Edward Havens examines Tony Garnett’s Deep in the Heart (aka Handgun), a 1984 film reportedly buried by a major American distributor because it resembled an upcoming Clint Eastwood project of theirs. We trace the film’s release history, why it was shelved, and how it’s being rediscovered forty years later. Context and analysis for 80s movie fans and film‑history buffs.
[00:00:00] From Los Angeles, California, the entertainment capital of the world, it's the 80s Movie
[00:00:13] Podcast.
[00:00:14] I'm your host, Edward Havens.
[00:00:16] Thank you for listening today.
[00:00:18] Before we get started, a little housekeeping.
[00:00:20] Spotify recently released their 2023 rap notices which tells listeners and podcasters more
[00:00:26] about their listening habits and or listener habits.
[00:00:30] For us, it was a pretty decent year on Spotify.
[00:00:33] Our followers grew 800% and dozens of people have us as one of their top 10 most listened
[00:00:39] to podcasts which is frankly, a lot great and a little humbling, especially when one
[00:00:45] of them posts on Twitter about your show being one of their favorites.
[00:00:49] So thank you to Lee Thompson for reaching out to me on Twitter yesterday.
[00:00:53] I cannot fully express in words how much I appreciate all the time you spent this
[00:00:57] year listening to me blabber on about old movies.
[00:01:01] My heart is filled with joy.
[00:01:04] And leave, there's a particular 80s Movie that you'd like me to talk about that I haven't
[00:01:07] covered yet.
[00:01:08] Please let me know you get a free listeners pick episode.
[00:01:12] You know where to find me.
[00:01:15] On this episode, we're going to visit a 1984 movie that was the film debut of Karen
[00:01:19] Young, a very good actress who teetered between the stage and screen, working with playwrights
[00:01:24] and directors like Sam Shepherd and Andre Konskolovsky, and making absolute Hollywood clap
[00:01:29] trap like JAWS The Revenge in the 1996 Sylvester Stallone disaster flick, Daylight.
[00:01:37] Handgun is the name of the movie released in America as deep in the heart.
[00:01:44] This episode was planned for much later, but this past Monday was announced that fun city
[00:01:48] editions would be releasing a new 4K digitally restored print of the movie into theaters in
[00:01:54] early 2024.
[00:01:57] So we move it up.
[00:01:59] But as always before we get to the movie, we have to go back a little bit in time.
[00:02:04] Tony Garnett was a British film and television producer who for many years was a producer
[00:02:11] for Ken Loesch, starting with Loesch's breakthrough 1969 feature, Kes, all the way through Loesch's
[00:02:17] 1979 children's film, Black Jack.
[00:02:20] After Garnett ended their association he would make his writing and directing debut on
[00:02:24] a drama called Prostitute, which would follow an ambitious call girl from Birmingham who
[00:02:30] moves to London in the hopes of a better life for herself and her son.
[00:02:34] Garnett spent four years researching the lives of hookers in Birmingham and London in order
[00:02:39] to try create a realistate and unsensational look at what it was like to exist in that
[00:02:45] world.
[00:02:46] The film was not successful in its native England and it didn't get much play around the
[00:02:50] world.
[00:02:51] And Garnett felt like he needed to take a break from the British film industry, so he moved
[00:02:56] to America where he quickly became fascinated by the American fetization of guns and general
[00:03:02] atherpie towards gun violence.
[00:03:05] He came up with a storyline about a woman who was failed by the police and community leaders
[00:03:10] after she is raped by her boyfriend at gunpoint and her desire to get revenge on the man
[00:03:15] who did this tour.
[00:03:17] Garnett was able to get a development deal with Alan Lad Jr.'s production company The
[00:03:21] Land Company, which was based at Warner Brothers and was at that moment in the middle of making
[00:03:26] one of my favorite movies of all time, Blade Runner.
[00:03:30] With some development funds in hand, Garnett rented an apartment near Deely Plaza in Dallas
[00:03:35] to further immerse himself in the gun culture of America.
[00:03:39] Although Garnett had little more than an outline of what he was going to do, his agent
[00:03:44] Harry Uffland was able to get the British film company EMI who had been wanting to work
[00:03:49] with Garnett for years to commit to fully financing the expected $3 million budget for
[00:03:54] the film themselves.
[00:03:56] Garnett started his search for the lead character Kathleen, a 20-something schoolteacher from Boston
[00:04:01] who recently moved to Dallas in New York City.
