Frank Ridgeway
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Flashbacks dramatize Eddie's life and the rise and fall of his band, the Cruisers. The band gets its start at a club in Somers Point, New Jersey named Tony Mart's. Not adept at writing lyrics, Eddie hires Frank Ridgeway aka "Wordman" to be the band's keyboard player and lyricist, over the protests of band manager Doc Robbins and bassist Sal Amato.
Eddie and the Cruisers: Directed by Martin Davidson. With Tom Berenger, Michael Paré, Joe Pantoliano, Matthew Laurance. A television newswoman picks up the story of a 1960s rock band whose long-lost leader Eddie Wilson may still be alive, while searching for the missing tapes of the band's never-released album.
- (8.6K)
- Drama, Music, Mystery
- Martin Davidson
- 1983-09-23
Flashbacks dramatize Eddie's life and the rise and fall of his band, the Cruisers. The band gets its start at a club in Somers Point, New Jersey named Tony Mart's. Not adept at writing lyrics, Eddie hires Frank Ridgeway aka "Wordman" to be the band's keyboard player and lyricist, over the protests of band manager Doc Robbins and bassist Sal Amato.
- It Was Based on A Murder Mystery.
- Rick Springfield Wanted to Play Eddie.
- The Band Got Advice from The Boss.
- Ellen Barkin Hated Making it.
- The Director Was Pretty Mean to Michael Paré.
- Sylvester Stallone Made An Important Introduction.
- HBO and MTV Gave The Movie A Second Wind.
- The Palace of Depression Really existed.
- The Sequel Went Through 14 drafts.
- The Sequel Was Shot at A Bon Jovi Concert.
Eddie and the Cruisers was not originally conceived as a nostalgia trip for Jersey rock. Author P. F. Kluge wrotethe 1980 novel it was based on as more of a thriller, with Eddie’s former bandmates reflecting on their heyday with the presumed-dead Wilson as a killer tries to find some “missing” recordings the singer made before his apparent death. W...
Itching to grow out of his scrubs onGeneral Hospital, soap opera actor-slash-singer Rick Springfield lobbied for the title role in Eddie and the Cruisers. Unfortunately, director Martin Davidson—who bought the novel rights—didn’t think he could be convincing as anyone other than Rick Springfield. While he “might have been great” in the part, Davids...
When producers went looking for a group to supply original music that would be lip-synched by the cast, they found John Cafferty & The Beaver Brown Band (named after a paint color) toiling in and around New Jersey. Their Bruce Springsteen-esque sound actually had some endorsement from Springsteen himself: Cafferty told Peoplethat the Boss was aroun...
Ellen Barkin, who played the latter-day investigative reporter looking into Eddie Wilson’s death, was not enthused about making the film. “That’s what we liked to call a 'pay the rent' job,” she told The A.V. Clubin 2010. “It wasn’t a script I liked.” Barkin said her agent more or less talked her into it on the premise she’d only have to work on it...
Paré’s most notable acting gig up to that point was as a supporting cast member of NBC’s The Greatest American Hero. Davidson didn't have much confidence the young actor could pull off some of the more emotionally demanding scenes required: He essentially put him on acting probation. “If you f*ck up tomorrow, you’re fired,” he allegedlytold Paré. T...
When Davidson had Cafferty’s master recording set, he needed a record label to distribute it. Having directed Sylvester Stallone in 1974’s The Lords of Flatbush, he approachedthe actor to put him in touch with Scotti Bros. Records, the label that had helped facilitate a meeting between Stallone and the group Survivor that eventually paved the way f...
Dumped unceremoniously by its distributor in September 1983 after a chunk of its potential audience was back in school,Eddie and the Cruisers was a theatrical flop. But in 1984, when the film hit HBO in heavy rotation and one of Cafferty’s songs was featured in a music video, audiences who had missed it the first time around caught on. Buoyed by th...
Eddie’s existential crisis—to stay true to his music or placate record industry executives—comes during a scene shot at the “Palace of Depression,” a massive junkyard with parts and assorted junk artistically arranged. It wasn’t just set dressing: the Palace opened in 1932 in Vineland, New Jersey, after a man named George Daynor lost his savings in...
After the success of the album, Scotti Brothers purchased the sequel rights in 1985. That film wouldn’t see the light of day until 1989: It took 14 drafts for producers to be satisfied with a script for a follow-up that sees Eddie (Paré) living in anonymity in Canada as blue-collar worker “Joe West” before he gets the urge to start recording music ...
To capture the atmosphere of a live arena crowd for Eddie’s climatic return to performing, the crew of Eddie II set up camerasat a Bon Jovi concert in April 1989 at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas. According to one concertgoer, the “fake” band lead by Paré was more well-received than the real warm-up band—Skid Row.
Eddie and the Cruisers ★★ 1983 (PG)In the early 1960s, rockers Eddie and the Cruisers score with one hit album. Amid their success, lead singer Pare dies mysteriously in a car accident. Years later, a reporter decides to write a feature on the defunct group, prompting a former band member to begin a search for missing tapes of the Cruisers' unreleased second album.
Learn more about the full cast of Eddie and the Cruisers with news, photos, videos and more at TV Guide ... a rock band reforms hoping to find the tapes for their never-release album. Meanwhile, a ...
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Eddie and the Cruisers is a 1983 American film directed by Martin Davidson with the screenplay written by Martin and Arlene Davidson, based on the novel by P. F. Kluge. The movie follows a fictional '60s rock band called Eddie and the Cruisers. The band makes a name for itself while playing regularly at a Somers Point, New Jersey club called ...
