O.C. and Stiggs | |
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Directed by | Robert Altman |
Produced by | Robert Altman Peter Newman |
Written by | Ted Mann Donald Cantrell |
Starring | Daniel H. Jenkins Neill Barry Paul Dooley Jane Curtin Martin Mull Dennis Hopper Ray Walston Louis Nye Melvin Van Peebles Tina Louise Cynthia Nixon Jon Cryer and Bob Uecker |
Music by | King Sunny Adé |
Cinematography | Pierre Mignot |
Editing by | Elizabeth Kling |
Distributed by | MGM |
Release date(s) | July 10, 1987 |
Running time | 109 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $7,000,000 (est.) |
O.C. and Stiggs is a 1987 film directed by Robert Altman, based on two characters that were originally featured in a series of stories published in National Lampoon magazine. The film stars Daniel H. Jenkins and Neill Barry as the title characters. Other members of the cast include Paul Dooley, Jane Curtin, Martin Mull, Dennis Hopper, Ray Walston, Louis Nye, Melvin Van Peebles, Tina Louise, Cynthia Nixon, Jon Cryer and Bob Uecker.
King Sunny Adé appears in the film and provided the score.
The film, a raunchy teen comedy described by the British Film Institute as "probably Altman's least successful film," was not released after post-production was completed. MGM shelved it for a couple of years, finally giving it a limited theatrical release in 1987 and 1988. In an interview years later, included on the DVD release of Tanner '88, Altman acknowledges that the film didn't work but is quick to defend the cast, which included Tanner star Cynthia Nixon, saying it was "not their fault."
O.C. & Stiggs is the adventure of two Arizona teenagers. In their car, the Gila Monster, they pick up slags (loose women), torture their nemesis, Randall Schwab, while procuring liquor from "Wino Bob" (a bum who lives in the oleander bushes behind the 7-Eleven).
The movie's plot was very loosely based on stories from National Lampoon magazine that were written by Ted Mann and Todd Carroll. O.C. and Stiggs were recurring characters in articles in the the magazine, eventually leading up to the entire October 1982 issue being devoted to a fictional first-person account of the story of their summer, "The Utterly Monstrous Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs". The plotline and main characters of the movie were significantly different from the National Lampoon stories they were based on. Most notably, the original magazine characters were destructive, malevolent teenagers, whereas the main characters of the movie were not inherently destructive, and significant portions of the magazine story were omitted from the movie. Alan Moore's comic characters D.R. and Quinch are a science fiction take on the magazine's O.C. and Stiggs characters.
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