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The History of American Cinema: 1993

23/1 -

Scent of a Woman wins three awards at this year’s Golden Globe awards: Best Film, Best Screenplay (Bo Goldman), and Best Actor (Al Pacino). [ADD]

25/1 -

Paramount makes outtake footage from its back catalogue of films available for hire for use in other films. [ADD]

31/1 -

Robert Rodriguez’s $7,000 budget action film, El Mariachi receives critical acclaim at this year’s Sundance Festival. [ADD]

12/2 -

Harold Ramis’ comedy Groundhog Day, in which Bill Murray plays a TV weatherman who finds himself reliving the same day over and over, is released.   Andie MacDowell and Ned Ryerson also star. [ADD]

19/3 -

John Badham’s Point of No Return continues the recent Hollywood trend for remaking European hits.   Bridget Fonda plays a drug addict recruited by a government agency and transformed into an assassin in a remake of Luc Besson’s La Femme Nikita. [ADD]

25/3 -

Carl Mazzocone and Main Line Pictures win their legal action against actress Kim Basinger after she backs out of making their controversial film Boxing Helena.   The film, directed by Jennifer Lynch, (daughter of director David Lynch) tells the gruesome story of a man who amputates a woman’s limbs in order to keep her for himself.   The court orders Basinger to pay $8.9 million in damages. [ADD]

30/3 -

Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven wins the Best Picture award at the 65th Annual Academy Awards ceremony.   The veteran actor also picks up the Best Director prize for the same film. [MORE]

31/3 -

Actor Brandon Lee is accidentally killed on-set while filming The Crow. [ADD]

3/4 -

Joel Schumacher’s Falling Down, in which Michael Douglas portrays a white-collar everyman who goes on a killing spree, comes under the media spotlight after the killing of six Asian grocers since the film’s release in late February. [ADD]

30/4 -

Disney's Buena Vista Pictures Distribution announces the planned acquisition of Miramax Films, which will become an autonomous division of the company. [ADD]

7/5 -

Kenneth Branagh’s ‘youthful’ version of William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing is released.   Branagh, Michael Keaton, Keanu Reeves, Denzel Washington, Richard Briers, Kate Beckinsale, and Emma Thompson star. [ADD]

21/5 -

Philip Noyce’s Sliver is released.   Cashing in on Sharon Stone’s infamy after Basic Instinct, the sexual thriller sees her opposite William Baldwin and Tom Berenger. [ADD]

28/5 -

Sylvester Stallone’s flagging career is revived by the release of Renny Harlin’s Cliffhanger.   Stallone plays a mountain rescue climber in pursuit of a gang of villains led by John Lithgow. [ADD]

9/6 -

High-class madam Heidi Fleiss’s arrest creates panic amongst the Hollywood community when she threatens to name her celebrity clients. [ADD]

11/6 -

Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg’s prehistoric theme-park gone wrong extravaganza is released.   Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum and Richard Attenborough star, but it is the computer generated dinosaurs who are the real attraction. [ADD]

17/6 -

Jurassic Park breaks box office records with an opening weekend gross of $50.2 million.   The film grosses $81.7 million in its first week of release. [ADD]

25/6 -

Nora Ephron’s directorial debut, Sleepless in Seattle, is released.   Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks play singletons brought together by Hanks’ on-screen son, Ross Malinger. [ADD]

Jun -

Whoopi Goldberg becomes Hollywood’s highest paid actress when she is offered $8.5 million to appear in the sequel to Sister Act. [ADD]

7/7 -

The court finds in favour of Mia Farrow in her bitter legal battle with Woody Allen for custody of their three children, Dylan, Moses and Satchel. [ADD]

9/7 -

Wolfgang Peterson’s In the Line of Fire, in which Clint Eastwood plays an ageing Secret Service agent hunting John Malkovich’s psychotic assassin, is released. [ADD]

