“The Linguini Incident,” a low-budget ’90s film directed by Richard Shepard and featuring Bowie and Rosanna Arquette, makes its way to Blu-ray in a director’s cut.
Even David Bowie’s biggest fans might be unaware of his solitary foray into romantic comedy, and for good reason: It was barely released in 1992, and has been all but impossible to see since. Now, its director has restored, reclaimed and recut the film in question, “The Linguini Incident,” which made its Blu-ray debut this week.
Richard Shepard was only 25 when he directed the quirky, New York-set indie, which was his solo feature directorial debut. (He directed an earlier film, “Cool Blue,” alongside Mark Mullin.) As was typical of the era, the low budget was gathered from multiple sources. “The whole movie was financed very weirdly,” Shepard said in a Zoom interview. “We had home video money and foreign sales money and mysterious money — a lot of mysterious money.”
His first casting coup came early, when he landed Rosanna Arquette, already a star with “After Hours” and “Desperately Seeking Susan” on her résumé. So what made her take a chance on this young novice? “I loved the script,” Arquette said in a phone interview. “I just thought it was well-written and funny … and then, lo and behold, we had David Bowie, so that was really exciting.”
Shepard sent the script to Bowie on a lark, with the idea that he and the fellow rock legend Mick Jagger could play the film’s flamboyant restaurateurs. “We naïvely just sent it to them, to play those small parts, with no money offered, no anything,” Shepard recalled. “We get this note back from Bowie saying, ‘I’m interested in your movie, but I don’t want to play that supporting role. I would like to play the lead.’”
Bowie wanted to play Monte, a British bartender at a hip, downtown restaurant who tries to talk one of his co-workers, the aspiring escape artist Lucy (Arquette), into a green card marriage, but is instead sidetracked into helping her rob their employers. Marlee Matlin, Eszter Balint, Buck Henry and Andre Gregory were among the cast; the future Oscar nominee Thomas Newman would compose the score, and Robert Yeoman, Wes Anderson’s go-to cinematographer, was behind the camera. The film was shot in 30 days in 1990.
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
