Meet Joe Black

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Meet Joe Black
Meet Joe Black poster
Directed by	Martin Brest
Written by	Ron Osborn, Jeff Reno, Kevin Wade, Bo Goldman
Starring	Brad Pitt Anthony Hopkins Claire Forlani
Music by	Thomas Newman
Cinematography	Emmanuel Lubezki
Release date(s)	November 13 1998
Running time	173 min.
Language	English
IMDb profile

Meet Joe Black is A 1998 remake of the 1934 film, Death Takes a Holiday, originally having been remade in 1971 under the same name as the original. Meet Joe Black stars Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins, and Claire Forlani. It was directed by Martin Brest. It was a box office bomb, recouping only about half of its US$90 million budget. (It remains the most expensive film made that does not include extensive special effects.)

Opinions of the film vary greatly. Many critics find the film's three hour running time excessive, while others feel that its slow pace allows the stories told to feel more personal and poignant. This division of opinion is highlighted by the awards it received: while the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films nominated it for a Saturn Award in three categories – Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Best Music –, the film was also nominated in the Worst Remake or Sequel category at the Razzie Awards. It also won a Worst Movie prize at the Hungarian equivalent of the Razzies, the Csapnivaló Awards.

A two-hour version was made to show on television and airline flights, by cutting most of the plotline involving Hopkins' character's business. Brest disowned it, and the director's credit was changed to Alan Smithee.

The film's box office received a boost following its opening weekend when, on Tuesday, November 17, 1998, the first teaser trailer for the highly anticipated Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace was attached to the majority of its film prints. Numerous patrons were reported to have paid full admission to see the trailer on the big screen, only to exit theaters immediately after. (Patrons who remained to watch the film were treated to the trailer a second time after the film's conclusion.)

Meet Joe Black gained an unexpected, somewhat anonymous claim to fame when a clip of the crash scene early on in the film became something of an internet phenomenon, leading many unsuspecting online viewers to believe it to be authentic footage.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Meet Joe Black tells the story of Death taking a break from his usual duties and inhabiting the body of a young man in order to learn what it is like to be human. The film covers many storylines at once, including a naive Death's (Pitt) first experiences with simple pleasures like peanut butter, his chosen guide's (Hopkins) coming to terms with his own mortality, and a romance between human Death and a young woman (Forlani).

[edit] Places of filming

The major part of the movie was filmed in New York City, on Fifth Avenue, in a hospital and in Brooklyn, New York. William Parrish's New York triplex was built inside a National Guard's warehouse in Brooklyn.

The manor in the first and final parts is the Aldrich Mansion in Warwick Neck, Rhode Island, on Narragansett Bay.