Erin Brockovich (film) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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search Erin Brockovich is a 2000
biographical film directed by
Steven Soderbergh. The film is a dramatization of the true story of
Erin Brockovich, played by
Julia Roberts, who fought against the
US West Coast energy corporation
Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E). It turned into a massive box office hit, and critical reviews are highly positive.
Roberts won the
Academy Award,
Golden Globe,
Screen Actors' Guild Award and
BAFTA for
Best Actress. The film itself was also nominated for
Best Picture and
Best Director for Steven Soderbergh at the
73rd Academy Awards. Early in the film the real Erin Brockovich has a
cameo appearance as a waitress named Julia.
PlotIn 1993,
Erin Brockovich (
Julia Roberts) is an unemployed
single mother of three children who, after losing a personal injury lawsuit against a doctor in a car accident she was in, asks her lawyer,
Edward L. Masry (
Albert Finney), if he can find her a job in compensation for the loss. Ed gives her work as a file
clerk in his office, and she sees the files in a
pro bono real-estate case in which
PG&E is offering to purchase the home of
Hinkley, California, resident Donna Jensen.
Erin is surprised to see medical records in the file and visits
Jensen, who explains that she had just kept all her PG&E
correspondence together. Donna is very appreciative of PG&E's help:
she has had several tumors and her husband has
Hodgkin's disease, but PG&E has always supplied a doctor at their own expense.
Erin asks why they would do that, and Donna replies, "because of the chromium".
Erin begins digging into the particulars of the case and soon finds
evidence that the groundwater in Hinkley is contaminated with dangerous
hexavalent chromium,
but PG&E is telling Hinkley residents that they use a safer form of
chromium in their cooling ponds. She persuades Ed to allow her further
research, and wins the trust of many Hinkley residents. She finds many
other cases of tumors and other medical problems in Hinkley. Everyone
has been treated by PG&E's doctors and thinks the cluster of cases
is just a coincidence, unrelated to the "safe" chromium.
Eventually a man approaches her and says that he was tasked with
destroying documents at PG&E, but he had noticed the medical
conditions plaguing the workers who worked in the unlined ponds, and
kept the documents instead. Now he gives them to her. One is a 1966 memo
that ties a conversation of a corporate executive in the
San Francisco PG&E headquarters to the Hinkley station: it proves that the
corporate headquarters knew the water was contaminated with hexavalent
chromium, did not do anything about it, and advised the Hinkley station
to keep it a secret from the neighborhood.
Rather than delay any settlement for years through a series of jury
trials and probable appeals, Ed takes the opportunity to arrange for a
final disposition by binding arbitration. Erin is able to persuade the
634
plaintiffs to go along, and the evidence is examined by a judge without a jury.
The judge orders PG&E to pay a settlement amount of $333 million
divided among the plaintiffs. In the final scene, Ed hands Erin her
bonus payment for the case, but says he has changed the amount. She is
astonished to see that he has increased it to $2 million.
Cast ProductionAccording to
Stacey Sher,
one of the film's producers, when they were attempting to locate
financing for the film they had the real Erin Brockovich pitch her life
story to an unnamed movie studio executive who yawned in the middle of
her pitch. One of the film's executive producers, Carla Shamberg, said,
"I'm sorry. Are we keeping you awake?"
[1]Erin Brockovich performed well with test audiences but executives at
Universal Pictures were worried that audiences would be turned off by the title character's use of profane language.
[2] Reaction Box officeErin Brockovich was released on March 17, 2000, in 2,848
theaters and grossed $28.1 million on its opening weekend. It went on to
make $126.6 million in North America and $130.7 million in the rest of
the world for a worldwide total of $256.3 million.
[3] ReviewsThe majority of critics responded favorably towards the film. It holds a certified "Fresh" rating of 83% on film review website
Rotten Tomatoes and 73 metascore on
Metacritic. In his review for
The New York Observer,
Andrew Sarris wrote, "We get the best of independent cinema and the best of mainstream cinema all in one package.
