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Made in Texas Film Series...A Perfect World

A Perfect World

(1993, 138 mins)

Writer: John Lee Hancock

Director: Clint Eastwood

Cast: Kevin Costner, Clint Eastwood, Laura Dern, T.J. Lowther, Ray McKinnon, Bradley Whitford

 

Wednesday, September 9, 7:30 pm

Texas Spirit Theater at the Bob Bullock Museum

1800 Congress Avenue, Austin, TX map

$5 for public, free for AFF and TSHM members

 

Screenwriter John Lee Hancock in attendance!

 

Following the Oscar winning Unforgiven, Eastwood turned to this small, character study that appeared in the guise of a cops and robbers action film.  Hancock’s script takes place in the fall of 1963 and tells the story of eight year old Phillip, the son of a devout Jehovah’s Witness, who is taken hostage by prison escapee, Butch Haynes (played by Costner).  The two take the Texas backroads on the run from Police Chief Red Garnett (Eastwood) in his sleek Populux Airglide trailer or “mobile command headquarters.”  Butch and Phillip form a strong bond that echoes a father-son relationship that neither character has. 

 

Often overlooked in Eastwood’s directing cannon, A Perfect World is one of his most cinematic and honest films the filmmaker has ever made.  Cahiers du Cinema named A Perfect World as the best film of 1993.

 

To view a clip of A Perfect World, click here.

 

The film was shot in around Austin and Lockhart.

 

“A Perfect World contains a prison break, the taking of a hostage, a chase across Texas, two murders, various robberies, and a final confrontation between a fugitive and a lawman. It is not really about any of those things, however. It's deeper and more interesting than that. It's about the true nature of violence and about how the child is father to the man.” - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

 

"A Perfect World, a rare high-powered Hollywood film that is actually about something, evokes the cinematic past in effortless, interesting ways. If its story (from a terse, colorful screenplay by John Lee Hancock) is pure western and its backdrop one of wide-open spaces, its doomed, claustrophobic sense of the modern world makes for a compelling contrast. – Janet Maslin, New York Times

 

"A Perfect World," a deeply felt, deceptively simple film that marks the high point of Mr. Eastwood's directing career thus far, could never be mistaken for a young man's movie." - Janet Maslin, New York Times

*An AFF Conversations in Film, sponsored by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, will precede the screening this night beginning at 6:00pm at the AT&T Conference Center.