Bullets Over Broadway [DVD]

Big city mobsters and the Broadway stage collide hilariously in this side-splitting all-star comedy that had audiences and critics rolling in the aisles! John Cusack (SERENDIPITY, HIGH FIDELITY) stars as David Shayne, an idealistic young writer who'll do anything to get his first Broadway play off the ground -- even if it means teaming up with the mob! Surrounded by a wacky cast of characters including a gangster's ditzy girlfriend (Jennifer Tilly, LIAR, LIAR), a tipsy actress (Dianne Wiest in her Academy Award(R)-winning performance -- Best Supporting Actress, 1994), and a mob hit man (Chazz Palminteri, THE USUAL SUSPECTS), Shayne's got to pull it all off before the curtain falls and bullets start to fly!

One of Woody Allen's best films of the '90s, Bullets over Broadway stars John Cusack as a virtual Woody surrogate, a neurotic, Jazz Age writer whose new play sounds wooden and unrealistic to a low-level mobster (Chazz Palminteri) assigned to watch over his boss's actress-girlfriend (Jennifer Tilly). When the hood starts contributing better story ideas and dialogue than what the official playwright can conjure, questions (not unlike those of Amadeus) about the price we pay to make art at the expense of other responsibilities are intriguingly raised. Palminteri gives a very interesting performance as the enforcer waking up to the desperate (and almost feminine) demands of his own creative psyche, and Dianne Wiest (who won an Oscar), Tracey Ullman, Jim Broadbent, and Jennifer Tilly are very funny together playing the ensemble cast of Cusack's play. --Tom Keogh