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The History of American Cinema: 1994

7/1 -

TriStar Pictures’ chairman, Mike Medavoy, announces his resignation.   He is replaced by Columbia’s Mark Canton. [ADD]

Jan -

Viacom acquires the Blockbuster video rental chain for $8,400 million. [ADD]

16/2 -

Sumner Redstone and Viacom, Inc beat QVC in the protracted battle for ownership of Paramount Pictures.   Viacom are believed to have paid in the region of $10 billion for the studio. [ADD]

3/3 -

Jack Nicholson becomes the 22^nd and youngest recipient of the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Awards.   Elizabeth Taylor also receives an award – only the fourth woman to do so after Lillian Gish, Bette Davis and Barbara Stanwyck. [ADD]

4/3 -

Comedy actor John Candy dies of a heart attack while filming in the small Colorado town of Durango  [ADD]

11/3 -

The Los Angeles Society of Cinematographers gives Jack Cardiff its International Award for Outstanding Achievement. [ADD]

21/3 -

Steven Spielberg wins the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars at the 66th Academy Awards for Schindler's List.   The film also wins a further five awards. [ADD]

28/3 -

Lana Turner is discharged from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center after undergoing tests for throat cancer. [ADD]

3/4 -

Frank Wells, 62-year-old president of the Walt Disney Co, dies in a helicopter accident in Nevada.   Wells, along with chief executive Michael Eisner, is credited with reviving the company’s fortunes since its slump in the eighties. [ADD]

13/4 -

John Waters’ Serial Mom, in which Kathleen Turner plays a psychotic but house-proud serial killer, is released.   Sam Waterston, Ricki Lake and Matthew Lillard also star as her picture-perfect family. [ADD]

14/4 -

On the centenary of the opening of the first Edison Kinematograph parlour in Times Square, New York, Turner Classic Movies is launched with a screening of Gone With the Wind. [ADD]

11/5 -

Alex Proyas’ The Crow is released.   Brandon Lee, the film’s star, died in an on-set shooting accident during filming, and some of his scenes are completed using digital compositing techniques.   Lee’s father, Bruce, also died tragically young. [ADD]

3/6 -

The expanded 2^nd edition of the late Ephraim Katz’s Film Encyclopedia is published by Harper Collins. [ADD]

10/6 -

Jan de Bont’s action thriller Speed, in which Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock are trapped on a bus wired to explode if its speedo dips beneath 50mph, is released.   Dennis Hopper is the psycho extortionist. [ADD]

15/6 -

Disney’s The Lion King, the animated tale of Simba, a lion cub, is released.   Rowan Atkinson, Whoopi Goldberg and Jeremy Irons provide the voices while Elton John and Tim Rice provide the songs. [ADD]

17/6 -

Actor and former football star O.J. Simpson is followed by police on a sixty-mile highway chase on suspicion of murdering his wife.   The chase is televised on global TV. [ADD]

6/7 -

Robert Zemeckis' Forrest Gump is released.   Tom Hanks plays the simple character of the title, and is skilfully inserted into real archive footage so that he appears to be interacting with past US presidents and celebrities.   Gary Sinise, Robin Wright and Sally Field also star. [ADD]

15/7 -

James Cameron’s $100 million budget True Lies is released.   Arnie Schwarzenegger stars as an apparently average guy who is actually a secret agent.   Jamie Lee Curtis co-stars as his long-suffering wife, with Tom Arnold in tow as his comedy sidekick. [ADD]

19/8 -

Michael Ovitz, head of the Creative Artists Agency (CAA), combines with three regional telephone companies to create a ‘cyberstudio’ to acquire, produce and distribute virtual reality, CD-ROM and other interactive programming. [ADD]

26/8 -

Oliver Stone’s sensationalistic and bloody Natural Born Killers is released.   Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis star as a murderous modern-day Bonnie and Clyde who become the subject of frenzied media attention. [ADD]

28/8 -

Jeffrey Katzenberg leaves Disney. [ADD]

14/9 -

Robert Redford’s Quiz Show, based upon the true story of the rigging of ‘Twenty One’ America’s favourite TV quiz show, is released.   Ralph Fiennes stars as Charles Van Doren a middle-class intellectual contestant fed the answers to questions by the show’s producers.   John Turturro co-stars as the contestant against whom he is competing, and Christopher McDonald is the show’s MC. [ADD]

28/9 -

Ed Wood, Tim Burton’s biopic of a director generally acknowledged as one of Hollywood’s worst, is released.   Filmed in black-and-white, the film stars Johnny Depp as the director of Glen or Glenda, Bride of the Monster and Plan 9 from Outer Space and Martin Landau as a sick and ageing Bela Lugosi.  Sarah Jessica Parker, Patricia Arquette, Jeffrey Jones, G. D. Spradlin, Bill Murray, Lisa Marie, George 'The Animal' Steel and Vincent D'Onofrio also appear. [ADD]

6/10 -

Carolco Pictures, producers of Cliffhanger and Total Recall face severe financial difficulties after Arnold Schwarzenegger pulls out of filming Crusade, and Michael Douglas rejects Cut-Throat Island two weeks before shooting is due to begin. [ADD]

14/10 -

Woody Allen’s Bullets Over Broadway is released.   John Cusack, Jennifer Tilly, Chazz Palminteri, Dianne Wiest, Jim Broadbent, Rob Reiner, Tracy Ullman and Mary-Louise Parker star. [ADD]

14/10 -

Hoop Dreams, Steve James’ 170-minute documentary film about the aspirations of a group of teenage basketball players, is named best film of 1994 by the Chicago film critics. [ADD]

27/11 -

The Library of Congress announce the titles of a further 25 films to be added to the 125 already preserved in the National Film Registry.   They include D. W. Griffith's A Corner in Wheat (1909), Disney's Pinocchio (1940), Vincente Minnelli's Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), John Huston's The African Queen (1951), Billy Wilder's The Apartment (1960), Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976), Steven Spielberg's E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and Abraham Zapruder's amateur footage of the 1963 Kennedy assassination. [ADD]

29/11 -

The National Endowment for the Arts withdraws all funds for the preservation of film following financial cuts. [ADD]

16/12 -

Peter Farrelly’s Dumb and Dumber, starring rubber-faced comic Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels as a pair of stupid but loveable friends, is released. [ADD]

28/12 -

Nicholas Hytner’s The Madness of King George is released amidst rumours that its title has been changed from The Madness of George III, the title of the Alan Bennett play from which it is adapted, to avoid confusing Americans into thinking it is the third film in a franchise.   Nigel Hawthorne stars as the beleaguered King. [ADD]

– Paramount’s library of feature films and TV episodes is valued at $9,600 million. [ADD]

Other Key American Films of 1994