[00:04:04] He put a notice in backstage a casting paper for New York and Los Angeles-based performers.
[00:04:10] The ad simply read wanted, 24-year-old Irish Catholic girl with long blonde hair.
[00:04:17] Although she was only 22 at the time, Karen Young sent her's headshot in and Garnett
[00:04:22] would quickly set up a time to meet with her.
[00:04:25] There would be no scriptie told her, the film would come out of the rehearsal period he
[00:04:29] would spend with the actors before filming commenced.
[00:04:32] The only stipulations would be that she would need to cut off her long hair at one point
[00:04:37] to show the character's deteriorating mental state, and that for the sake of realism she
[00:04:41] would need to be nude for a couple of scenes.
[00:04:44] Garnett, however, assured Young that if she were naked in a scene, her male co-star also
[00:04:50] would be, and Garnett had his lead actress.
[00:04:54] Jim and Kitty Harlan, a married couple in Boston and first-time actors would be cast as
[00:04:59] Kathleen's parents, and the remainder of the cast were found locally in Dallas.
[00:05:04] Garnett would spend three months with his actors in Dallas in the spring of 1981 rehearsing
[00:05:10] before shooting commenced an early summer.
[00:05:13] Garnett was particularly sensitive to the shooting of the rape scenes, while the actual acts
[00:05:18] of rape would not be filmed, he would spend a lot of time blocking the scenes with his two
[00:05:22] actors Karen Young and Clayton Day during rehearsals so that when it came time to shoot
[00:05:28] the scene, the only other person on the set would be the cinematographer Charles Stewart.
[00:05:34] The shoot went quite well from all accounts, with much surprise coming from the technical
[00:05:38] crew on just how a depth Miss Young came to her firearm's handling.
[00:05:43] She would note herself in a January 1983 interview with The New York Times that now that she
[00:05:48] knew how simple it was to kill someone with a gun, she was wise as afraid of guns as
[00:05:53] she was before.
[00:05:56] Once filming completed, Garnett returned to Los Angeles to begin editing the film.
[00:06:00] It all came together rather quickly, but as good as the film was there was something missing.
[00:06:07] A theme song if you will, something that would bring the film into focus during the end credits.
[00:06:13] And Tony Garnett had a pretty good idea of who to approach.
[00:06:16] Someone who could be counted on to write a good song and who had recently taken up
[00:06:21] the mantle of the anti-gun crusade.
[00:06:25] If you don't know who Harry Neelson is by name, let me give you a quick breakdown of
[00:06:29] who he was as a singer and songwriter.
[00:06:33] Harry Neelson first came to the public attention in the mid-1960s when several songs he had
[00:06:37] written and recorded for his early records would be re-recorded by other artists including
[00:06:41] the monkeys and three dog night.
[00:06:44] But he'd really get a boost when Derek Taylor, the press officer for The Beatles, introduced
[00:06:49] the band Two Nilsons' work.
[00:06:51] The band loved what they heard, especially Neelson's cover of their 1964 hit You Can't Do That,
[00:06:58] which also named checked 17 other Beatles songs in the backing vocals.
[00:07:03] When The Beatles held a press conference in April 1968 to announce the formation of
[00:07:07] Applecore, one reporter asked John Lennon who his favorite American artist was.
[00:07:14] Lennon simply replied, Nilson.
[00:07:17] And when the same reporter asked Paul McCartney who his favorite American crew was, he
[00:07:21] also simply replied, Nilson.
[00:07:25] The mutual admiration society between Harry Neelson and The Beatles would continue to grow
[00:07:29] over the years, as with Nilson's star.
[00:07:32] You might know him from his version of the Fred Neelson Everybody's Talking that would
[00:07:36] become the theme for the 1969 Best Picture Oscar winner Midnight Cowboy.
[00:07:41] Or you might know his biggest hit, a 1972 cover The Bad Finger Song Without You, a band
[00:07:47] who had been signed to Apple records with the approval of his friends Lennon and McCartney.
[00:07:52] Or Coconut, where he sings about putting the lime in the coconut and drinking it all
[00:07:56] up.
[00:07:57] Or a number of his other songs like Me and My Arrow or your Breaking My Heart.
[00:08:02] In 1973, Nilson joined John Lennon on Lennon's two-year-long lost weekend in Los Angeles,
[00:08:08] which found Lennon and Nilson boozing up almost every night.
