Nothing Lasts Forever (film)
Encyclopedia
Nothing Lasts Forever is a 1984
movie
starring a number of high profile Hollywood actors. It was directed by Tom Schiller
, who had previously worked on Saturday Night Live
.
The movie stars Zach Galligan
and Lauren Tom
in the lead roles, with a supporting cast including Bill Murray
, Dan Aykroyd
, Sam Jaffe
and Mort Sahl
. John Belushi
was to appear in the film, but he died 6 weeks before production began.
The making of the film, through interviews with Tom Schiller
, Lorne Michaels
, Zach Galligan
, Lauren Tom
, Bill Murray
and others involved with the film, is chronicled in the book Nothing Lost Forever: The Films of Tom Schiller by Michael Streeter (BearManor Media, 2005).
The film includes a large number of clips to give it the feel of the 1930s, and it is possible that getting copyright
clearance for these clips has proved difficult. In 2007, another chat was conducted and Warner claimed it was "on the middle burner -- not the front, but not the back." It is possible that this means the legal issues have been cleared up, but this was not explicitly stated.
Bill Murray
and Dan Aykroyd
have both agreed to take part in DVD special features, should the film be finally released.
Murray and Schiller held a screening of the film on April 13, 2004 at the BAM Cinematek in Brooklyn, New York. On September 6, 2005, Murray, Schiller and Zach Galligan attended another screening, this time at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater. The screening was followed by a Q&A session and a book signing of Nothing Lost Forever: The Films of Tom Schiller. The film was shown on November 6, 2009 at Olympia's Capitol Theater as part of the opening night of the Olympia
Film Festival
. On April 1, 2010, it screened in Los Angeles, California
at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre
in Hollywood as part of the American Cinematheque
's acknowledgment of "criminally unknown" films, with Schiller attending and answering questions.
. On returning to his relatives in Manhattan
, he finds that the Port Authority
has taken control of the city, and is forced to work in a menial job under a trigger-happy boss (Aykroyd).
His kindness to a tramp
leads him to be taken into an underground network where he discovers that the city's tramps are controlling the destiny of all the cities in the world. They instruct him to travel to the moon
on a mission to spread peace and find his true love (Lauren Tom).
Galligan accidentally finds a bus
travelling to the moon. Bill Murray
plays the bus conductor.
1984 in film
-Events:* The Walt Disney Company founds Touchstone Pictures to release movies with subject matter deemed inappropriate for the Disney name.* Tri-Star Pictures, a joint venture of Columbia Pictures, HBO, and CBS, releases its first film....
movie
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
starring a number of high profile Hollywood actors. It was directed by Tom Schiller
Tom Schiller
Tom Schiller is an American Emmy Award winning writer best known for his eleven-year stint writing and directing short films for Saturday Night Live...
, who had previously worked on Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...
.
The movie stars Zach Galligan
Zach Galligan
Zachary Wolfe "Zach" Galligan is an American actor.-Biography:Galligan was born in New York City, the son of Carol Jean , a psychologist, and Arthur John Galligan, a lawyer who was a founding partner of the law firm of Dickstein Shapiro. He has a sister, Jessica, and attended Columbia University...
and Lauren Tom
Lauren Tom
Lauren Tom is an American actress and voice actress perhaps best known for her roles as Lena St Clair in The Joy Luck Club, Julie in the TV series Friends, and for providing the voices for both mother and daughter characters on two animated TV comedy series: on Futurama she voices Amy Wong and her...
in the lead roles, with a supporting cast including Bill Murray
Bill Murray
William James "Bill" Murray is an American actor and comedian. He first gained national exposure on Saturday Night Live in which he earned an Emmy Award and later went on to star in a number of critically and commercially successful comedic films, including Caddyshack , Ghostbusters , and...
, Dan Aykroyd
Dan Aykroyd
Daniel Edward "Dan" Aykroyd, CM is a Canadian comedian, actor, screenwriter, musician, winemaker and ufologist. He was an original cast member of Saturday Night Live, an originator of The Blues Brothers and Ghostbusters and has had a long career as a film actor and screenwriter.-Early...
, Sam Jaffe
Sam Jaffe (actor)
Sam Jaffe was an American actor, teacher, musician and engineer. In 1951, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in The Asphalt Jungle and appeared in other classic films such as Ben-Hur and The Day the Earth Stood Still...
and Mort Sahl
Mort Sahl
Morton Lyon "Mort" Sahl is a Canadian-born American comedian and actor. He occasionally wrote jokes for speeches delivered by President John F. Kennedy. He was the first comedian to record a live album and the first to perform on college campuses...
. John Belushi
John Belushi
John Adam Belushi was an American comedian, actor, and musician, best known as one of the original cast members of the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, The Star of the Films National Lampoon's Animal House and the The Blues Brothers and for fronting the American blues and soul...
was to appear in the film, but he died 6 weeks before production began.
The making of the film, through interviews with Tom Schiller
Tom Schiller
Tom Schiller is an American Emmy Award winning writer best known for his eleven-year stint writing and directing short films for Saturday Night Live...
, Lorne Michaels
Lorne Michaels
Lorne Michaels, CM is a Canadian-American television producer, writer, and comedian best known for creating and producing Saturday Night Live and producing the various film and TV projects that spun off from it.-Early life:...
