Bright Lights, Big City Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

Bright Lights, Big City Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 25, 2019

The late eighties witnessed two actors named Michael who were arguably cast against type and who therefore may have struck some viewers as needing to struggle to fully realize the characters they were assigned to portray. The more famous example is Michael Keaton’s 1989 tour as Batman, a casting choice which was quite controversial at the time, in part due to the fact that at that point Keaton was thought of mostly as a light comedy actor. However, a year before that particular iteration of the Caped Crusader hit the big screen, another Michael, Michael J. Fox, left behind images of the ultra conservative and decidedly straight and narrow Alex P. Keaton of Family Ties or even the somewhat looser Marty McFly of the Back to the Future Trilogy to essay a role more or less based on novelist Jay McInerney, whose kinda sorta memoir Bright Lights, Big City had taken the publishing world by storm in 1984 (McInerney also contributed the adapted screenplay for this film version). McInerney had been a kid from a relatively small town (Hartford, Connecticut) who moved to the Big Apple and quickly found work as a fact checker for The New Yorker, but who also developed a rather debilitating dependence on cocaine. The novel version of Bright Lights, Big City documented the trials and tribulations of a writer obviously based on McInerney, but one of the novel's conceits is that it was written in the second person, as evidenced by this now iconic opening line of the book (which makes it, more or less anyway, into the film):

You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy.

In one of the relatively brief featurettes included on this release as a supplement, McInerney actually addresses having to “format” the film differently from his second person narrative in the book, and one of those choices was in fact coming up with a name for the main character, something that McInerney suggests he kind of chafed at during the screenplay writing process. In any case, Fox portrays Jamie Conway, who is first seen in a noisy New York City nightclub, staying past last call into the wee hours of the morning, and not hesitating to partake in repeated doses of (as he calls it) “Bolivian marching powder”. Conway is such a hearty partier that he badly oversleeps the next day, making him perilously late to work as a fact checker at a large publication, where he’s evidently already attracted the disparaging attention of Clara Tillinghast (Frances Sternhagen), his boss. Conway at least has a friendship (and possibly nascent romance) with coworker Megan (Swoosie Kurtz), who seems eager to “stand guard” between Conway and Tillinghast.

There is a kind of weird combination of at least relatively realistic psychological turmoil and what almost be termed hints of magical realism in Bright Lights, Big City. The “realistic” aspect plays out (again relatively) believably in terms of Jamie’s troubled history with his estranged model wife Amanda (Phoebe Cates), as well as memories of his now passed terminally ill mother (Dianne Wiest). The “magical realism” element plays out in a kind of bizarrely recurrent use of a story that Jamie spies in the New York Post about a so-called “coma baby” (i.e., an unborn child “housed” in a mother who is unfortunately in a vegetative state). I’m frankly not sure if the whole “coma baby” aspect works, or what it’s intended to convey, but there’s one notable scene where Jamie actually “interacts” with the “coma baby” (in a kind of drug fueled dream sequence), where the film may tip over into camp for some viewers.

The film has a number of supporting characters (some may feel too many, leaving some on the underdeveloped side). Chief among these is Jamie's best friend Tad (Kiefer Sutherland), a kind of charming cad who is something of a user. But it's here that Bright Lights, Big City may have made a fatal casting error. While it's understandable why a "nice guy" like Michael J. Fox seems to almost inherently be what was "needed" for the hero of this piece, epsecially since it posits a kind of saving grace of conscience as the film wends to a close, Sutherland brings such a visceral energy to his part, and the hard partying ways of the character seem more in "tune" with McInerney's original novelistic presentation, so that ironically Jamie kind of feels like an afterthought. Other underdeveloped characters include Kurtz's Megan, who is kind of shoehorned (however briefly) in the "romantic angle" part, as is Vicky, Tad's cousin who is played by (real life Mrs. Fox) Tracy Pollan. Two iconic character actors, Jason Robards and John Houseman, are just kind of strangely wasted.

Bright Lights, Big City Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Bright Lights, Big City is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of MVD Visual's MVD Rewind imprint with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. This is another release culled from the sometimes spotty MGM/UA high definition catalog, but with certain allowances made for a bit of fade and less than optimal saturation, this is a rather pleasing looking transfer that will probably easily satisfy any of the film's fans who had the DVD. Fine detail is quite admirable on textures like Sternagen's pill-fibered sweater or some of the crosshatched patterns on suit jackets for the men. A surplus of both dark material combined with a quasi-hallucinatory filming style that emphasizes soft focus and diffused lighting tends to keep fine detail levels somewhat tamped down at times, but in brighter lighting (even in some of the "middling" lighting of the office scenes), detail levels are generally very good to excellent. The palette kind look just a tad blanched at times, though that said Gordon Willis' often quite evocative cinematography can pop quite well, again in the more brightly lit moments. Grain looks natural and resolves without any compression issues.

Bright Lights, Big City Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

One of the kind of fun "below the line credits" in the film is Steely Dan's Donald Fagen as composer (and, one assumes, music supervisor, since he sings some non-Fagen material, as well), and the disc's LPCM 2.0 track nicely recreates some of the sophisticated pop-jazz that Fagen provides for the film. The club scenes also bristle with activity, and even some of the office material has some good energy. A lot of the film is either Jamie's voiceover or more simple dialogue sequences, and the 2.0 track suffices perfectly well, with good balance and fidelity throughout.

Bright Lights, Big City Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Jay McInerney: The Light Within Featurette (480i; 12:11) is an appealing interview with the author and screenplay writer, who discusses how his real life informed both properties.


• Big City Lights Featurette (480i; 14:55) features a number of talking heads, none of whom I had frankly ever heard of, discussing the book and what New York City nightlife was like in the 1980s.


• Photo Gallery (480i; 3:53)


• Trailers includes Bright Lights, Big City (480i; 1:32), along with trailers for other MVD releases.


• Commentary with Author/Screenwriter Jay McInerney can be found under the Setup Menu.


• Commentary with Cinematographer Gordon Willis can be found under the Setup Menu.

Additionally, the keepcase includes a folded mini-poster.

Bright Lights, Big City Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Bright Lights, Big City is certainly a relic of both its production time but also of the slightly earlier era it attempts to portray. Some of the drug fueled craziness that was part and parcel of the Manhattan club scene of the early 1980s is faithfully caught here, but what some may see as the fatal miscasting of Michael J. Fox tends to undercut the drama, and the less said about "coma baby", (probably) the better. Technical merits are generally fine for those considering a purchase.