Cybill Shepherd Movies

THE L WORD Season 4 picks up with the women wrestling with issues close to their hearts. As with previous seasons, old demons rear their ugly heads and a host of new characters are brought into their fold, offering them access to a broader community with diverse issues. The L Word stars Jennifer Beals, Leisha Hailey, Laurel Holloman, Mia Kirshner, Katherine Moennig, Dallas Roberts, Daniela Sea, Rachel Shelley, and Pam Grier. Newest additions to the cast include Cybill Shepherd, Marlee Matlin, Janina Gavankar and Rose Rollins. Special guest stars are Rosanna Arquette, Eric Roberts, Bruce Davison, Kristanna Loken and Jane Lynch. This season, the war in Iraq becomes an integral part of Alice's (Hailey) life as she struggles to move on after the death of Dana; Helena (Shelley) tries to find financial independence and come to terms with leaving behind a world of privilege; Phyllis Kroll (Shepherd) -- who takes the courageous plunge late in life to come out of the closet -- risking everything that has defined her life up to now; and, Bette (Beals) has to deal with Jodi Lerner (Matlin), a woman who confronts her head-on about her Type-A personality.

Based upon Peter Biskind's book of the same name, this BBC-produced documentary traces the rise of a generation of Hollywood filmmakers who briefly changed the face of movies with a more personal approach that pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable onscreen. Influenced by such European directors as Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, and Federico Fellini, the movement kicked off in the mid-'60s with two films directed by Arthur Penn: Mickey One and Bonnie and Clyde. (The latter had been offered to both Godard and Truffaut before it wound up with producer/star Warren Beatty and Penn.) What really kicked it into gear was the unexpected success of Easy Rider, a biker-road movie that became that rare film phenomenon: acclaimed at the Cannes Film Festival and a huge commercial success. Film school graduates, the first generation brought up with movies as their main cultural reference, flooded the studios (whose own regimes were changing) with production chieftains such as Robert Evans of Paramount and David Picker at United Artists; they approved risky-looking projects and allowed relatively untested filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola to take on heavyweight movies such as The Godfather or Hollywood newcomers like Britain's John Schlesinger to make quirky stories like Midnight Cowboy. Enriched by success with their TV show The Monkees, producer Bert Schneider and director Bob Rafelson formed a company that produced not only Easy Rider but seminal '70s films such as Five Easy Pieces and the Oscar-winning Vietnam War documentary Hearts and Minds. Another godfather to the new movement was producer Roger Corman, who gave early career opportunities to Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, and Jonathan Demme on low-budget projects that allowed them to learn their craft.

Two things brought this movement to an end: Some individual filmmakers' personal excesses (such disastrous flops as Dennis Hopper's follow-up to Easy Rider, appropriately titled The Last Movie, and Scorsese's New York, New York), and the studios growing fascination with special effects-driven B-movies. An outgrowth of two box-office and marketing juggernauts -- Jaws and Star Wars -- the resulting films became entertainments rather than personal statements of the directors. Narrated by William H. Macy, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls features vintage clips of Coppola, Scorsese, Beatty, George Lucas, Sam Peckinpah, Roman Polanski, Robert Altman, and Pauline Kael. It also includes original interview material with Penn; Corman; Bogdanovich; Hopper; Picker; writer/directors John Milius and Paul Schrader; actresses Karen Black, Cybill Shepherd, Margot Kidder, and Jennifer Salt (the latter two shared a house in Malibu, a social center for young filmmakers); actors Peter Fonda, Kris Kristofferson, and Richard Dreyfuss; producers Jerome Hellman, Michael Phillips, and Jonathan Taplin; editor Dede Allen; production designer Polly Platt; writers David Newman, Joan Tewksbury, Gloria Katz, and Willard Huyck; cinematographers Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmond; agent Mike Medavoy; and former production executive Peter Bart. Among the films discussed are Rosemary's Baby, The Wild Bunch, Mean Streets, American Graffiti, The Rain People, Midnight Cowboy, M*A*S*H, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Last Picture Show, Shampoo, Taxi Driver, and Raging Bull. (Three interviewees -- cinematographer Gordon Willis, critic Andrew Sarris, and writer-director Monte Hellman -- listed in the Variety review of this film, were not included in this version from a screening on Bravo.) ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide

June (Cybill Shepherd) is a twice-divorced, middle-aged lounge singer grappling with her dwindling career, fading looks, children from previous marriages, and Robert (Peter Outerbridge), her much younger and slightly confused lover. When Robert embarks on an affair with a woman his own age, June is thrown into something of a crisis that is seen through the eyes of her adolescent daughter Adele (Alexandra Purvis), a young woman struggling to find her own place in the world. Marine Life was shown at the 2000 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide

