Steven Conrad Interview on "Wrestling Ernest Hemingway" (January 10, 1994)

Wrestling Ernest Hemingway is a 1993 American romantic drama film written by Steve Conrad and directed by Randa Haines, starring Richard Harris, Robert Duvall, Sandra Bullock, Shirley MacLaine, and Piper Laurie. The film is about two elderly men in Florida who form a friendship and the romantic relationships they have with the women in their respective lives. Wrestling Ernest Hemingway garnered mixed reviews from critics, praising the performances but criticized the overly melodramatic and sentimental direction of the plot. It was also a box-office bomb, grossing $278,720 against a $20 million budget.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 59% approval rating based on 22 reviews, with an average score of 5.9/10. The site's consensus states: "Predictable but moving, Wrestling Ernest Hemingway is an understated and melancholic drama that gets plenty of mileage out of an outstanding cast that includes Robert Duvall, Richard Harris, Shirley MacLaine, and Sandra Bullock."[2]
Roger Ebert wrote that: "[T]he movie is essentially about the close observation of behavior. Like some of Hemingway's stories, the real action is all implied. The characters trade small talk, and we sense that larger issues are lurking beneath their cheerfulness."[3] Caryn James of The New York Times gave credit to Harris and Duvall for giving "two intelligent but distant performances" and the actresses for being "appealing" in their "understandably tiny" roles, but felt the film suffers from an overlong runtime, "an easy, sentimental impulse" to its scenes and succumbs to the "scenery chewing and predictability" of its elderly-focused tale, saying "Instead of simply assuming that the old have interesting lives, the film never stops congratulating itself for being daring enough to focus on them. It shows the terrible strain of trying too hard."[4] Louis Black of The Austin Chronicle praised Harris and Duvall's screen chemistry, and the actresses for being "outstanding" in their roles but was critical of the "superficial melodramatic stereotyping" throughout the story, saying "[I]t's another right of passage movie that pinballs off of clichés as though that is a way to achieve meaning. But there are those performances."[5] Ty Burr of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a C grade, saying it "feels canned and inert" with Haines' direction and Michael Convertino's score turning the male bonding scenes into "swollen epiphanies" when compared to the "richly funny observations" in Grumpy Old Men, adding that Harris gives "a gutsy performance in a gutless movie."[6]
Steven Conrad (born May 20, 1968)[1] is an American filmmaker.
Personal life
Steven Conrad was born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and briefly attended Florida State University before transferring to Northwestern University, where he majored in creative writing. His brother, Chris Conrad, is an actor and has frequently appeared in Steven's productions. Their mother was a teacher at St. Gregory the Great Catholic School, Plantation, Broward County, Florida.[citation needed]
Career
Shortly after attending Northwestern, at age 19, he sold his first screenplay, Wrestling Ernest Hemingway, adapted from a short story he had written for a creative writing class. Eleven years passed before he tackled his next project, Lawrence Melm, which he wrote and directed. He followed this with The Weather Man (which he also produced) and The Pursuit of Happyness. He wrote, directed, and edited The Promotion, which premiered at South by Southwest in March 2008 and was released by Dimension Films later that year.
His projects include an adaptation of the Chang-Rae Lee novel Aloft for Scott Rudin; Chad Schmidt, about a talented actor with a resemblance to Brad Pitt and The Expanding Mailman with Jack Black.[2]
In 2013, he adapted a James Thurber short story for the film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, directed by and starring Ben Stiller. In 2015, Conrad developed Patriot for Amazon Studios. Its pilot led to a full series order,[3] and it premiered in its entirety on February 24, 2017.[4] In addition to executive-producing the series, he has also written and directed most of the first season's episodes.[citation needed]
In the same year, Conrad re-wrote the script for Wonder, a film adaptation of the 2012 novel of the same name by R. J. Palacio. The script was also written by Jack Thorne and Stephen Chbosky, with the latter having directed the film,[5] which was released on November 17, 2017.
In 2019, Conrad's series Perpetual Grace, LTD, starring Sir Ben Kingsley and featuring many of the actors from Patriot, premiered on Epix. In 2021, Conrad's stop action animation series Ultra City Smiths premiered on AMC+.