Roxanne (film)

Infobox_Film
name = Roxanne


caption = "Roxanne" movie poster
director = Fred Schepisi
writer = Steve Martin
producer = Steve Martin (executive producer)
Michael I. Rachmil
Daniel Melnick
starring = Steve Martin
Daryl Hannah
Rick Rossovich
Shelley Duvall
music = Bruce Smeaton
cinematography = Ian Baker
editing = John Scott
released = June 19, 1987
runtime = 107 min.
distributor = Columbia Pictures
awards =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
country = United States
language = English
budget =
amg_id = 1:42193
imdb_id = 0093886

"Roxanne" is a comedy film released in 1987, starring Steve Martin and Daryl Hannah. It is a modern retelling of the verse play "Cyrano de Bergerac", written in 1897 by French author Edmond Rostand. The screenplay was written by Martin.

Plot summary

In the film, Martin plays C.D. Bales, the fire chief in a small American town. (Note that C.D. Bales' initials match those of Cyrano de Bergerac.) Bales is witty, acrobatic, and skilled at many things, but he has a very large nose about which he is violently sensitive. He loves the beautiful Roxanne Kowalski (Hannah), but she is infatuated with Chris (Rick Rossovich), a handsome but dim fireman. As in the play, Bales is touchy about his perceived ugliness (which he cannot get surgically altered because of a dangerous allergy to anesthetics) and speaks to the object of adoration the only way he can: he writes expressions of love and allows Chris to present them to Roxanne as if they were his own.

Among the side plots in the movie are: C.D. dealing with the incompetence of his volunteer firemen (whom Chris was brought in to help train), an insult fight between C.D. and a barfly, the appearance of a new comet which Roxanne came to observe, and a cafe owner (Shelley Duvall) who is a friend of both C.D. and Roxanne.

"Roxanne" was filmed in the small Canadian city of Nelson, British Columbia.

Cast

*Steve Martin as C.D. "Charlie" Bales
*Daryl Hannah as Roxanne Kowalski
*Rick Rossovich as Chris McConnell
*Shelley Duvall as Dixie
*John Kapelos as Chuck
*Fred Willard as Mayor Deebs
*Max Alexander as Dean
*Michael J. Pollard as Andy
*Steve Mittleman as Ralston
*Damon Wayans as Jerry
*Matt Lattanzi as Trent
*Ritch Shydner and Kevin Nealon as two drunk guys that Charlie meets on the street
*Brian George as Dr. Dave Schepsi, plastic surgeon
*Maureen Murphy as Cindy, the cosmetics girl
*Heidi Sorenson as Trudy, the Mayor's girl
*Shandra Beri as Sandy, the bar tender

Trivia

*Steve Martin did all his own stunts for the film.

*Filmed in the summer of 1986 in the town of Nelson, British Columbia. Steve Martin chose to use the local fire hall on Baker Street as a primary set, although the license plates on vehicles were from the state of Washington.

*In a scene where Roxanne slaps C.D. in the face, Hannah accidentally hits Martin's prosthetic nose, apparently dislodging it. As Martin reaches to his face, otherwise on cue, the viewer can see him fumble with his nose using his fingertips, rather than more naturally holding his assaulted cheek.

* The historical Cyrano de Bergerac wrote of a journey to the moon and to the Sun, and Roxanne alludes to this in a scene where C.D. jokes about UFOs and aliens.

*In the insult fight scene, C.D. had to come up with twenty unique nose jokes. When C.D. called for a count of jokes in the middle, one of his men said that he was up to 14 jokes; he actually had said 19 at that point. But C.D. did come up with six more anyway, making the actual number of jokes on screen 25. Usually one joke is moved to the end when the movie is put in syndication, covering the final joke: "Dirty: Your name wouldn't happen to be 'Dick', would it?"

*This film is number 71 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies".

*With "L.A. Story" and "A Simple Twist of Fate," this forms the first installment of a loose trilogy of films written by Martin about love. In each film, Martin's character has a close, platonic friendship with a woman – played by Shelley Duvall in "Roxanne," Susan Forristal in "L.A. Story," and Catherine O'Hara in "A Simple Twist of Fate."

Memorable quotes

:"(finding a flaming barrel inside the firehouse)'"I have a dream. It's not a big dream, it's just a little dream. My dream — and I hope you don't find this too crazy — is that I would like the people of this community to feel that if, God forbid, there were a fire, calling the fire department would actually be a WISE thing to do. You can't have people, if their houses are burning down, saying, 'Whatever you do, don't call the fire department!' That would be bad."'(He blasts the flames with an extinguisher, and there's a knock at the door)""Please, get it cleaned up. Don't make me have to EXPLAIN it.": — C.D. Bales

:"Oh, irony! Oh no, we don't get that here. See, people ski topless here while smoking dope, so irony's not really a high priority. We haven't had any irony here since about '83, when I was the only practitioner of it. And I stopped because I was tired of being stared at.":— C.D. Bales

ee also

*List of firefighting films

External links

*imdb title|0093886|Roxanne
* [http://freenet-homepage.de/RickRossovich/roxanne.html Roxanne Photos]