{"id":622028,"date":"2026-04-21T19:38:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T19:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/622028\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T19:38:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T19:38:12","slug":"barry-levinson-looks-back-at-1996-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/622028\/","title":{"rendered":"Barry Levinson Looks Back at 1996 Drama"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Barry Levinson<\/a> made his feature directing debut with the autobiographical dramedy \u201cDiner<\/a>\u201d in 1982, many expected him to continue making similarly handcrafted, personal stories. Levinson delivered on that expectation with memory pieces set in his native Baltimore like \u201cTin Men,\u201d \u201cAvalon,\u201d and \u201cLiberty Heights.\u201d <\/p>\n

Yet right from the beginning, Levinson mixed things up by taking on adaptations and other assignments that didn\u2019t originate with him \u2014 he followed \u201cDiner\u201d with the big studio Robert Redford vehicle \u201cThe Natural,\u201d and followed that with a Steven Spielberg<\/a>-produced fantasy film<\/a> (\u201cYoung Sherlock Holmes\u201d), before returning to more personal filmmaking with \u201cTin Men.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"'The<\/a> \"Jaafar<\/a> <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a pattern Levinson would continue throughout his career, alternating original screenplays with assignments where he would often \u2014 as in the case of \u201cRain Man\u201d and \u201cBugsy\u201d \u2014 find the sweet spot between commercial appeal and artistic ambition. Equally adept at auteurist passion projects as he was at mounting mainstream crowdpleasers from popular IP like \u201cDisclosure\u201d and \u201cSphere,\u201d Levinson became a figure unusual in Hollywood cinema: an idiosyncratic personal filmmaker who was also comfortable working as an old-fashioned journeyman classicist \u2014 John Cassavetes and Michael Curtiz in the same body.<\/p>\n

To be a Levinson fan in the 1990s meant that in the same year you could savor both the offbeat comedy \u201cJimmy Hollywood\u201d \u2014 a movie only Levinson could have made \u2014 and the Michael Crichton adaptation \u201cDisclosure,\u201d the kind of film Hollywood was cranking out by the dozens at the time but which also seemed singular thanks to the intelligence and visual imagination Levinson applied to the material. <\/p>\n

\u201cDisclosure\u201d kicked off a series of high-profile Levinson assignments for Warner Bros.<\/a> based on bestselling books, the second and best of which was \u201cSleepers<\/a>,\u201d the writer\/director\u2019s 1996 adaptation of Lorenzo Carcaterra\u2019s fictionalized account of his harrowing childhood spent in a juvenile detention center and the conspiracy between him and his friends as adults to exact revenge on their tormentors. A well-resourced, impeccably cast (including Brad Pitt, Kevin Bacon, Robert De Niro, Jason Patric, Dustin Hoffman, Billy Crudup, Minnie Driver, and more), and beautifully scored (by John Williams at his best) adult drama, it\u2019s one of Levinson\u2019s best movies from an era when he was cranking out great stuff on an almost yearly basis.<\/p>\n

\"SLEEPERS,Brad Pitt in \u2018Sleepers\u2019\u00a9Warner Bros\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

When asked about his varied output at the time, Levinson says it was less about strategy than instinct and taste. \u201cIt\u2019s always hard to explain why you want to do what you want to do,\u201d Levinson told IndieWire. \u201cSomething just gets into you, and you can\u2019t let it go.\u201d <\/p>\n

With \u201cSleepers,\u201d there was something about the years of consequences for one careless action \u2014 four young boys stealing a food cart and setting off a chain of events that would lead to their incarceration \u2014 that Levinson felt would be worth exploring.<\/p>\n

One of the most interesting things about \u201cSleepers\u201d now, 30 years after its release, is its restraint \u2014 although the film is violent and filled with heightened situations, Levinson and cinematographer Michael Ballhaus eschew melodrama in favor of a subtler approach that pays huge dividends in the movie\u2019s final moments, when the emotional impact of all that the characters have been through is felt with full, undiluted force. <\/p>\n

\u201cI gravitate toward things that have a strong point of view, but I\u2019m not looking to throw it in your face,\u201d Levinson told IndieWire, noting that the key to \u201cSleepers\u201d was adhering to a kind of understated naturalism without sacrificing the potential for drama.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to find a style that\u2019s naturalistic but has an element that\u2019s visually interesting,\u201d Levinson said. To that end, Levinson, Ballhaus, and production designer Kristi Zea (both of whom had worked on another 1990s New York classic, Martin Scorsese\u2019s \u201cGoodfellas\u201d) devoted themselves to shooting in locations that were accurate to the movie\u2019s 1967-1981 period while also offering possibilities for atmospheric lighting and deep, autumnal colors. The compositions are precise and hypnotic, though Levinson says he likes to keep himself as loose as possible on set and tries not to lock actors into specific movements or blocking from the outset.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know certain things that I want, but I don\u2019t necessarily want to manufacture it,\u201d Levinson said. \u201cIf you lay it out too much \u2014 saying, \u2018now step over here, and go over to the couch\u2019 \u2014 that can get into the actor\u2019s head and affect their spontaneity. Even if you want to get them there, you don\u2019t want it to feel like a mechanical process. I try to keep the environment on set as casual as possible, because I find that anytime you apply pressure, people have a tendency to tighten up and you don\u2019t get the same personality and the unpredictable nature of the emotions and communication.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"SLEEPERS,\u2018Sleepers\u2019 cast: Joseph Perrino, Robert De Niro, Geoffrey Wigdor, Brad Renfro, Jonathan Tucker.\u00a9Warner Bros\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

Levinson has had the occasion to think about \u201cSleepers\u201d for the first time in decades thanks to a new 4K UHD edition from Warner Bros., though he tends not to indulge in looking back at his earlier films. \u201cI\u2019m glad they restored it, but I personally don\u2019t revisit the films after they\u2019re done,\u201d Levinson said. \u201cFor me, you have an idea, you do the work, you try to put it all together, and then it goes out into the world, and that\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Right now, Levinson is looking to the future and hoping to make one of two projects he\u2019s been working on. \u201cOne is a comedy, and one is a real drama; they\u2019re totally different from each other,\u201d he said, once again displaying his penchant for jumping between tones and styles. Although he knows the business has changed drastically since the days when studios would mount his sophisticated adult entertainments with high production and marketing budgets, Levinson is still intent on finding ways to make the movies he wants to make.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not telling you anything you don\u2019t know, but the business is in an awkward time right now,\u201d Levinson said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t know where it\u2019s going. I just try to do the things that interest me, and they\u2019re all over the place. We shot \u2018The Humbling\u2019 [a Philip Roth adaptation starring Al Pacino] for $2 million because no studio wanted to make a movie of that nature. We had a great cast, and we shot it in my house in Connecticut. You have to look at what\u2019s going on now and say, are these just the same transitions that the film business has always gone through over the decades? Probably. So you just have to find a way to do what you want.\u201d<\/p>\n

Warner Home Video will release \u201cSleepers\u201d on 4K UHD April 21.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Barry Levinson made his feature directing debut with the autobiographical dramedy \u201cDiner\u201d in 1982, many expected him…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":622029,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,301469,134,1689,344,301470,241199,6141],"class_list":{"0":"post-622028","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-barry-levinson","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-film","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-physical-media","15":"tag-sleepers","16":"tag-warner-bros"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}