The sneaky underworld of baby selling is the subject of this made-for-television movie. Cybill Shepard stars as a doctor who is trying to adopt a baby. She turns to a couple who claims to be willing to sell their child, only to be swindled out of her money and the child. ~ Bernadette McCallion, All Movie Guide

Cybill Shepherd stars in this heart-tugging drama as a mother whose baby was abducted out of his bed. Fifteen years pass and she is working as a middle-school teacher in a different town. One of her students is a defiant 15-year-old. Despite the trouble he gives, there is something about the boy that draws her to him. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This video offers a profile of filmmaker Bogdanovich's first great movie, The Last Picture Show, as Cybill Shepherd, Jeff Bridges, Timothy Bottoms and Sam Bottoms, Polly Platt, Randy Quaid and others reveal the impacts that the film had on their lives. ~ All Movie Guide

The made-for-cable film Which Way Home is the story of a Red Cross nurse trying to escape from war-torn Cambodia in the late '70s with a group of orphans. An Australian smuggler assists her in her valiant attempt to save the children and leave Asia. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide

Although fans were still addicted to the hip, kidding-on-the-square detective series Moonlighting, the series was being eroded from within by profound production problems and internal squabbles. As a result, only 13 new episodes were produced for the series' fourth season, forcing ABC to fill out the rest of the schedule with reruns. Also, tensions between series star Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd, coupled with ongoing arguments between the two leads and the series' producers, culminated with extended absences from the set and lengthy production shutdowns. In one episode, "Here's Living With You, Kid," Willis and Shepherd didn't appear at all, forcing supporting actor Curtis Armstrong, cast as junior detective Herbert Viola (a character who graduated this season from recurring to regular status), to carry the plotline by himself. Fortunately, the old spark roared into flame long enough for some top-rank episodes to be produced during season four. The opener, which occurs shortly after detective-agency partners Maddie Hayes (Shepherd) and David Addison (Willis) have finally slept together, finds the duo separately seeking out advice on their relationship from psychologist Dr. Joyce Brothers and singer Ray Charles (this installment also finds time for an elaborate takeoff of The Honeymooners). In later episodes, it is revealed that Maddie is pregnant with David's baby, whereupon she gets married -- not to David, but to a total stranger named Walter Bishop (Dennis Dugan). With the two stars spending so much time on affairs of the heart, it is up to the supporting characters, notably the aforementioned Herbert Viola and detective-agency receptionist Agnes DiPesto (Allyce Beasley), to take care of the "mystery" angle; especially memorable is the episode in which Agnes' mother is inexplicably targeted for elimination after returning from a vacation. ~ All Movie Guide

The made-for-TV The Long Hot Summer was based on the 1958 theatrical film of the same name-which, in turn, was based on two William Faulkner short stories. Don Johnson plays Ben Quick, a Southern drifter who is under suspicion as a "barn burner." Ben secures a job at the Mississippi mansion of town-boss Will Varner (Jason Robards). Varner's daughter Noel (Judith Ivey) and daughter-in-law Eula (Cybill Shepherd) vie for the handsome Ben's attention, while the patriarch's weakling son Jody (William Russ) seethes. When a few local barns are burned, Ben is the primary suspect-and no one is more suspicious than Noel. A murder trial and lynch mob both figure into the second half of the two-part The Long Hot Summer; the film originally aired October 6 and 7, 1985. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The irrepressibly hip detective series Moonlighting really shifts into high gear for its second season, which offers 18 delightfully intriguing episodes, chock-full of knowledgeable inside jokes and eccentric deviations from the plotlines. In the opener, reluctantly teamed private eyes Maddie Hayes (Cybill Shepherd) and David Addison (Bruce Willis) find themselves in hot water thanks to David's charming but thoroughly untrustworthy older brother (Charles Rocket). In later episodes, the couple is hired by a self-proclaimed lady leprechaun to find her missing pot o' gold; Christmas Eve finds the Blue Moon Detective Agency being used as a combination nursery and "Santa Hot Line"; the agency's ditsy secretary, Agnes DiPesto (Allyce Beasley), gets the thrill of her life when she subs for her bosses at a fancy ball; a Hitchcock-style plotline, replete with Bernard Herrmannesque music, finds Maddie probing the mysterious suicide of the artist who pained her portrait; an elderly client insists that David and Maddie serve as "expert witnesses" -- to his own murder; and Whoopi Goldberg guest stars as a con artist who becomes a target for assassination after inadvertently emerging as a national hero. Other highlights include the first appearance of Maddie's well-heeled parents (played by Eva Marie Saint and Robert Webber) and a lavish film noir black-and-white episode in which Dave and Maddie solve a cold case from 1946 -- and which is dedicated to narrator Orson Welles, who died five days before the episode was telecast. ~ All Movie Guide