Joe Connelly: "Bringing out the Dead"

THE FILM "BRINGING OUT THE DEAD" TO BE SCREENED WITH COMMENTARY BY AUTHOR AND FORMER PARAMEDIC JOE CONNELLY

NYS Writers Institute, 7 p.m. Friday, November 3, 2017
Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, University at Albany Downtown Campus

EVENT LISTING:
BRINGING OUT THE DEAD (United States, 1999, 121 minutes, color, directed by Martin Scorsese) will be screened on Friday, November 3, at 7 p.m. in Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, on the University at Albany Downtown Campus.

Free and open to the public, the program is organized by the New York State Education Department’s Office of Cultural Education with additional support from the New York State Writers Institute.

PROFILE:
The screening will be followed by commentary by Joe Connelly, a former paramedic and author of the novel on which the film is based, and members of the Five Quad Ambulance Service, UAlbany�s New York State-certified ambulance agency that is run and operated by UAlbany students, in a discussion about the rewards and perils of serving on an ambulance corps.

Sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute as part of its Classic Film Series, the screening is free and open to the public. BRINGING OUT THE DEAD follows a burned-out Manhattan ambulance paramedic, played by Nicolas Cage, right,working the graveyard shift at the height of the crack epidemic in the early 1990s as he is haunted by the ghosts of the people he couldn�t save.

Along with Cage, BRINGING OUT THE DEAD (United States, 1999, 121 minutes, color) also stars Patricia Arquette, John Goodman, Ving Rhames and Mary Beth Hurt. A Publishers Weekly review praised Connelly�s novel: �[He] brings an air of authenticity to his rendering of this marginal world, and his compassion for its miserable and impoverished denizens is almost palpable.�

In her New York Times movie review, Janet Maslin called BRINGING OUT THE DEAD �an intense, volatile film full of sorrow and wild, mordant humor.� Film critic Roger Ebert gave it four stars: �The screenplay by Paul Schrader is another chapter in the most fruitful writer-director collaboration of the quarter century (�Taxi Driver,� �Raging Bull,� �The Last Temptation of Christ�).� On Nicolas Cage�s performance, Ebert write, �Cage is an actor of great style and heedless emotional availability: He will go anywhere for a role, and this film is his best since �Leaving Las Vegas.��

Cosponsored by UAlbany School of Criminal Justice�s Crime, History, and Public Memory Film Series. (press release)