Erin Brockovich, like
Wonder Boys right before it, makes the year 2000 seem increasingly promising for movies".
[4] Newsweek magazine's
David Ansen began his review with, "Julia Roberts is flat-out terrific in
Erin Brockovich."
Furthermore, he wrote, "Roberts has wasted her effervescence on many
paltry projects, but she hits the jackpot this time. Erin, single mother
of three, a former Miss
Wichita who improbably rallies a community to take on a multi-billion-dollar
corporation, is the richest role of her career, simultaneously showing
off her comic, dramatic and romantic chops".
[5] Rolling Stone magazine's
Peter Travers wrote, "Roberts shows the emotional toll on Erin as she tries to stay
responsible to her children and to a job that has provided her with a
first taste of self-esteem".
[6] In his review for
Entertainment Weekly,
Owen Gleiberman gave the film a "B+" rating and wrote, "It's a delight to watch
Roberts, with her flirtatious sparkle and undertow of melancholy,
ricochet off Finney's wonderfully jaded, dry-as-beef-jerky performance
as the beleaguered career attorney who knows too much about the
loopholes of his profession to have much faith left in it".
[7] Sight and Sound magazine's Andrew O'Hehir wrote, "Perhaps the best thing about this
relaxed and supremely engaging film (for my money the best work either
the director or his star has ever done) is that even its near-fairytale
resolution doesn't offer a magical transformation".
[8] In her review for the
Village Voice,
Amy Taubin wrote, "What's pretty original about the picture is that it focuses an
investigative drama based on a true story around a comic performance".
[9]However, film critic
Roger Ebert gave the film a two-star review, writing, "There is obviously a story here, but
Erin Brockovich doesn't make it compelling. The film lacks focus and energy, the character development is facile and thin".
[10] In his review for
The New York Times,
A.O. Scott wrote, "After proving, for about 40 minutes, what a
marvelous actress she can be, Ms. Roberts spends the next 90 content to
be a movie star. As the movie drags on, her performance swells to
bursting with moral vanity and phony populism".
[11] Time magazine's Richard Corliss found the film to be "slick, grating and false. We bet it makes a bundle".
[12] Awards and honorsErin Brockovich received numerous awards. The
National Board of Review, the
Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the
Broadcast Film Critics Association voted Julia Roberts best actress of the year.
[13] The
National Society of Film Critics voted Steven Soderbegh best director for his work on both
Traffic and
Erin Brockovich.
[14]Erin Brockovich received four
Golden Globe nominations including
Best Dramatic Motion Picture,
Best Dramatic Motion Picture Actress (Roberts),
Best Director (Soderbergh) and
Best Supporting Actor (Albert Finney).
[15] It won only one award for Best Dramatic Actress.
[16] The film received five
Academy Award nominations including
Best Picture,
Best Director (Soderbergh),
Best Actress (Roberts),
Best Supporting Actor (Finney), and
Best Original Screenplay (Susannah Grant).
[17] Roberts won Best Actress, the only Academy Award the film received.
[18] However, Soderbergh lost out to himself for his work on the film
Traffic.
American Film Institute recognition:
</li>
AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains:
Erin Brockovich - #31
</li>
AFI's 100 Years...100 Cheers:
#73
</li>
AccuracyWhile the general facts of the story are accurate, there are some
minor discrepancies between actual events and the movie, as well as a
number of controversial and disputed issues more fundamental to the
case. In the film, Erin Brockovich appears to deliberately use her
cleavage to seduce the water board attendant to allow her to access the
documents. Brockovich has acknowledged that her cleavage may have had an
influence, but denies consciously trying to influence individuals in
this way.
[20] In the film, Ed Masry represents Erin Brockovich in the car crash case. In reality, it was his law partner, Jim Vititoe.
