Saint Jack (film)
Saint Jack is a 1979 crime drama film directed by Peter Bogdanovich based on the 1973 novel "Saint Jack". Ben Gazzara stars as Flowers in the film. The film also features Denholm Elliott and George Lazenby. Plot. Jack, an American pimp in Singapore, goes to the airport to pick up a British accountant for his Chinese 'boss'. The boss he only associates with to cover his real business, pimping, from the authorities. He takes William, the accountant, to his hotel, then to a bar where British expats mingle. He meets a john, who he takes to a  brothel, together with William, who only really wants a game of squash. Returning, they are chased by Chinese triads, who resent Jack. The next day they find one of Jack's Chinese friends has been murdered, as a warning. Film adaptation rights. Cybill Shepherd sued "Playboy" magazine after they published photos of her from "The Last Picture Show". As part of the settlement, she got the rights to the novel "Saint Jack", which she had wanted to make into a film ever since Orson Welles gave her a copy. Production. "Saint Jack" was shot entirely on location in various places  in Singapore in May and June 1978. Places featured in the film include the former Empress Place hawker centre (now demolished) and Bugis Street. The local authorities knew about the book, hence the foreign production crew did not tell them that they were adapting it, fearing that they would not be permitted to shoot the film. Instead, they created a fake synopsis for a film called "Jack of Hearts", (what the director called "a cross between "Love Is a Many Splendored Thing" and "Pal Joey"") and most of the Singaporeans involved in the production believed this was what they were  making. Release. The film was banned in Singapore and Malaysia on January 17, 1980. Singapore banned it "largely due to concerns that there would be excessive edits required to the scenes of nudity and some coarse language before it could be shown to a general audience", and lifted the ban only in March 2006. It is now an M18-rated film. "Saint Jack" was re-released in North America on DVD in 2001. In an interview with "The New York Times" on 15 March 2006, Bogdanovich said ""Saint Jack" and "They All Laughed" were two of my best films but  never received the kind of distribution they should have." Critical reception. Roger Ebert gave the film a four-star review. In praise of Gazzara's performance, he writes "sometimes a character in a movie inhabits his world so freely, so easily, that he creates it for us as well. Ben Gazzara does that in Saint Jack." He goes on to say "The film is by Peter Bogdanovich and what a revelation it is, coming after three expensive flops. But here everything is right again. Everything." Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic described Saint Jack as 'otiose and odious'. Saint Jack