions on how to improve it. David begrudgingly takes Cheech's writing advice and ends up having to decide whether art or life is more important.
12	----
13	!!'''Tropes:'''
14	* AllPartOfTheShow: During the show's opening night on Broadway, [[spoiler: a pair of mobsters shoot and kill Cheech backstage. The audience thinks the gunshots were all part of the show. In fact, the show gets rave reviews because of the "symbolic" gunshots in the ending.]]
15	* AuthorAvatar: David Shayne for Creator/WoodyAllen. Creator/MarkKermode has said that people are wrong when they say that Allen's not in the film - he is, he's just played by Creator/JohnCusack.
16	* BadBadActing: Olive, and it's not an InformedFlaw. We get to see how bad she is - '''HA!'''[[note]][[{{Irony}} Ironically]], the role earned Jennifer Tilly an Oscar nomination, and she might have won but her castmate (Weist) won instead.[[/note]]
17	* BelligerentSexualTension: What Nick and his goons ultimately ''think'' is going on between Cheech and Olive. (No, they legitimately ''despise'' each other.)
18	* BerserkButton:
19	** Olive's bad acting [[spoiler: finally pushes Cheech over the edge.]]
20	** Helen ''despises'' dogs. When hearing Eden's Chihuahua barking, she snarls, "Is that a ''mutt'' I hear?!"
21	* BigEater: Warner Purcell is a compulsive eater. Olive even invokes the trope verbatim.
22	-->'''Warner:''' Before we start...
23	-->'''Olive:''' Yeah?
24	-->''(Warner pulls a turkey leg out of his pocket and eats it)''
25	-->'''Olive:''' What? Oh. Just a... a little poultry. ''(giggles)''
26	* BittersweetEnding / DownerEnding: [[spoiler: David's play is a hit but all the best parts of it were written by the now dead Cheech. David discovers that he is not really an artist and plans to move back to Pittsburgh and marry Ellen.]]
27	* BodyguardBetrayal: [[spoiler:Cheech is hired as a bodyguard for talentless aspiring actress Olive, but kills her out of frustration about how she is ruining the play]].
28	* BrickJoke: The musical cue of "Up A Lazy River" insures you know exactly what is going to happen to [[spoiler: Olive]]. It's still funny when it happens.
29	%%* BrokenPedestal
30	* CentralTheme: Great artists have their own moral code, and the greater the artist, the more amoral they get.
31	%%* ContemplateOurNavels
32	* DamnedByFaintPraise: When David asks Helen if there was ANYTHING good about the "first draft" script (the one he actually wrote, before it was rewritten by Cheech in secret), Helen says that the stage directions were good and the color of the folder was appropriate.[[note]]It's largely unintentional on her part, since she doesn't realize the much-improved second version that she's praised generously wasn't also written by him.[[/note]]
33	-->'''David:''' ''(deadpan)'' Oh, good. I always had a flair for stage directions.
34	* EnforcedMethodActing: [[invoked]] Near the end.
35	* EvenEvilHasStandards: Despite being a ProfessionalKiller, Cheech flatly stated he never killed anyone who didn't deserve it.
36	* {{Foreshadowing}}:
37	** Flender asks early in the film if you could choose a great play over someone's life. [[spoiler: Cheech murders someone over making sure a play is great.]]
38	** Cheech uncharacteristically spares Warner's life for dallying around with his boss' girlfriend, because Warner is a great actor and the play would suffer. [[spoiler:He kills his boss' girlfriend for being a bad actress wrecking the play.]]
39	* GargleBlaster: Helen at one point drinks what she calls "paint remover" from a flask. From David's reaction, it's incredibly alcoholic.
40	* GenkiGirl: Eden Brent is a giggly flapper.
41	-->'''Helen:''' She's perky all right. She makes you want to sneak up behind her with a pillow and suffocate her.
42	* TheGift: Examined in the film. Chazz has a gift for writing; where David went to dozens of writing classes, Chazz had no use for "those blue-haired bitches". David struggles to do what Chazz does effortlessly. However, Chazz just thinks David is needlessly pretentious. David counters that as a kid he was taught to play the accordion, and while he was passable, a friend could just press two keys and make magic.
43	* HiddenDepths: Cheech. A mob goon turns out to be a brilliant playwright.
44	* IllTakeTwoBeersToo:
45	-->'''Helen''': Two martinis, please, very dry.
46	-->'''David''': How'd you know what I drank?
47	-->'''Helen''': Oh, you want one too? Three.
48	* IronicEcho: "Don't speak. Don't speak. Don't speak."
49	** The first line of the film is David shouting, "'''I'm an ''ARTIST''!'''" The last line of the film is David admitting, "I'm not an artist."
