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What Happened Was...

United States

1994

91 Min
Color
English
  • Currently 4.3/5 Stars.
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DIR Tom Noonan

EXEC Ted Hope, James Schamus

PROD Scott Macaulay

SCR Tom Noonan

DP Joe DeSalvo

CAST Karen Sillas, Tom Noonan

ED Tom Noonan

PROD DES Daniel Ouellette

MUSIC Tom Noonan

SOUND Rick Stevenson

Sundance (Dramatic Competition): Grand Jury Prize, Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award, San Francisco, Stockholm (American Independents)

Synopsis

Jackie works as a secretary in a law firm. One evening she invites her colleague Michael from work for dinner, a date, she believes. The meeting is tentative. They eat and drink wine, however the atmosphere remains uneasy. Jackie is set on becoming a writer, something she tells Michael about. After dinner she reads from her own macabre story titled: What Happened Was… When she admits to Michael that she was attracted to him because he is a writer, he admits that he may not be whom she believed him to be. This does not put Jackie off her attempts in trying to seduce him.

The evening becomes one of revealed secrets and dreams. In the end they have to find out if their drastically changed impressions of each other makes a future acquaintance possible.

The director Tom Noonan, also in one of the leading parts, received the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 1994 as well as The Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award for his screenplay for What Happened Was…. –Stockholm International Film Festival

Director

Original

Tom Noonan

Tom Noonan (born April 12, 1951) is an American actor and film writer-director.

Early life

Noonan was born in Greenwich, Connecticut, the son of Rosaleen and Tom Noonan, who worked as a dentist and jazz musician respectively. He has an older brother, John Ford Noonan, a playwright, and two sisters, Rosemary and Caroline.

Career

Noonan started working in theatre (appearing in the original Off-Broadway production Sam Shepard’s play Buried Child), but in the 1980s he began working in film. At 6 feet, 6 inches (198 cm), Noonan’s imposing presence is probably responsible for his tendency to be cast as menacing villains, as in RoboCop 2, Last Action Hero, Manhunter and The Pledge. His height was used for comic effect in “The Moving Finger,” the series finale of the horror anthology Monsters (several episodes of which he also directed and wrote).

In 1986, Noonan played Francis Dolarhyde, a serial killer who kills entire families, in Manhunter, the first movie… read more

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JESCIE

12May12

http://www.hulu.com/watch/339689/what-happened-was

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Westley

27Mar12

Weird movie, but in a good way. It would make a nice double-feature with Synecdoche, New York (which also includes Tom Noonan). This double-feature could be billed 'The Tom Noonan Depression Session'.

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T. J. Harman

3Mar12

Best bad date movie ever? Its a lot more then that though. Amazing actiing and writing sweaten this depressing, cringe-every other min pill.

Yuki Aditya likes this

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JP. Schmidt

17May11

An excellent showcase of humanity, intimacy, and insecurity ... it's comforting to know these same thoughts and feelings dwell in others' minds and those who are older and mature.

Yuki Aditya likes this

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W184

Repertory. Truffaut, Newman, Noonan, More

By David Hudson on November 4, 2011

The Bride Wore Black, Sometimes a Great Notion, What Happened Was… and more.

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Cinema 21: What Happened Was

43 posts by 11 people 3 months ago