Reception and Aftermath
Brainstorm was eventually released almost two years after Wood's death on a small number of screens and with little publicity, despite being trumpeted unofficially as "Natalie Wood's last movie". The film received mixed critical opinion, and review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 64% of 14 critics have given the film a positive review. Janet Maslin of the New York Times gave particular credit to Louise Fletcher's "superb performance"
The film was not a commercial success, with a production budget of $18 million and grossing only $10 million in ticket sales in North America.
Because of the immensely troubled production and disagreements with MGM, Trumbull opted never to direct a Hollywood film again. In 1983 he stated "I have no interest...in doing another Hollywood feature film...Absolutely none. The movie business is so totally screwed-up that I just don't have the energy to invest three or four years in a feature film. Moviemaking is like waging war. It destroys your personal life, too. The people who can survive the process of making films have largely given up their personal lives in order to do that, just because it's such a battle to make a movie. And in doing that, they've isolated themselves from the very audience that they're trying to reach."
Read more about this topic: Brainstorm (1983 film)
Famous quotes containing the words reception and/or aftermath:
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“The aftermath of joy is not usually more joy.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)