Parallel Lives (film)
Encyclopedia
Parallel Lives is a 1994 TV movie, directed by Linda Yellen
Linda Yellen
Linda Yellen is an American director, producer and writer of film and television.As a producer some of her credits include Playing for Time , The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana and Second Serve .Some of her credits as a director include Northern Lights , The Simian Line , William & Catherine:...

. The movie resumes some actors and similar patterns of the previous Yellen's work, Chantilly Lace
Chantilly Lace (film)
Chantilly Lace is a 1993 film shot in Sundance, Utah for the Showtime Network and eventually released on video via Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment. The film was directed by Linda Yellen and features a script that was largely improvised by its ensemble cast, led by JoBeth Williams, Helen...

. It is the Dudley Moore's last film.

It was broadcasted August 14, 1994 on the Showtime cable network.

Cast

  • James Belushi
    James Belushi
    James Adam "Jim" Belushi is an American actor, comedian, and musician. He is the younger brother of comic actor John Belushi.-Early life:Belushi was born in Chicago...

     as Nick Dimas
  • Liza Minnelli
    Liza Minnelli
    Liza May Minnelli is an American actress and singer. She is the daughter of singer and actress Judy Garland and film director Vincente Minnelli....

     as Stevie Merrill
  • James Brolin
    James Brolin
    James Brolin is an American actor, producer and director, best known for his roles in soap operas, movies, sitcoms, and television. He is the father of actor Josh Brolin and husband of singer/actress Barbra Streisand.-Early life:...

     as Professor Spencer Jones
  • Helen Slater
    Helen Slater
    Helen Rachel Slater is an American actress and singer-songwriter.She appeared in the title role in the 1984 film Supergirl. In the following years she starred in several very successful comedy-drama films such as Ruthless People, The Secret of My Success, and City Slickers...

     as Elsa Freedman
  • LeVar Burton
    LeVar Burton
    Levardis Robert Martyn Burton, Jr. , professionally known as LeVar Burton, is an American actor, director, producer and author who first came to prominence portraying Kunta Kinte in the 1977 award-winning ABC television miniseries Roots, based on the novel by Alex Haley...

     as Dr. Franklin Carter
  • Jack Klugman
    Jack Klugman
    Jacob Joachim "Jack" Klugman is an American stage, film and television actor known for his roles in sitcoms, movies, and television and on Broadway...

     as Senator Robert Ferguson
  • Patricia Wettig
    Patricia Wettig
    Patricia Wettig is an American actress and playwright. She is best known for her roles in the television series Thirtysomething, Prison Break and Brothers & Sisters...

     as Rebecca Ferguson Stone
  • Ben Gazzara
    Ben Gazzara
    -Early life:Gazzara was born Biagio Anthony Gazzara in New York City, the son of Italian immigrants Angelina and Antonio Gazzara, who was a laborer and carpenter. Gazzara grew up on New York's tough Lower East Side. He actually lived on E. 29th Street and participated in the drama program at...

     as Charlie Duke
  • Mira Sorvino
    Mira Sorvino
    Mira Katherine Sorvino is an American actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Mighty Aphrodite and is also known for her role as Romy White in Romy and Michele's High School Reunion.- Early life :Sorvino was born in Tenafly, New Jersey...

     as Matty Derosa
  • Lindsay Crouse
    Lindsay Crouse
    -Early life:Crouse was born in New York City, the daughter of Anna and Russel Crouse, a playwright. Her full name—Lindsay Ann Crouse—is an intentional tribute to the Broadway writing partnership of Lindsay and Crouse. Her father and his writing partner, Howard Lindsay, wrote much of...

     as Una Pace
  • JoBeth Williams
    JoBeth Williams
    JoBeth Williams is an American film and television actress and director, and current President of the Screen Actors Guild Foundation.-Early life:...

     as Winnie Winslow
  • Ally Sheedy
    Ally Sheedy
    Alexandra Elizabeth "Ally" Sheedy is an American film and stage actress, as well as the author of two books. She is best known for her roles in the Brat Pack films The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo's Fire.-Early life:...

     as Louise
  • Paul Sorvino
    Paul Sorvino
    Paul Anthony Sorvino is an American actor. He often portrays authority figures on both sides of the law, and is possibly best known for his roles as Paulie Cicero, a portrayal of Paul Vario in the film Goodfellas and Sgt. Phil Cerreta on the police procedural and legal drama television series Law...