[21] Brockovich had never been Miss Wichita; she had been Miss Pacific
Coast. According to Brockovich, this detail was deliberately changed by
Soderbergh as he thought it was "cute" to have her be beauty queen of
the region from which she came.
[20]Scientists have argued that the movie encouraged exactly the wrong
way to think about data, elevating individuals' medical histories to the
level of proof and distorting the notion of risk. Scientists, seeing
the evidence that so infuriated Erin Brockovich, would be much more
cautious, and skeptical. The first question to ask is whether residents
of Hinkley really did have more illnesses than people living elsewhere.
When found that they had more, it should have then been asked, are these
illnesses attributable to the industrial processes nearby. Dr. Lois
Swirsky Gold, who directs the carcinogenic potency project at the
University of California at Berkeley,
notes that Erin Brockovich is billed as fiction. So she has one wish
for its audiences. 'They should ask, does the science support the
conclusion?'.
[22] References in other mediaThe 2011 music video and song "
Jack Sparrow" by
The Lonely Island featuring
Michael Bolton includes a reference to Erin Brockovich. In the video Bolton, who is
attempting to impersonate various film characters, is seen wearing a wig
and holding a baby and calls himself Erin Brockovich. The song went
viral through YouTube and other social media sites. It currently has
over 86 million views.
See also References
- ^ Giles, Jeff; David Ansen (February 5, 2001). "Pass Me An Oscar". Newsweek. Retrieved 2010-03-04.
- ^ Willens, Michele (June 25, 2000). "Putting Films to the Test, Every Time". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-03-04.
- ^ "Erin Brockovich". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2008-12-05.
- ^ Sarris, Andrew (March 19, 2000). "She Doesn't Have a Résumé, but She's Got Other Assets". The New York Observer. Retrieved 2010-03-04.
- ^ Ansen, David (March 13, 2000). "A Trash-Talking Crusader". Newsweek. Retrieved 2010-03-04.
- ^ Travers, Peter (February 9, 2001). "Erin Brockovich". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 2008-12-05.
- ^ Gleiberman, Owen (March 24, 2000). "Erin Brockovich". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 2008-12-05.
- ^ O'Hehir, Andrew (May 2000). "Erin Brockovich". Sight and Sound. Retrieved 2010-03-04.
- ^ Taubin, Amy (March 14, 2000). "Tit for Tat". Village Voice. Retrieved 2010-03-04.
- ^ Ebert, Roger (March 17, 2000). "Erin Brockovich". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 2008-05-07.
- ^ Scott, A.O (March 17, 2000). "Erin Brockovich: High Ideals, Higher Heels". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-12-05.
- ^ Corliss, Richard (March 20, 2000). "Erin Go Bra". Time. Retrieved 2010-03-04.
- ^ Lyman, Rick (December 20, 2000). "High-Decibel Oscar Buzz". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-03-04.
- ^ Cardwell, Diane (January 7, 2001). "Critics Group Honors Quirky List of Film Favorites". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-03-04.
- ^ Lyman, Rick (December 22, 2000). "Gladiator and Traffic Lead Globe Nominees". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-03-04.
- ^ Lyman, Rick (January 22, 2001). "Surprises but No Dominator at the Golden Globes". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-03-04.
- ^ Lyman, Rick (February 14, 2001). "Gladiator, Crouching Tiger and Soderbergh Are Oscar Nominees". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-03-04.
- ^ Lyman, Rick (March 26, 2001). "Oscar Spreads the Wealth, but Gladiator Takes Top Prize; Julia Roberts Is Named Best Actress, And Russell Crowe Is Chosen Best Actor". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-03-04.
- ^ AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes Nominees
- ^ a b "Chasing the Frog - Erin Brockovich - Questioning the Story". Chasing the Frog. Retrieved 2008-12-05.
- ^ Masry & Vititoe - Erin Brockovitch resumé
- ^ http://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/11/health/reflections-a-hit-movie-is-rated-f-in-science.html?pagewanted=2&src=pm
External linkshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Brockovich_%28film%29