''Apology'' is a made for

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...

original film that premiered on July 27, 1986. The movie is based on the artwork of

Allan Bridge Allan Bridge (February 14, 1945 – August 5, 1995) was an American conceptual artist best known for his creation in 1980 of the confessional phone system known as the Apology Line. He went by the pseudonym Mr. Apology (a label which has since ...

and the novel he inspired, '' Mr. Apology''. The film was eventually released on video and syndicated to cable and network television outlets. It stars

Lesley Ann Warren Lesley Ann Warren (born August 16, 1946) is an American actress and singer. She made her Broadway debut in 1963, aged 17, in '' 110 in the Shade''. In 1965 she received wide recognition for playing the title role in the television musical prod ...

Peter Weller Peter Weller (born June 24, 1947) is an American film and stage actor, television director, and art historian. He has appeared in more than 70 films and television series, including ''RoboCop'' (1987) and its sequel ''RoboCop 2'' (1990), in whic ...

and John Glover. The film was titled in some markets as ''Apology for Murder''. It was the first film produced under the HBO Pictures banner.

Background

Producers Les Alexander, Richard Park, and Richard Smith developed the idea from a similarly themed art project in New York. They hired

Mark Medoff Mark Medoff (March 18, 1940 – April 23, 2019) was an American playwright, screenwriter, film and theatre director, actor, and professor. His play '' Children of a Lesser God'' received both the Tony Award and the Olivier Award. He was nominat ...

, who had won a

Tony Award The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Broadway Theatre, more commonly known as the Tony Award, recognizes excellence in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual cer ...

for his play '' Children of a Lesser God'', to write the script. Filming was done in New York's

SoHo Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century. The area was develop ...

district and

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

, with additional shooting in

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

. Executive producer

Roger Gimbel Roger Gimbel (March 11, 1925 – April 26, 2011) was an American television producer who specialized in television movies. Many of Gimbel's television films dealt with real-life events, including '' Chernobyl: The Final Warning'', '' S.O.S. Titani ...

cast Warren in the lead role based on their prior working relationship in ''

Betrayal Betrayal is the breaking or violation of a presumptive contract, trust, or confidence that produces moral and psychological conflict within a relationship amongst individuals, between organizations or between individuals and organizations. Ofte ...

'' (1978). The part of Lily in ''Apology'' was Warren's first role in a

thriller film Thriller film, also known as suspense film or suspense thriller, is a broad film genre that evokes excitement and suspense in the audience. The suspense element found in most films' plots is particularly exploited by the filmmaker in this genre ...

Plot

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

avant garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or 'vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical De ...

sculptor Lily McGuire (

) lives a complicated and frustrating life as she tries to not only provide for herself and her daughter, but debut her latest artwork known as ''Apology''. The design is a two-part exhibit consisting of a walkthrough sculpture of advanced mechanical design and a phone service that allows callers to anonymously leave confessions of whatever they desire on the answering machine. However, someone has been calling the line and using it to announce a string of recent high-profile killings. After contacting the police, Detective Hungate (

) advises Lily to take the threats seriously. Eventually, the

serial killer A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more persons,A * * * * with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them. While most authorities set a threshold of three ...

stops his phone calls and intends to murder Lily to the sounds of the exhibit's programmed confessions.

Charles S. Dutton Charles Stanley Dutton (born January 30, 1951) is an American actor and director. He is best known for his roles in the television series ''Roc (TV series), Roc'' (1991–1994) and the television film ''The Piano Lesson (film), The Piano Lesson'' ...

Harvey Fierstein Harvey Forbes Fierstein ( ; born June 6, 1952) is an American actor, playwright and screenwriter. He is best known for his theater work in ''Torch Song Trilogy'' and ''Hairspray'' and movie roles in ''Mrs. Doubtfire'', '' Independence Day'', and ...

, and

Chris Noth Christopher David Noth ( ; born November 13, 1954) is an American actor. He is known for his television roles as NYPD Detective Mike Logan on ''Law & Order'' (1990–95), Big on ''Sex and the City'' (1998–2004), and Peter Florrick on ''The ...

co-star.

Cast

as Lily *

as Rad Hungate * George Loros as Frank * John Glover as Philip * Jimmie Ray Weeks as Claude *

as The Derelict *

as Assistant District Attorney (as Charles Dutton) * Skye Bassett as Anna * Garrett M. Brown as Gordon * Ellen Barber as Patty Garretson * Reathel Bean as Lieutenant Arnold Goodson *

as Roy Burnette * Diana Reis as Jean * Joe Zaloom as Street Vendor

Home media

The film was released on VHS by HBO/Cannon Video under license from

Home Box Office Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...

. However, it never released on DVD or Blu-ray.

Critical reception

The film was considered notably violent for cable television of the day: one critic wrote "there's lots of gore... the screen is littered with bodies and the sound track is filled with obscenities". Despite the caveats, the same critic added: "It's good enough to hook you though. Once you start watching you stick around to find out what happens." In the ''

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...

'', a reviewer wrote that although the story "alternates between the suspenseful and the silly", it remains "intriguing because of its quirky premise".

Gannett News Service Gannett Co., Inc. () is an American mass media holding company headquartered in McLean, Virginia, in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.Tom Shales Thomas William Shales (born November 3, 1944) is an American writer and retired critic of television programming and operations. He was a television critic for ''The Washington Post'' from 1977 to 2010, for which Shales received the Pulitzer Pr ...

, however, heaped scorn on the film for its "miserably nasty" and "pointlessly perverse" storyline, describing it as all "foul language, violence and miscellaneous kinks".

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Apology (Tv Film) 1986 television films 1986 films HBO Films films American serial killer films 1980s serial killer films 1986 thriller films Films based on American novels American thriller television films Films about fictional painters 1980s English-language films Films directed by Robert Bierman 1980s American films