joshua then and now

Director: ted kotcheff

Actor: james woods,gabrielle lazure,alan arkin,michael sarrazin

Data Published: Thu Sep 05 1985

Genres: Comedy,Drama

Key Words: antisemitic joke,racist joke,reference to charles darwin,semi autobiographical,happy ending

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089383/

WIKI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Then_and_Now_(film)

Description: Joshua Then and Now is a movie starring James Woods, Gabrielle Lazure, and Alan Arkin. The story of a Jewish writer, from his life as a young boy in Montreal to his more complicated grown-up life.

Plot: Joshua Shapiro, successful writer and pundit, in a hospital room, seems to have lost his wife and is in the middle of a sex scandal. Compelled to find meaning in his life, he reviews it from his youth to the present day. Joshua grew up as a Jew in the working class St. Urbain Street area in Montreal. His upbringing was unusual because his father was a boxer who had become a gentle crook and his mother was a strip-tease dancer. Embarrassingly, she strips for his friends as part of a Bar Mitzvah party for him. Joshua's father is revealed to have a unique perspective on life, sex, and religion. A trip to Spain as a young man is the impetus that sparks a career as a journalist and writer. In England in a momentary lapse of reason, Joshua forges letters about a (fake) homosexual affair with a British writer to sell to an American university archive. He meets an upper-class Canadian married to a poseur of a communist and steals her away to become his own wife. She is the daughter of a Canadian senator and Joshua's key into a level of society of which he is contemptuous. In the meantime, Joshua's childhood friends have become successful in their own right. Some become targets for bizarre pranks as he settles various scores. Joshua's conceited brother-in-law assumes a pivotal role in the novel as it is revealed that he is insecure and vulnerable. Neighbors in the wealthy cottage community around Lake Memphremagog lead him astray with dreadful consequences. Past indiscretions rear their ugly heads and Joshua must put together the shambles of his life.