FILM 2128: DINER (1982)

FILM 2128: DINER (1982)

TRIVIA: All of the scenes in the diner were filmed last after the cast got to know each other. The dialogue in those scenes is a combination of scripted and improvisational.

Barry Levinson claims that the infamous football quiz that Eddie forces his fiancée to pass is based on something that one of his male cousins did in real-life.

Barry Levinson had the main actors arrive in Baltimore a week before filming began to get to know each other and build rapport. Predictably, the young male actors went out on the town to clubs and tried to pick up women. Sometimes they would use bogus stories about what they were doing in Baltimore. Tim Daly says he came up with the most popular one, that they were engineers working on a rotating rooftop restaurant.

MGM was reluctant to release the film, which they believed would be a commercial flop. But when they found out that critic Pauline Kael had written a glowing review in The New Yorker, they immediately released it.

Included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider.

I’m making my way through the book "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider. See my blog post about my copy of the book here…

You can buy an updated version (which I will get after I’ve made my way through this edition) here…

I really hope you can come on this journey with me – if you do I’d love to know which films you’ve enjoyed the most! 

Watch this here..