The End

The End (1978)

Are there laughs before death?

Wendell Lawson has only six months to live. Not wanting to endure his last few months of life waiting for the end, he decides to take matters into his own hands and enlists the help of a delusional mental patient to help him commit suicide.

Date of release
1978-05-10
TMDB
5.6 / 10 (73)
Runtime
1h 40m
Genres
Comedy
Director
Burt Reynolds

Casting

Interesting facts

The End is a 1978 American black comedy film directed by and starring Burt Reynolds, written by Jerry Belson, and with music composed by Paul Williams. The film also stars Dom DeLuise along with Sally Field, Strother Martin, David Steinberg, Joanne Woodward, Norman Fell, Myrna Loy, Kristy McNichol, Pat O'Brien, Robby Benson and Carl Reiner.

Production

Belson wrote the script in 1971 and it was under development at Columbia Pictures before producer Lawrence Gordon took it on. He sat on the script for five years until Burt Reynolds became attached and the film went into development at United Artists. Reynolds said he wanted to do the film because "I'd read an awful lot of comedies and none struck me as especially funny, according to my strange sense of comedy.

He elaborated: "You can deal with death on a totally Mel Brooks level, but when you try to make a film with parts that are really real amidst the comedy, that's a big risk. What's really funny is what's real. When I was very sick, if I told you what I did, it was funny."

The studio was reluctant to finance The End. They were unhappy with Reynolds wearing a beard and wanted his profession to be a stock car racer. But Reynolds insisted.

Reynolds said "Some people think the guy in The End is as far away from me as anybody could be, but people who really know me realize that it's very close to what I am. The guy crying in the doctor's office, that's me. This guy is totally nude."

The original ending had Marlon kill Sonny. Reynolds said he changed it "because I thought it had to have some hope."

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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