Holy Man
USA 1998
Reviewed by Andy Richards
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Miami, the present. McBainbridge, the new owner of the Good Buy Shopping Network which broadcasts live 'infomercials', threatens to sack executive Ricky Hayman unless he can increase his sales figures. After a blow-out on the freeway, Ricky and network media-analyst Kate Newell encounter G, an enigmatic, itinerant "holy man" on a personal spiritual pilgrimage. When Ricky accidentally reverses his car towards G, G appears to halt the vehicle with psychic powers before collapsing from the effort. Ricky and Kate take G to hospital, where Ricky agrees to pay his fees. While awaiting medical assessment, G stays in Ricky's apartment. At a party G hypnotises Nino Cerruti and helps him overcome his fear of flying. After G wanders on to some of the network's sets and inadvertently succeeds in increasing sales through an advocacy of spiritual values, Ricky proposes he work as a salesman for the network. G agrees, as a favour to Ricky.
Sales soon soar, and G becomes a media sensation. Ricky and Kate become lovers. A woman causes a brief scandal by claiming G is her husband and the father of her children, but then confesses she was bribed to lie by a jealous rival of Ricky's. McBainbridge, wanting to put G on prime time, offers Ricky a promotion if he gets G to sign a contract. Ricky lies to G about his medical tests. Kate is appalled, and breaks up with Ricky. G signs the contract. However, Ricky relents and tells G to continue his pilgrimage. Live to the network's audience, Ricky explains his own changed values. Kate sees his recantation and races to the studio, where they reconcile in front of the cameras. Together, they return G to where they found him.
Review
Eddie Murphy's late-90s career resurgence is a prime instance of a star distancing himself from the style of material that once made him famous but subsequently proved too constraining. The Nutty Professor self-consciously deconstructed the Murphy persona, while last year's Doctor Dolittle softened the actor's macho reputation. Here, as G - a modern-day saint seeking an Inner rather than a Golden Child - Murphy again largely effaces his 48Hrs. Axel Foley shtick, leaving Jeff Goldblum to dominate as flash womaniser Ricky whose grandstanding rants offset G's still small voice of calm. This balance - between Murphy's restrained placidity and Goldblum's manic spieling - proves crucial to the film's overall success.
Television shopping may not be the most elusive of satirical targets, but the film at least manages to do a thorough and entertaining job of putting the boot in. Director Stephen Herek (Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, 101 Dalmatians) has fun with a succession of witty vignettes: James Brown endorses the Soul Survivor's Alarm System which emits his trademark cry of "Help Me, Help Me, Good God!"; a sexagenarian plugs 'Clam' perfume by gently orgasming on camera.
The film displays a clear contempt for the masses glued to the shopping networks, so spiritually bereft they fall instantly in love with Murphy's G and his anti-materialistic sermonising, buying in greater quantities of goods than ever before and feeling better about themselves in the process. What G offers is literally a grass-roots philosophy. When he exhorts his audience to go outside and look at some grass, they do so, in wide-eyed wonderment, before phoning in to buy some of Ricky's cheap grass mats. This scene is a clear variant on Peter Finch's famous "I'm mad as hell..." rant from Network (1976), to which Herek's film is clearly indebted. Like Finch's character, G is gleefully exploited and commodified by a ruthless network.
While Finch's Messianic anchorman gave extemporaneous editorials on societal breakdown, G offers pantheistic panaceas, advice on how to rediscover life's essential purity. G's faith, of course, is non-specific and non-denominational, and as with almost any Hollywood film that confronts 'spirituality' in its nebulous, catch-all form, certain confusions arise. Holy Man would like to reconcile commerce and the soul, and the film while poking fun at the excesses of a specific sales culture never indicts selling per se. It is Ricky's betrayal of G's friendship that makes Kate leave him, and Ricky's subsequent 'conversion' seems principally motivated (like most of his actions) by his desire for Kate. Yet despite this thematic fuzziness, born of a desire to be both satirical and feel-good, Holy Man is well enough crafted to trick you into believing you've just bought a slice of both.