[00:08:12] But they also found enough time between the drinking for Lennon to produce an album for
[00:08:16] Nilson.
[00:08:18] In December 1980, two profound incidents would affect Nilson greatly for years to come.
[00:08:23] On December 6th, Robert Altman's film version of Popeye would have its world premiere in
[00:08:28] Los Angeles, where it would receive a plethora of, or reviews.
[00:08:32] Many of the critics were especially hard on the songs and score Nilson had written for
[00:08:36] the movie.
[00:08:37] And then two days later his friend John Lennon was assassinated in New York City.
[00:08:43] But rather than give in to his anger and depression, Nilson dove headfirst into working with
[00:08:48] the National Coalition to Ban Handguns, which worked with 30 affiliated religious, labor
[00:08:53] and non-profit organizations, with the goal of addressing the high rates of gun-related
[00:08:58] crime and death in American society.
[00:09:01] They sought to require licensing of gun owners, the registration of firearms, and banning
[00:09:06] private ownership of handguns.
[00:09:09] If there was any American musician who would get what Garnett was trying to say with
[00:09:12] the movie, it was going to be Harry Nilson.
[00:09:15] And he was right.
[00:09:21] Garnett would get a work print of the film set up and arranged for a screening of one in
[00:09:24] Los Angeles.
[00:09:26] At the end of the screening, Nilson had been moved to tears in parts because of the power
[00:09:30] of the storytelling and in part because of his lingering resentment from losing one of
[00:09:34] his best friends to gun violence.
[00:09:37] To drive home the point of senseless violence within the movie, Garnett had placed a small
[00:09:41] boaster of the cummer of double fantasy, the John Lennon Albin released just a few weeks
[00:09:46] before his murder over Kathleen's bed.
[00:09:49] Although that decision had been made on set a year earlier, it would help move the needle
[00:09:53] for Nilson to accept the commission.
[00:09:57] Within a couple weeks Harry Nilson would send Garnett a copy of the song Lay Down Your
[00:10:00] Arms, the first major song Nilson would write after Lenin's death.
[00:10:05] Yet instead of something serious and somber, the song has a John T. Reggae feel that would
[00:10:10] not feel out of place on a Bob Marley album.
[00:10:13] I'll have you two links to all of the songs I've mentioned on this page for the episode
[00:10:18] on our website, theadiesmoviepodcast.com.
[00:10:22] Garnett would finish his final edit in the summer of 1982 and show it to executives at
[00:10:26] EMI Films.
[00:10:28] Despite the fact that Garnett hooded very close to the storyline that was approved and financed,
[00:10:33] EMI was unhappy with the film, specifically according to Garnett in a 2016 interview
[00:10:39] with Matthew Edwards of Cinema Retro Magazine, that while he made the slow and thoughtful
[00:10:44] character study of a woman who felt the need to take matters into her own hands when no
[00:10:49] one would help her, the company was helping for a more commercial hit with some sexy rape
[00:10:54] scenes.
[00:10:55] EMI would try to sell the film off and a number of American distributors were also
[00:10:59] disappointed that the rapes scenes were a turn-off.
[00:11:03] The only two companies willing to pick the film up was Warner Brothers, the Giant Studio
[00:11:07] with the power to get a small film like handgun into theaters, and the Samuel Goldman
[00:11:12] Company, which had been founded years before by Samuel Goldman Jr. at the son of the MGM
[00:11:17] co-founder, which was still a few years away from becoming a very successful distributor
[00:11:22] with films like One Spitten, The Sting Concert movie Bring On The Night, and Desert Hearts.
[00:11:28] Garnett went with Warner Brothers and quickly regretted the decision.
[00:11:33] Most Warner's had a bunch of notes, mostly about toning down the rapes sequence since it
[00:11:37] wasn't very sexy, which not so ironically was the whole point of how the rapes scene
[00:11:42] was shot.
[00:11:43] Rap is not sexy.
[00:11:45] Rap has never been sexy.
[00:11:46] Rap isn't about sex but power.
[00:11:49] And if the men in Power and Hollywood weren't going to get a sexy rapes scene, at least
[00:11:53] the indication of the power of rape would be toned down.
[00:11:57] And then there was sudden impact.
