Paramount Home Entertainment will be celebrating the
40th anniversary of director James L. Brooks’ Oscar-winning film adaptation of
Larry McMurtry’s 1975 novel, Terms of Entertainment, on
Nov. 14 with a newly-minted 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo Pack release.
Not only did Brooks win the Oscar for Best Picture
as the producer, but he hit the trifecta with Best Director and Best Adapted
Screenplay wins as well. Shirley
MacLaine won Best Actress and Jack Nicholson, for his performance as Garrett
Breedlove — which was turned down by both Burt Reynolds and Paul Newman — won
the Best Supporting Actor Oscar.
All that gold.
All those wins. And Terms of
Entertainment almost didn’t get made.
The film was optioned by Paramount in 1980, who
hired Brooks to write the screenplay. He
delivered the script sometime in 1982, but Paramount balked at the budget and the
film went into turn-around.
Brooks landed ever so briefly at United Artists with
a production deal, but that too blew up … so back to Paramount and with the
help of some outside financing the film finally went into production in the
spring of 1983 with Brooks now directing and producing.
Three months later the production wrapped and the
finished film was released theatrically at Thanksgiving of the same year … the
rest, they say, is history.
Bonus features include vintage commentary (previous
Blu-ray release) and the newly-prepared “Filmmaker Focus with James L. Brooks.”