50	* HonestAdvisor: Helen's agent Sid is very blunt and pragmatic when telling her about actions that will be both beneficial and achievable for her career.
51	* {{Jerkass}}: Flender. Unlike Chazz, Flender is not an amoral artist. He's just amoral.
52	-->'''Rifkin:''' I paint a canvas every week, take one look at it and slash it with a razor.\
53	'''Flender:''' Well, in your case that's a good idea.
54	* JerkAssHasAPoint: Olive is dense about most things, but she's right about David's stilted dialogue.
55	* LadyDrunk: Helen Sinclair. When she orders two strong drinks, David asks how she knew what his favorite drink was. She reacts by saying, "You want one, too?" and orders a third.
56	-->'''Sid:''' You're a star because you're great and you are a great star, but let me tell you something, Helen. In the last couple of years you're better known as an adulteress and a drunk. [[WithAllDueRespect And I say this in all due respect.]]\
57	'''Helen:''' Look, I haven't had a drink since New Year's Eve.\
58	'''Sid:''' You're talking Chinese New Year's.\
59	'''Helen:''' ''Naturally.'' Still, that's two days, Sid! You know how long that is for me?
60	* LargeHam: Helen, both on stage and in real life.
61	* LastNameBasis: No one calls Flender by his first name, Sheldon.
62	* TheMafia: The reason the play is produced, and the reason Olive can't be fired.
63	-->'''Julian:''' It's not the money. I told ya that. We dump Olive, you, me, [[AndYourLittleDogToo even the dog]] [[CementShoes will wind up at the bottom of the Hudson.]] It won't take that long. He'll kill us here in Boston. We'll be at the bottom of the Charles.
64	* MobWar: Nick Valenti is engaged in a turf war with Leo Kustabeck. We even see some of Valenti's mooks getting gunned down in a drive-by.
65	* MythologyGag: A dying Cheech tells David to have the Sylvia Poston character, played by Diane Wiest, reveal she's miraculously pregnant. That's basically how ''Film/HannahAndHerSisters'' ended, with Wiest's character making that revelation.
66	%%* OmniscientMoralityLicense
67	* PreMortemOneLiner: "[[spoiler: Olive]], I just want you to know one thing: you're a ''horrible'' actress."
68	** Doubles as a BrickJoke.
69	* PrettyInMink: Olive, Eden and especially Helen Sinclair have some very nice looking furs.
70	* TheRoaringTwenties: Complete with flappers, bathtub gin, Prohibition gangsters fighting over territory with Tommy guns, and proto-beatniks in Greenwich Village.
71	%%* RuleOfSymbolism
72	* RunningGag:
73	** Cheech's favorite spot to execute rival gang members. [[spoiler: Olive becomes the last one.]]
74	--->♪ ''Up a lazy river by the old mill run...'' ♫
75	** Warner Purcell keeps eating... and eating... and eating...
76	* SapientPet: Eden seems to think her chihuahua is this.
77	-->'''Eden''': And to think I didn't believe you at first!
78	--> ''(said when Warner gets caught stealing her dog treats)''
79	* SassyBlackWoman: Venus, who is Olive's maid, making her a ServileSnarker, too.
80	-->'''Venus:''' ''(to Olive)'' You better get in the mood, honey, 'cause he's payin' the rent.
81	* ShoutOut: A rather subtle one, but the ShowWithinAShow is named ''God Of Our Fathers'', rather appropriate [[Film/TheGodfather for a movie revolving around gangsters who get into show biz]].
82	* ShowWithinAShow: We get to see a lot of the play in various states of development.
83	* SoundtrackDissonance: Cheech's assassinations are accompanied by the 1930 standard "Up a Lazy River". [[spoiler: It's signals a BrickJoke when Cheech is driving Olive to his "favorite spot".]]
84	* TakeThat: Nick Valenti, a mob boss so culturally barren he has no idea who or what ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'' is, is named after the head of AMPAS at the time, Jack Valenti.
85	* ThrowItIn: [[invoked]] Olive thinks you can do this in a play. She claims it's ad-libbing, but it's completely inappropriate.
86	** [[spoiler: Cheech's dying line, an IronicEcho of Helen's, "Don't speak", was ad-libbed by Chazz Palminteri]].
87	* TitleDrop: In a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, the character of Sylvia cries out "Oh, God of our fathers, save me!" The ShowWithinAShow's title is ''God of Our Fathers''.
88	* TrueArtIsAngsty: [[invoked]] Flender firmly believes this ("My plays are written specifically to go unproduced!"). David initially believes this. Cheech thinks it's pure bullshit (and he turns out to be the best writer of them all.)
89	* WhiteDwarfStarlet: Helen.
90	-->'''Helen:''' I never play frumps or virgins.

Context Film / BulletsOverBroadway