Switching Channels

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Switching Channels poster

Switching Channels is a 1988 comedic movie remake of The Front Page (also more famously remade as His Girl Friday in 1940). It stars Kathleen Turner as Christy Colleran, Burt Reynolds as John L. Sullivan IV, Christopher Reeve as Blaine Bingham, Ned Beatty as Roy Ridnitz, Henry Gibson as Ike Roscoe, and George Newbern as Sigenthaler.

The film uses only the basic premise of The Front Page and His Girl Friday. All of the characters' names are changed, the story is modernized to what was then the present day, and none of the dialogue from the play is used in the film.

Filmed primarily in Canada with a Canadian director (Ted Kotcheff), Switching Channels features many popular Canadian character actors in supporting roles: Al Waxman as Berger, the station manager, Ken James as Warden Terwilliger, Barry Flatman and Anthony Sherwood as television reporters Zaks and Carvalho, Joe Silver as newswriter Mordsini, Tony Rosato, Jackie Richardson, Philip Akin, Laura Robinson (from Night Heat), Fiona Reid (who co-starred with Waxman on King of Kensington) and Jack Duffy. It also co-stars Charles Kimbrough as the hapless Governor, just before he began his popular role of anchorman Jim Dale on Murphy Brown.

The film was not commercially successful. It derailed the acting career of Christopher Reeve, who played against type as the hapless fiancé.

[edit] Synopsis

Sullivan (Reynolds) is a cable TV news mogul. He tries to prevent the impending marriage of Colleran (Turner), his best reporter and ex-wife, by keeping her on the job during the critical news coverage of an upcoming execution and prison break.

[edit] Trivia

The film features two Superman actors - Christopher Reeve, who starred in all four of the films made between 1978 and 1987, and George Newbern, who would provide the voice of Superman for Bruce Timm's Justice League series. Ned Beatty, who played "Otis" in the two first Superman films, also appears; he and Reeve had also worked together on the 1978 film "Gray Lady Down".

Reeve later expressed regret in making the film, believing he "made a fool of himself" and that he had only taken the project as a distraction from depression following a divorce. He also reportedly had to act as "referee", as costars Turner and Reynolds hated each other.