Hanky Panky | |
---|---|
Directed by | Sidney Poitier [1] |
Written by | Henry Rosenbaum David Taylor |
Produced by | Martin Ransohoff |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Arthur J. Ornitz |
Edited by | Harry Keller |
Music by | Tom Scott |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 110 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $14 million [2] |
Box office | $9 million (domestic) |
Hanky Panky is a 1982 American comedy thriller Metrocolor film directed by Sidney Poitier, starring Gene Wilder and Gilda Radner. Wilder and Radner met during filming and later married. [3]
Michael Jordon, an architect, accidentally becomes involved in a web of intrigue and murder when a strange woman, who enters a taxi with him, is later found murdered. As a result, he flees from false murder charges. Kate is a woman out to find her brother's killer. Although she and Michael initially believe the other is a killer, they realize otherwise and become a team. They undertake a wild cross-country ride from New York City to the Grand Canyon.
The film was developed as a follow-up to the successful Gene Wilder- Richard Pryor film Stir Crazy. [4] However, Pryor chose not to participate and Gilda Radner was brought in as a replacement, with the script rewritten for her role. [5]
Locations include Parc East, [6] Knickerbocker Club, Madison Square Garden, Roosevelt Hotel, Ware Hall, Cambridge, Massachusetts, New England Aquarium, and Grand Canyon National Park.
Vincent Canby, writing in The New York Times, gave the film a mixed review, saying it "is apt to leave you far less exhilarated than exhausted." [7] [8]
Richard Schickel wrote: "a funny, human moment, and if Hanky Panky had 30 or 40 more of them it might have been a congenial little picture" [9]
Variety wrote: "a limp romantic suspense comedy which manages to be neither romantic, suspenseful nor funny...appears to be an attempt to duplicate the classy thrills of North by Northwest..." [10]
A $2.50 paperback novelization of the screenplay was published by Pinnacle Books, in July 1982 , [11] [12] by Leslie Jarreau, possibly a pseudonym. The book is copyrighted by, Henry Rosenbaum and David Taylor, the screenwriters. [13]