Bullets Over Broadway

Bullets Over Broadway (1994) is Woody Allen's crime comedy, free to watch online on iFILM. Set in 1920s New York during Prohibition, it follows an idealistic playwright who will accept almost anything to get staged, except letting someone rewrite his words.

David Shayne (John Cusack) lands his money from a mobster, on one condition: a part goes to the gangster's girlfriend Olive (Jennifer Tilly), shrill and hopelessly untalented. Her bodyguard Cheech (Chazz Palminteri) tags along, gets bored, starts reading the script, and turns out to have a sharper ear for a line than the writer does. Dianne Wiest plays a fading grande dame demanding her scenes be punched up, and steals every entrance with a single hissed "Don't speak!"

Allen and co-writer Douglas McGrath build the whole thing around a nasty question: who is the real artist here, the man who writes or the killer willing to commit murder for a better third act. Wiest took home the Best Supporting Actress Oscar, and the film still stands apart from Allen's later comedies, light on the surface and ruthless underneath. Stream Bullets Over Broadway (1994) online on iFILM.