     as Ed Starling
  • Matthew Perry
    Matthew Perry
    Matthew Perry is Canadian-American television and film actor.Matthew Perry or Matt Perry may also refer to:*Matthew C. Perry , American naval officer who forcibly opened Japan to trade with the West...

     as Willie Morrison
  • Jill Eikenberry
    Jill Eikenberry
    Jill Eikenberry is an American film, stage, and television actress. She is best known for her role as lawyer Ann Kelsey in L.A. Law...

     as Lula Sparks
  • Treat Williams
    Treat Williams
    Richard Treat Williams is a Screen Actors Guild Award–nominated American actor and children's book author who has appeared on film, stage and television...

     as Peter Barnum
  • Dudley Moore
    Dudley Moore
    Dudley Stuart John Moore, CBE was an English actor, comedian, composer and musician.Moore first came to prominence as one of the four writer-performers in the ground-breaking comedy revue Beyond the Fringe in the early 1960s, and then became famous as half of the highly popular television...

     as Imaginary Friend / President Andrews
  • Gena Rowlands
    Gena Rowlands
    Gena Rowlands is an American actress of film, stage and television. The four-time Emmy and two-time Golden Globe winner is best known for her collaborations with her actor-director husband John Cassavetes in ten films, in two of which, Gloria and A Woman Under the Influence, she gave Academy...

     as Francie Pomerantz
  • Robert Wagner
    Robert Wagner
    Robert John Wagner is an American actor of stage, screen, and television.A veteran of many films in the 1950s and 1960s, Wagner gained prominence in three American television series that spanned three decades: It Takes a Thief , Switch , and Hart to Hart...

     as the sheriff
  • Michael O'Rourke as Kirk O'Brien
  • Alan Feinstein
    Alan Feinstein (actor)
    Alan Feinstein is an American actor noted for his 1983 award winning stage performance in A View From the Bridge.-References:...

     as Dan Merrill

Production

The movie was developed by Linda Yellen with the assistance of the Sundance Institute. As for Chantilly Lace
Chantilly Lace (film)
Chantilly Lace is a 1993 film shot in Sundance, Utah for the Showtime Network and eventually released on video via Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment. The film was directed by Linda Yellen and features a script that was largely improvised by its ensemble cast, led by JoBeth Williams, Helen...

, it uses "guided improvisations": the actors after receiving some general character-outlines were free to improvise.

Reception

The Television-movies received mixed reviews. The New York Times critic John Leonard argued: "Parallel Lives is injured in its lightness of being by Yellen's added structure. But until it sinks in murky narrative waters, it's a marvel of raw edges and wild wit and surprise cunning, of craft that goes up like a kite to catch some lightning". The Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...

critic Ray Loynd wrote: "When the movie works best (...), this is a movie that tends to make The Big Chill
The Big Chill (film)
The Big Chill is a 1983 American comedy-drama film directed by Lawrence Kasdan, starring Tom Berenger, Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum, William Hurt, Kevin Kline, Mary Kay Place, Meg Tilly, and JoBeth Williams. It is about a group of baby boomer college friends who reunite briefly after 15 years due to...

look sodden".

On the other hand, Lynne Heffley opened her review for the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

with these words: "From the sublime to the ridiculous... and the ridiculous has the edge in Parallel Lives". Jerry Roberts in his Encyclopedia of Television Film Directors defined the film as "a cattle call at the actors unemployment line" and film critic Lewis Beale
Lewis Beale
Lewis Beale is an American journalist, film critic and film lecturer whose articles and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Newsday, the Los Angeles Times the Chicago Sun-Times, Interview, USA Today, Film Journal International, and other publications...

 in his video review for the New York Daily News
New York Daily News
The Daily News of New York City is the fourth most widely circulated daily newspaper in the United States with a daily circulation of 605,677, as of November 1, 2011....

claimed that: "Linda Yellen's film wants to be hip, moving and Robert Altmanesque
Robert Altman
Robert Bernard Altman was an American film director and screenwriter known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective. In 2006, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his body of work with an Academy Honorary Award.His films MASH , McCabe and...

(overlapping dialogue and an improvisational feel), but it's simply tedious and stupid".
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