Griffin and Phoenix (1976 film)
| Griffin and Phoenix | |
|---|---|
Video release cover
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| Genre | Drama |
| Written by | John Hill |
| Directed by | Daryl Duke |
| Starring |
Peter Falk Jill Clayburgh Sally Kirkland Dorothy Tristan George Chandler |
| Music by | George Tipton |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language(s) | English |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | Paul Junger Witt |
| Producer(s) |
Tony Thomas David M. Shapiro Judith Craig Marlin |
| Cinematography | Richard C. Glouner |
| Editor(s) | O. Nicholas Brown |
| Running time | 97 min |
| Production company(s) | ABC Circle Films |
| Distributor | ABC |
| Release | |
| Original network | ABC |
| Original release |
March 18, 1977 (Theatrical) |
Griffin and Phoenix (sometimes subtitled "A Love Story") is a 1976 American made-for-television romantic drama film produced by ABC Circle Films starring Peter Falk and Jill Clayburgh as title characters Geoffrey Griffin and Sarah Phoenix. Written by John Hill and directed by Daryl Duke, it first premiered on the ABC television network on February 27, 1976, and was also released to theaters in select countries under the title Today Is Forever from 1977 through 1980. It was nominated in the category of Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography at the 28th Primetime Emmy Awards.
It tells the story of two ill-fated middle-aged characters who both face a terminal cancer diagnosis and have months left to live. A chance meeting brings them together and they fall in love, both unaware of the other's shared fate. Notably, Jill Clayburgh developed the same type of cancer her character had in this film, succumbing to it in 2010. Peter Falk died just over six months later in 2011 from complications relating to Alzheimer's disease. Griffin and Phoenix was first distributed on VHS by 20th Century Fox in 1982, but has never been formally released on DVD or Blu-ray.
The film begins with Geoffrey Griffin (Peter Falk) in the midst of a camping trip with his estranged wife Jean Griffin (Dorothy Tristan) and children Randy (Randy Faustino) and Bob (Stephen Rogers) at Yosemite National Park. His children and especially his wife are bored with the trip and uninterested in any family togetherness, despite his insistence. As the family is traveling back home, Griffin is driving the car while his wife and kids are being hauled in the camper behind him. He has a flashback to a doctor's visit where he is told that he has an inoperable form of terminal melanoma and will soon die, which is assumed to have been the motivating factor behind his initiative to take the trip, which his family had talked about doing before he and his wife separated. After becoming increasingly frustrated at his family's apathy about the trip, their reviling attitude toward him, and their trivial demands such as that he stop to walk the dog, he detaches his car from the camper and drives away, deserting them.
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