10 Things to Know About 'Choose Me' (1984)

10 Things to Know About Choose Me (1984)

10 A Budget Under 1 Million Dollars

Choose Me was a truly low budget, independent effort. Produced by Island Alive, an offshoot of Island Records, the film was made on a budget of $750,000 dollars.

9 Debuted as part of of the World’s Longest Film Film Festival

1984’s Seattle Film Festival was billed as “The World’s Longest Film Festival.” It went on for a full month featuring more than 30 films, and according to organizers, it brought together the best of Cannes, Berlin, Toronto and the other biggest film festivals around the world. Choose Me debuted among the the group of films at the 84 festival.

8 Received Terrific Reviews at the Seattle Film Festival

Playing in the final week of “The World’s Longest Film Festival,” Choose Me received terrific reviews with at least one critic calling it the best movie to debut during the lengthy festival.

7 Alan Rudolph Spent Time Promoting the Movie Talking About a Different Movie

In a June interview promoting the premiere of Choose Me at the Seattle Film Festival, Alan Rudolph spent more time talking about Sergio Leone’s new movie, Once Upon a Time in America than he did his own newly debuting film. Having heard that film critic Brent Northup had just seen Once Upon a Time in America, Rudolph expressed his hope that critics would go easy on the legendary Italian filmmaker:

“I hope you film critics treat that film respectfully. Leone isn’t a great director, but he is a visual stylist and at this stage of his career, he deserves respect.”

Rudolph continues, talking about how he’d seen Once Upon a Time in Amerrica at Cannes in its original 4 hour runtime.

“Ladd had the courage to let Leone make the film. But they didn’t have the courage to release it in Leone’s form. Even if they think it will lose money at four hours, they should release it in that form. Why not have the courage to follow through on their commitment to Leone”

6 Rudolph Had Two Movies in Theaters at the Same Time

While Choose Me was in limited festival release in mid-1984, Rudolph’s much bigger, higher profile film, Songwriter, starring Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelso began ramping up for release. This might explain why Choose me never got much attention and slipped into obscurity.

More on why Songwriter was important to Choose Me, later in this article.

5 Genevieve Bujold Showed Up Late on Day one of Shooting for the Cutest Reason

After having spent several days convincing Genevieve Bujold to star in his movie, Choose Me, director Alan Rudolph was dismayed to find his star not on set for the first day of shooting. Traveling to Bujold’s beachside home himself, thinking she was perhaps backing out, Rudolph found Bujold watching Sesame Street with young son and immediately forgot about being upset. From there, everything went smoothly.

4 Rudolph Wasn’t The Only One Who Was Busy in 1984

While Rudolph had both Choose Me and Songwriter in theaters at the same time, his star, Genevieve Bujold had two movies going at once as well. The same week Choose Me was playing as part of the 1984 Montreal Film Festival. Bujold’s biggest movie in years, Tightrope, co-starring Clint Eastwood was debuting in theaters.

3 Teddy Pendergrass Gets a Chance

Following a 1982 car crash, singer Teddy Pendergrass was left paralyzed from the chest down. Many believed that his career was over, especially after his recording contract with Philadelphia International Records abruptly ended. But Pendergrass carried on.

In an attempt to keep Pendergrass’s career going, Pendergrass’ manager approached director Alan Rudolph to direct a music video. Rudolph responded that he could make an entire movie based on the budget offered for the video. And Choose Me was born.

2 Rudolph Made Songwriter so He Could Afford More Teddy Pendergrass Songs for Choose Me.

According to Alan Rudolph, he made the movie Songwriter specifically so he had a little more money to add more Teddy Pendergrass songs for Choose Me.

1 Choose Me Was Alan Rudolph’s Way of Escaping from His Recent Big Budget Failure

In 1981 Alan Rudolph got a shot at a big budget, sci-fi movie called Endangered Species. It was a complete nightmare. Almost immediately after filming began, MGM executive David Begelman began interfering with the film, even shutting down production and firing members of the crew because he didn’t like Rudolph’s naturalistic style of filming. Rudolph himself tried to quit the film but was contractually obligated to stay. He managed to finish the film only to have a new set of MGM executives take over and demand more changes to the movie.

The experience made Rudolph consider giving up directing altogether until Island Alive, the unique and experimental film production arm of Island Records offered him the chance to make a Teddy Pendergrass music video that turned into a feature film that is now part of the Criterion Collection.