, Zach Galligan
Zach Galligan
Zachary Wolfe "Zach" Galligan is an American actor.-Biography:Galligan was born in New York City, the son of Carol Jean , a psychologist, and Arthur John Galligan, a lawyer who was a founding partner of the law firm of Dickstein Shapiro. He has a sister, Jessica, and attended Columbia University...
, Lauren Tom
Lauren Tom
Lauren Tom is an American actress and voice actress perhaps best known for her roles as Lena St Clair in The Joy Luck Club, Julie in the TV series Friends, and for providing the voices for both mother and daughter characters on two animated TV comedy series: on Futurama she voices Amy Wong and her...
, Bill Murray
Bill Murray
William James "Bill" Murray is an American actor and comedian. He first gained national exposure on Saturday Night Live in which he earned an Emmy Award and later went on to star in a number of critically and commercially successful comedic films, including Caddyshack , Ghostbusters , and...
and others involved with the film, is chronicled in the book Nothing Lost Forever: The Films of Tom Schiller by Michael Streeter (BearManor Media, 2005).
Legal status
A Warner Brothers spokesman stated in 2003 and again in February 2006 that the film cannot be released for unspecified "legal difficulties".The film includes a large number of clips to give it the feel of the 1930s, and it is possible that getting copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
clearance for these clips has proved difficult. In 2007, another chat was conducted and Warner claimed it was "on the middle burner -- not the front, but not the back." It is possible that this means the legal issues have been cleared up, but this was not explicitly stated.
Bill Murray
Bill Murray
William James "Bill" Murray is an American actor and comedian. He first gained national exposure on Saturday Night Live in which he earned an Emmy Award and later went on to star in a number of critically and commercially successful comedic films, including Caddyshack , Ghostbusters , and...
and Dan Aykroyd
Dan Aykroyd
Daniel Edward "Dan" Aykroyd, CM is a Canadian comedian, actor, screenwriter, musician, winemaker and ufologist. He was an original cast member of Saturday Night Live, an originator of The Blues Brothers and Ghostbusters and has had a long career as a film actor and screenwriter.-Early...
have both agreed to take part in DVD special features, should the film be finally released.
Murray and Schiller held a screening of the film on April 13, 2004 at the BAM Cinematek in Brooklyn, New York. On September 6, 2005, Murray, Schiller and Zach Galligan attended another screening, this time at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater. The screening was followed by a Q&A session and a book signing of Nothing Lost Forever: The Films of Tom Schiller. The film was shown on November 6, 2009 at Olympia's Capitol Theater as part of the opening night of the Olympia
Olympia Film Society
Olympia Film Society is a nonprofit arts organization in Olympia, Washington that shows independent, international and classic film year-round, offers special live performances, and produces the Olympia Film Festival...
Film Festival
Film festival
A film festival is an organised, extended presentation of films in one or more movie theaters or screening venues, usually in a single locality. More and more often film festivals show part of their films to the public by adding outdoor movie screenings...
. On April 1, 2010, it screened in Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre
Grauman's Egyptian Theatre
Grauman's Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California, is one of the world's most famous movie theatres. Opened in 1922, it was the venue for the first-ever Hollywood premiere.- History :...
in Hollywood as part of the American Cinematheque
American Cinematheque
The American Cinematheque is an independent, non-profit cultural organization in Los Angeles dedicated exclusively to the public presentation of the Moving Image in all its forms. It is considered among the premier organizations of its kind in America....
's acknowledgment of "criminally unknown" films, with Schiller attending and answering questions.
Plot
The plot concerns a young man (Galligan) who dreams of becoming an artistArtist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
. On returning to his relatives in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
, he finds that the Port Authority
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is a bi-state port district, established in 1921 through an interstate compact, that runs most of the regional transportation infrastructure, including the bridges, tunnels, airports, and seaports, within the Port of New York and New Jersey...
has taken control of the city, and is forced to work in a menial job under a trigger-happy boss (Aykroyd).
His kindness to a tramp
Tramp
A tramp is a long term homeless person who travels from place to place as a vagrant, traditionally walking or hiking all year round. In British English meanwhile a tramp simply refers to a homeless person, usually not a travelling one....
leads him to be taken into an underground network where he discovers that the city's tramps are controlling the destiny of all the cities in the world. They instruct him to travel to the moon
Moon
The Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...
on a mission to spread peace and find his true love (Lauren Tom).
Galligan accidentally finds a bus
Bus
A bus is a road vehicle designed to carry passengers. Buses can have a capacity as high as 300 passengers. The most common type of bus is the single-decker bus, with larger loads carried by double-decker buses and articulated buses, and smaller loads carried by midibuses and minibuses; coaches are...
travelling to the moon. Bill Murray
Bill Murray
William James "Bill" Murray is an American actor and comedian. He first gained national exposure on Saturday Night Live in which he earned an Emmy Award and later went on to star in a number of critically and commercially successful comedic films, including Caddyshack , Ghostbusters , and...
plays the bus conductor.
External links
- Nothing Lost Forever - a book about Tom SchillerTom SchillerTom Schiller is an American Emmy Award winning writer best known for his eleven-year stint writing and directing short films for Saturday Night Live...
and this film.