[00:12:00] The M&O's to Garnett, Pliny Eastwood was in the middle of making the fourth dirty
[00:12:04] Harry movie, in which a gang rape victim, played by Eastwood's then-paramore Sandra Locke,
[00:12:10] decides to seek revenge on her rapist 10 years after the attack by killing them one by
[00:12:15] one.
[00:12:16] Garnett quickly surmised that Warner's hadn't purchased his movie with the best of intentions
[00:12:21] but instead bought it to essentially bury it since it had so much in common with the new
[00:12:25] movie from the studio's biggest star director.
[00:12:29] The studio in turn tried to convince Garnett otherwise by coming up with a whole new advertising
[00:12:34] campaign for the film, which included giving the movie a new title deep in the heart and
[00:12:39] setting a January 18th 1984 release for the film at one of New York City's better movie
[00:12:44] theaters, the 436 seat Manhattan Twin, around the corner from the famed flagship Bloomingdale
[00:12:50] store at 59th and 3rd.
[00:12:53] The tagline on the new poster was pretty lousy though.
[00:12:57] When passions flare into rage, the gun kept next to the bed is loaded with possibilities.
[00:13:06] When the film opened it would get some pretty decent reviews from likes of Amy Tauman in
[00:13:10] the village voice who called the film Admobile and Amazing and David Elliott of USA Today,
[00:13:16] who noted the film rose above the expected cliches of seduction, violence and revenge
[00:13:21] and singled out Karen Young's performance.
[00:13:24] The most New York-based critics almost all men would find the film didn't make its
[00:13:28] point as clearly as they thought it should have, as if Clint's recent treatise on rape
[00:13:34] and revenge was worthy of comparison to Gdard and Renoir.
[00:13:37] It also didn't help that sudden impact was still in the top three of the National Box
[00:13:43] Office after six weeks, and that the other screen at the Manhattan Twin was playing, you
[00:13:48] probably guessed it, sudden impact.
[00:13:52] In the heart would only play seven days at the Manhattan Twin, grossing $4,500 during
[00:13:57] its one and only week in theaters.
[00:14:00] Next door, sudden impact grossed $7,000 in its seventh week of release, while still playing
[00:14:06] in 65 other theaters in the area.
[00:14:10] The film would never play in Los Angeles, Chicago, anywhere in the state the movie was shot
[00:14:15] and set in or anywhere else in America.
[00:14:19] Internet was right all along.
[00:14:21] Warner's buried the film.
[00:14:24] The film, as handgun would play in the United Kingdom, Australia, Portugal, Iceland and
[00:14:30] in a number of other foreign countries, it was critics praised the film for its tackling
[00:14:35] of a serious subject that has treated lightly in its own country, but it would never
[00:14:40] become any kind of hit anywhere.
[00:14:43] Whether it was titled handgun or deep in the heart, this movie has never been released
[00:14:47] on any home video format in the United States.
[00:14:51] That's VHS, Betamax, Laserdisk, DVD, HD DVD, Blu-ray, 4K Blu-ray, streaming never
[00:14:59] once.
[00:15:01] But it has been released on some of these formats in other countries.
[00:15:04] You can find the film online and what appears to be a 480P transfer from a British DVD
[00:15:09] on a very popular streaming site.
[00:15:12] But why would you watch a 480P scan online when you can see a 4K print in a theater in
[00:15:17] the very near future?
[00:15:19] I'm not sure when handgun will be opening in theaters other than early 2024.
[00:15:24] Fun City Edition has not contacted me about this release.
[00:15:27] They did not ask me to produce this episode.
[00:15:30] It is one of literally 2,000 movies I have on a list of potential episode topics that
[00:15:35] moved to the front of the line when I learned about its impending release because seriously,
[00:15:40] a forgotten film that really didn't get a first chance being given a second chance
[00:15:44] all these years later is something worth cheering.
[00:15:49] Something worth highlighting, something to be excited about.
[00:15:53] I will let you know on a future episode when I hear more about handguns upcoming theatrical
[00:15:57] release.
[00:15:59] And with that we close this, our 124th episode of the 80s movie podcast.
[00:16:04] Thank you for listening.
[00:16:05] We'll talk again very soon when our 125th episode on Who Framed Roger Rabbit is released.
[00:16:12] Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, the 80s movie podcast.com for
[00:16:17] excellent materials about handgun, aka Deep in the Heart.
[00:16:22] The 80s movie podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens
[00:16:27] for idiosyncratic entertainment.
[00:16:30] Thank you again.
[00:16:32] Good night.