19/7 -

It is estimated that Hollywood’s six major studios – Fox, Inc., Walt Disney Co., Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures and Universal – have spent $1 billion on high-tech production equipment. [ADD]

10/8 -

Costume designer Irene Sharaff dies in New York at the age of 83.   She was nominated for an Academy Award fifteen times during her 50-year career, winning the statuette on eight occasions. [ADD]

8/9 -

Wayne Wang’s The Joy Luck Club, adapted for the screen by Amy Tan, on whose novel the film is based, is released. [ADD]

1/10 -

Martin Scorsese directs against type to make an adaptation of Edith Wharton’s 19th-century novel The Age of Innocence.   Daniel Day-Lewis plays Newland Archer in love with the ‘unsuitable’ Countess Ellen Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer).   Winona Ryder also stars as Archer’s more appropriate love. [ADD]

29/9 -

Robert De Niro’s directorial debut, A Bronx Tale, adapted by Chazz Palmintieri from his own one-man show, is released.   De Niro also stars as a bus driver struggling to bring up his young son (Lillo Brancato). [ADD]

8/10 -

Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes star in debut director Marco Brambilla’s futuristic thriller, Demolition Man. [ADD]

17/10 -

Four-time Academy Award nominee Jane Alexander is sworn in as Chairperson of the National Endowment for the Arts. [ADD]

22/10 -

Disney release an edited version of their sports drama The Program after a teenager is killed and two others are seriously injured when they imitated a scene in which a group of drunken youths lie down on a busy road to prove their toughness. [ADD]

26/10 -

The Warner Bros. store opens on Fifth Avenue in New York. [ADD]

31/10 -

Rising young actor River Phoenix (22) collapses on the pavement and dies outside The Viper Rooms, Johnny Depp’s West Hollywood nightclub, after consuming a cocktail of alcohol and drugs. [ADD]

4/11 -

48-year-old Sherry Lansing becomes the highest-ranking woman in the film industry when she is appointed Chairman of the Motion Picture Group of Paramount Pictures. [ADD]

12/11 -

American Multi-Cinema and Loew’s Theaters launch a 20-cinema chain to exhibit interactive feature films from Inter Film Inc. [ADD]

30/11 -

Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, based on the Thomas Kenneally novel, is released.   Liam Neeson stars as Oskar Schindler, the German businessman who saved over a thousand Jews from the gas chamber by giving them work in his munitions factory. [ADD]

1/12 -

Vincent Canby retires as film critic for the New York Times after nearly 25 years. [ADD]

15/12 -

The Academy Award statuette given to Vivien Leigh for her role in Gone With the Wind is sold in auction at Sotheby’s for $510,000. [ADD]

15/12 -

America and Europe attempt to put their differences behind them to reach a GATT agreement aimed at lowering tariffs and reducing other restrictions on world trade. [ADD]

23/12 -

Johnathan Demme’s Philadelphia, written by Ron Nyswaner, is released.   Based on a true case, it tells the story of a high-flying lawyer who sues his former employers when they fire him after he gets AIDS.   Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington star. [ADD]

25/12 -

Lasse Hallström’s offbeat What's Eating Gilbert Grape? is released.   Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio star. [ADD]

30/12 -

Legendary agent Irving ‘Swifty’ Lazar dies at the age of 86. [ADD]

Other Key American Films of 1993

The Ballad of Little Jo (Maggie Greenwald) [ADD]

Dave (Ivan Reitman) [ADD]

The Firm (Sydney Pollack) [ADD]

The Fugitive (Andrew Davis) [ADD]

Heaven & Earth (Oliver Stone) [ADD]

In the Line of Fire (Wolfgang Petersen) [ADD]

Manhattan Murder Mystery (Woody Allen) [ADD]

Matinee (Joe Dante) [ADD]

Mrs Doubtfire (Chris Columbus) [ADD]

The Secret Garden (Agnieszka Holland) [ADD]

Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas (Henry Selick) [ADD]