Credits
- Producers
- Roger Birnbaum
- Stephen Herek
- Screenplay
- Tom Schulman
- Director of Photography
- Adrian Biddle
- Editor
- Trudy Ship
- Production Designer
- Andrew McAlpine
- Music/Orchestra Conductor
- Alan Silvestri
- ©Touchstone Pictures
- Production Companies
- Touchstone Pictures presents in association with Caravan Pictures
- a Roger Birnbaum production
- Executive Producers
- Jeffrey Chernov
- Jonathan Glickman
- Co-producers
- Ray Murphy
- Rebekah Rudd
- Production Co-ordinator
- Denise Heinrich
- Unit Production Manager
- Ross Fanger
- Location Managers
- David K. Pressman
- Elizabeth A. Elwell
- Post-production Co-ordinator
- Lyle Mayer
- 2nd Unit Director
- David Ellis
- Assistant Directors
- Jeffrey Wetzel
- Kent Genzlinger
- Doug Raine
- Kevin Williams
- Brian Moon
- 2nd Unit:
- Terry Moore
- Script Supervisor
- Adrienne Hamalian
- Casting
- Amanda Mackey Johnson
- Cathy Sandrich
- LA, Associate:
- Liz Lang
- NY, Associate:
- Mercedes Danforth
- Florida:
- Lori S. Wyman
- Director of Photography - Aerial Unit
- Hans Bjerno
- Camera Operators
- Craig Haagensen
- John Winner
- Steadicam Operator
- David Luckenbach
- Digital Effects
- Buena Vista Imaging
- Visual Effects Supervisor:
- Mark Dornfeld
- Digital Supervisor:
- Christofer Dierdorff
- Effects Co-ordinator:
- Adam Gass
- Digital Artists:
- Beth Block
- Lee-Way Chang
- Michael Curtis
- Sarah Moore
- Joe Salazar
- Optical Line-up:
- Pat Kenly
- Optical Camera:
- Douglas Ulm
- Special Effects
- Co-ordinator:
- Kevin Harris
- Foreman:
- Michael Doyle
- Technician:
- Durk Tyndall
- Additional Editing
- Craig Hayes
- Art Director
- James Tocci
- Set Designers
- Richard Fojo
- Stephanie Girard
- Set Decorator
- Chris Spellman
- Sign Writer
- Dean Janik
- Scenic Artist
- Lewis Bowen
- Costume Designer
- Aggie Guerard Rodgers
- Costume Supervisor
- Winnie Brown-Willis
- Key Make-up
- Joe Campayno
- Key Hairstylist
- Donna Battersby-Greene
- Main/End Titles Design
- Nina Saxon/New Wave Entertainment
- Opticals
- Buena Vista Imaging
- Orchestrations
- William Ross
- Executive in Charge of Music for The Buena Vista Motion Pictures
- Kathy Nelson
- Supervising Music Editors
- Michael T. Ryan
- Kenneth Karman
- Score Recordist/Mixer
- Dennis Sands
- Music Programmer
- David Bifano
- Soundtrack
- "Pearl's Girl" by Richard Smith, Karl Hyde, Darren Emerson, performed by Underworld; "Money" by Andrew Dorfman, performed by Andrew Dorfman, Wendy Bremer; "Sparkling Brass", "Lazy Latin" by/performed by Malcolm Lockyer; "Running from Jamaica" by Ansel Cridland, performed by The Meditations; "Manic Position" by/performed by Dominic Glynn; "The Syncopated Clock" by Leroy Anderson; "Oye" by Gloria Estefan, Emilio Estefan Jr, Randall Barlow, Angie Chirino, performed by Gloria Estefan; "Prologue" by/performed by Loreena McKennitt; "Don't You Worry 'bout a Thing" by/performed by Stevie Wonder
- Choreography
- Lori Eastside
- Sound Design
- Tim Chau
- Donald J. Malouf
- Sound Mixer
- Peter J. Devlin
- Re-recording Mixers
