Jo Marie Payton-France Movies
Colors stars Robert Duvall and Sean Penn as partners on the LAPD's gang crime division. Duvall had hoped to spend more time with his family, but he's pulled back into active service because of a step-up in gang activity. He makes no secret of his contempt for his novice partner Penn, but eventually comes to rely on the younger man as a valuable street contact. The central crisis is the battle for supremacy between the "Crips" and the "Bloods", with every effort to call a truce stymied by the gang members themselves and by undue police intervention. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Sean Penn, Robert Duvall, (more)
- 1988
The fourth season of Perfect Strangers finds aspiring photographer Larry (Mark-Linn Baker) and his Myposian-born cousin Balki (Bronson Pinchot) still working in entry-level jobs at the "Chicago Chronicle." Likewise carried over from the previous season is Larry and Balki's tendency to enmesh themselves in situations reminiscent of Laurel & Hardy, never more so than when the boys agree to move a piano up ten flights of stairs at the behest of the "Chronicle"'s neurotic advice columnist Lydia (Belita Moreno). More zany slapstick ensues in the two-part episode which finds Larry and Balki, their stewardess neighbors Mary Anne (Rebecca Arthur) and Jennifer (Melanie Wilson), and the "Chronicle"'s acid-tongue elevator operator Harriette (Jo Marie Payton-France) embark upon a disastrous camping trip. Later escapades include Balki's first airplane flight, and a hectic Q&A session when Larry and Balki compete on a TV game show. Plus, there's the obligatory Christmas episode, in which Balki generously arranges a party for his curmudgeonly mail-room supervisor Mr. Gorpley (Sam Anderson). And in a more original development, Balki is hypnotized into thinking that he's Elvis, thereby setting up a "tour de force" for series regular Bronson Pinchot. Also: Balki prepares for a college entrance exam with the aid of memories from past episodes (the standard Season Four "clip show"); Doris Roberts (Everybody Loves Raymond guests as a maid whose efficiency drives everyone crazier than usual; and John Matuszak shows up as the head of a motorcycle club for which Balki must undergo a riotous initiation ceremony. Perhaps the season's most significant episode is "Crimebusters", in which Larry and Balki go undercover to research a newspaper story and run afoul of gangsters--one of whom turns out to be an undercover cop named Carl (Reginald VelJohnson), who happens to be the husband of the boys' coworker Harriette. Within the next year, both Harriette and Carl would be spun off into their own long-running sitcom, Family Matters. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Mark Linn-Baker, Bronson Pinchot, (more)
- 1987
Season Three of Perfect Strangers finds aspiring young photographer Larry (Mark Linn-Baker) and his cousin-roomate Balki (Bronson Pinchot) landing new jobs at the "Chicago Chronicle", with organization-freak Larry working as a cub reporter and zany Myposian immigrant Balki ending up in the mail room, where he takes orders from the misanthropic Mr. Gorpley (Sam Anderson). New to the series this season are Eugene Roche as "Chronicle" editor Harry Burns, F.J. O'Neill as publisher R.T. Wainwright, and Jo Marie Payton-France as the newspaper building's eternally sarcastic elevator operator Harriette Winslow. Also, Belita Moreno, seen during the first two seasons as the wife of Larry and Balki's obnoxious employer "Twinkie", resurfaces in Season Three in a brand-new role, as the "Chronicle"'s hypersensitive advice columnist Lydia Markham. The new journalistic setting opens up a whole new slew of story possibilities, including the time-honored routine in which Larry and Balki break into the publisher's office late at night to retrieve an embarrassing missive, another wherein the boys "star" in a commercial for the "Chronicle", and still another which finds our heroes handcuffed together on the very evening that Larry must make a good impression on the publisher. Back in their apartment, Larry and Balki continue to recycle old two-reel comedy bits, notably in the episode in which they offered to install the plumbing for their stewardess neighbors Mary Anne (Rebecca Arthur) and Jennifer (Melanie Wilson). Guest stars this season include such familiar faces as Jeff Corey in the role of the "Chronicle"'s chief stockholder, Holland Taylor as the paper's sexually predatory Sunday magazine, Kimmy Robertson as a clerk in a store where Balki goes on a riotous shopping spree, and the inescapable Ted McGinley as Larry's insufferable brother Billy. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Mark Linn-Baker, Bronson Pinchot, (more)
A passion for blues music is evident in this drama based on a contest-winning script by former blues musician John Fusco -- and featuring one of the decade's best-received motion picture soundtracks, written and performed by Ry Cooder. Eugene Martone Ralph Macchio is a classically trained guitarist who desperately wants to locate a long-lost blues song. At a Harlem nursing home, Eugene finds Willie Brown (Joe Seneca), a legendary blues man who may be able to help him. Eugene becomes part of the master guitarist's scheme to reclaim his soul from the Devil, which he sold in exchange for musical greatness at a rural crossroads many decades before. Making their way across the Mississippi Delta, the duo meets Frances (Jami Gertz), a runaway who becomes a love interest for Eugene. After launching his career with the sale of his script for Crossroads (1986), which is loosely based on the mythical character of Faust and a fable involving real-life blues legend Robert Johnson (played in the film by Tim Russ), Fusco went on to write the highly successful Young Guns (1988). ~ Karl Williams, Rovi
- Starring:
- Ralph Macchio, Joe Seneca, (more)
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