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He also claimed that he had seen, during his years there, ten thousand movies, an experience that he believed gave him (his words) “an unconscious grounding in storytelling.”įrankenheimer called “The Manchurian Candidate” “one of the best books I ever read,” but admirers of Frankenheimer’s movie have not been so gracious. Condon claimed that his work in Hollywood had given him three ulcers.
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“The only thing I knew how to do was spell,” he later explained, so he did the logical thing and became a writer. He didn’t know what he wanted to do next he just wanted out. He began, in 1936, at Walt Disney Productions, where he promoted “Fantasia” and “Dumbo,” among other animated masterpieces, and moved on to a succession of studios, finishing up at United Artists, which he left in 1957. Before he was a novelist, Condon was a movie publicist.
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He learned that attitude in the finest school for it on earth, Hollywood. He died in 1996.Ĭondon was a cynic of the upbeat type, not unlike Tom Wolfe: his belief that everything is basically shit did not get in the way of his pleasure in making fun of it. The novel’s success made Condon rich he spent most of the rest of his life abroad, producing many more works in the genre that Time had identified, including “Winter Kills,” in 1974, and, in 1982, “Prizzi’s Honor.” His adaptation of that novel for the John Huston movie received an Academy Award nomination in 1986. It was praised in the Times (“a wild, vigorous, curiously readable melange”) and The New Yorker (“a wild and exhilarating satire”) Time named it one of the Ten Best Bad Novels-which, from a publisher’s point of view, is far from the worst thing that might be said about a book.
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The true artifact of Cold War culture is the novel, by Richard Condon, that the movie was based on.Ĭondon’s book came out in 1959 and was a best-seller. It turned up a few times on television, but it was not shown in a movie theatre again until 1987, which-nearly the end of the Cold War-is the year its popularity dates from. It was released in the fall of 1962, failed to recover its costs, and was pulled from distribution two years later, after the assassination of John F. In fact, “The Manchurian Candidate” was a flop. And most people probably think of the movie as a classic of Cold War culture, like “On the Beach” and “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”-a popular work articulating the anxieties of an era. It's imperfect, but Jonathan Demme's The Manchurian Candidate has a lot to offer in terms of excitement and entertainment, and that's more than enough to make it a worthwhile movie to watch.Most people know John Frankenheimer’s movie “The Manchurian Candidate,” which stars Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, and Angela Lansbury in the story of an American soldier who is captured in Korea and programmed by Chinese Communists to kill on command. The story becomes a little muddled in the ending, but everything leading up to it is thrilling and very enjoyable. Schreiber is also great as a young senator and Gulf War veteran who is mind-controlled as part of a far-reaching political conspiracy. Meryl Streep gives a fantastic performance as Liev Schreiber's sinister, conspiring mother and the primary antagonist of the movie. It's sort of a political thriller sprinkled with just enough creepiness and mystery to make it consistently interesting. I haven't seen the original, but I was impressed by just how exciting and entertaining this remake is. It is, of course, a remake of the 1960s thriller of the same name starring Frank Sinatra. An above-average psychological thriller with some great performances, The Manchurian Candidate delivers its fair share of creepy moments before ending a little unremarkably.