- Terry Porter
- Mel Metcalfe
- Dean A. Zupancic
- Dubbing Recordist
- Judy Nord
- Supervising Sound Editors
- Tim Chau
- Donald J. Malouf
- Sound Editors
- Nils C. Jensen
- Jim Brookshire
- Doug Jackson
- Albert Gasser
- ADR
- Recordist:
- Jeannette Browning
- Mixer:
- Doc Kane
- Supervising Editor:
- Thomas G. Whiting
- Editor:
- Denise Whiting-Gontz
- Foley
- Artists:
- Gregg Barbanell
- Laura Macias
- Mixer:
- Scott Weber
- Video Supervisor
- Rick Whitfield
- Video Co-ordinator
- Pam Whitfield
- Stunt Co-ordinator
- Alan Oliney
- 2nd Unit Helicopter Pilot
- Al Guthery
- Cast
- Eddie Murphy
- G
- Jeff Goldblum
- Ricky Hayman
- Kelly Preston
- Kate Newell
- Robert Loggia
- John McBainbridge
- Jon Cryer
- Barry
- Eric McCormack
- Scott Hawkes
- Sam Kitchin
- control room director
- Robert Small
- assistant director
- Marc Macaulay
- Brutus, cameraman
- Mary Stout
- laundry lady 1
- Edie McClurg
- laundry lady 2
- Kim Staunton
- Grace
- Morgan Fairchild
- Betty White
- Florence Henderson
- James Brown
- Soupy Sales
- Dan Marino
- Willard Scott
- Nino Cerruti
- themselves
- Barbara Hubbard Barron
- Cristina Wilcox
- sunbathers
- Clarence Reynolds
- TV host
- Mal Jones
- Jody Wilson
- elderly couple
- Pamela West
- Fresca, the foot model
- Tim Powell
- Doctor Simon
- Lori Viveros Herek
- Angel Schmiedt
- nurses
- Whitney DuPree
- Laurie
- Jennifer Bini Taylor
- hot tub girl
- Robert Walker
- farmer
- Elodia Riovega
- housekeeper
- Avrohom Horovitz
- rabbi
- Al Kamaar
- Moslem theologian
- Dan Fitzgerald
- priest
- Mark Brown
- grass mat salesman
- Mike Benitez
- bullet proof vest man
- Deborah Magdalena
- control booth technician
- Adriana Catano
- TV hostess 1
- Andrea Lively
- TV hostess 2
- Kim Alexis
- Amber, Keratin girl
- Veronica Webb
- Diandre, Keratin girl
- Lee Bryant
- Money 'Meg'
- Nick Santa Maria
- sword salesman
- Aaron Elbaz
- glue-gun boy
- Scott Gallin
- John Bosa
- jock salesmen
- Jeffrey Wetzel
- stage manager
- Erin Morrissey
- Daryl Meyer
- Ronda Pierson
- hosts
- Brett Rice
- John Archie
- detectives
- Armando Ramos
- Grace's little boy
- Nancy Duerr
- Tonya Oliver
- Fred Workman
- Jacqueline Chernov
- Roger Reid
- reporters
- Peter Paul DeLeo
- stagehand
- Errol Smith
- GBSN staffer
- Dave Corey
- announcer
- Alejandro Acosta Fox
- Flamenco guitarist
- Maria Alejandra Carpio
- Flamenco dancer
- Laurie Wallace
- Facial Mist girl
- Willie Gault
- Nordic track guy
- Amanda Lynn
- Nordic track girl
- Charlie Haugk
- party animal
- Margaret Muldoon
- attractive party guest
- Mark Massar
- set dresser
- Toy Van Lierop
- G make-up artist
- Dana Hawkins
- Denise Heinrich
- Hair Chat girls
- Antoni Cornacchione
- chain saw host
- Marc C. Geschwind
- GBSN electrician
- A.J. Alexander O. Parhm
- UPS guy
- Alan Jordan
- Mike Kirton
- marksmen
- Certificate
- PG
- Distributor
- Buena Vista International (UK)
- 10,223 feet
- 113 minutes 36 seconds
- SDDS/Dolby digital/DTS digital sound
- In Colour
- Prints by
- Technicolor
- Anamorphic [Panavision]