Newly Discovered Extended Cut of 1982's LOOKIN' TO GET OUT from director Hal Ashby (now on DVD)

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—> See Link to our DVD Review (further below)

What they're doing is insane, immoral...
and working!

The comedy that treats you like a king... for a day.

"The pleasures are behavioral and textural... Ashby's loving attention to all things wayward seems more welcome now than it did during his heyday."
—Kent Jones, Film Comment

"Well-made... An urgent horror story."
—Vincent Canby, The New York Times

Burbank, CA. — LOOKIN' TO GET OUT, in a newly discovered version from the late director Hal Ashby, newly available on DVD (June 30) from Warner Home Video (SRP $19.98).

The never-before seen cut of the comedy had its World Premiere Saturday, April 4 at the Sarasota Film Festival's 2009 Filmmaker Tribute. The gala event honoring the noted director was held at the Sarasota Opera House and included on-stage conversations about Ashby's life and work with Jon Voight and other distinguished collaborators. Among those attending were Bill Paxton, Stanley Tucci, Steve Buscemi and the director's daughter, Leigh MacManus. The panel was moderated by Nick Dawson who launches his new biography, Being Hal Ashby: Life of a Hollywood Rebel.

Lookin' to Get Out stars Jon Voight, Ann-Margret and Burt Young, and features the debut of seven-year-old Angelina Jolie. The film is about a cheap con man on the run from New York City gangsters, who travels to Las Vegas hoping to win enough money to pay back the loan sharks who are after him. There he unexpectedly meets his ex-girlfriend—and the child he fathered.

Twenty-seven years after Lookin' to Get Out was released, a new version was discovered. As Voight, who was instrumental in the film's development, screenplay (as a co-writer), tells it, "For various reasons, the film we released didn't really represent Hal's best work. I knew every version of the script and every cut, so I was understandably excited when I heard about this, yet I also didn't want to be disappointed. But when I saw it, I knew instantly it had Hal's touch. The way he took all the elements and made it his own, it was almost like we were working together again. When Hal Ashby [an Oscar® winning editor] cut his films himself, it was magic."

As Wikipedia notes: While speaking at the University of Southern California, Jon Voight discovered the version of the film that had been shown to the students wasn't the theatrical version but instead Ashby's original cut (which was considered lost). The film is Angelina Jolie's screen debut at age seven (and she would not appear in another film until 1993's Cyborg 2).

Ashby's most important films were screened throughout this year's festival, including Harold And Maude, Shampoo, The Last Detail, Bound For Glory, The Slugger´s Wife, Coming Home and Being There.

About the Film and the Director:
The comedy tells the story of two gamblers who head to Las Vegas hoping to turn their luck around after losing a lot of money in NY. Oscar-winner Jon Voight (Actor in a Leading Role for Coming Home), who also co-wrote the screenplay, stars as Alex Kovac, a charming, happy-go-lucky gambler, with Oscar® nominee Burt Young (Actor in a Supporting Role for Rocky) as his buddy. Ann-Margret (Bye Bye Birdie, Viva Las Vegas) co-stars as Alex's ex-girlfriend.

Although Lookin' to Get Out was made in 1980 it wasn't released until 1982. The Las Vegas scenes were filmed at the MGM Grand Hotel. And according to IMDB, the film is notable as being the only movie to co-star real-life father, mother and daughter: Jon Voight, Marcheline Bertrand and Angelina Jolie.

Hal Ashby's first work in Hollywood was as an assistant editor on a number of high profile titles. His first job as editor was on Tony Richardson's The Loved One, followed by Norman Jewison's The Cincinnati Kid, The Russians are Coming the Russians are Coming, The Thomas Crown Affair and In the Heat of the Night for which Ashby was awarded an Oscar®.

Ashby's directorial debut came with The Landlord from a script which producer Norman Jewison encouraged him to direct. Ashby then helmed his best known group of films, including The Last Detail, Shampoo, Bound for Glory, Coming Home, and Being There — all acclaimed with excellent reviews and Academy Award nominations. In fact, 10 were given nods in acting categories: Lee Grant, Jack Nicholson, Randy Quaid, Jack Warden, Jon Voight, Jane Fonda, Bruce Dern, Penelope Milford, Melvyn Douglas and Peter Sellers. Grant, Fonda, Voight and Douglas took Oscars® for their performances.

Ashby died of pancreatic cancer Dec 27, 1988 at the age of 59.

DVD BONUS FEATURES include:
• Lookin' to Get Out: The Cast Looks Back — New featurette with Jon Voight, co-writer Al Schwartz, Burt Young and Ann-Margaret as they reminisce at the making of Lookin' to Get Out
• Theatrical trailer

LOOKIN' TO GET OUT — Explore further:
—> DVD Review by John J. Puccio »
EXCERPT: It appears that what Hal Ashby, co-writers Al Schwartz and Jon Voight, cinematographer Haskell Wexler, and composer Johnny Mandel were trying to make was a sort of zany, screwball-type comedy, and certainly one can see the potential there. Unfortunately, the direction falls flat, the script is implausible even by the whimsical standards of screwball comedy, and the acting is either forced and unnatural or disinterested and dull.

The biggest shortcoming of all: Voight's comedic trials. The man is a brilliant dramatic actor, but he is not another Cary Grant, Burt Reynolds, or Paul Newman, fellows who could do straight dramatic roles and then change gears with comfort into charming, lovable, comedy roles. Voight shows no such ability in "Lookin' to Get Out." Instead, he seems always ill at ease, his character's constant laughing and joking, which the character uses to disguise his vulnerabilities, being more rueful than amusing. It's hard to find a guy funny who is so obviously straining to make the characters around him like him.

Oddly, given the attention spent on the script and direction, much of "Lookin' to Get Out" appears improvised, with the actors appearing as though they're having a better time than the audience. Even in its new, longer, supposedly original form, the movie doesn't generate much interest beyond the ordinary.

(Click thru the Link above for the full review)

Rated R for language and some nudity (Director's Cut)

Lookin' to Get Out Extended Version has an all-new transfer and includes a new featurette and interviews with the cast about the making of the movie. The film is part of Warner Home Video's previously announced "Director's Showcase: Take Four" which includes the May 26th release of Hugh Hudson's new Revolution Revisited Director's Cut, starring Al Pacino; John Boorman's Beyond Rangoon; Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point and David Cronenberg's M. Butterfly.

Film Synopsis:
What they're doing is insane, immoral...
and working!
Alex has had a good day at the track, a bad night at the poker game and hell have a worse time if the guys he owes catch up with him. So Alex and go-along pal Jerry split for Las Vegas where (they hope) Lady Luck and their wits will give them the cash they need. Fans of life-embracing buddy comedy and of Hal Ashby (Harold and Maude, Being There) are in luck with this newly discovered version of Ashby's LOOKIN' TO GET OUT, with 15 minutes of never-before-seen footage.

Jon Voight, directed by Ashby in his Academy Award-winning role in Coming Home, plays mercurial Alex and co-wrote the con-is-on tale co-starring Ann-Margret and Burt Young and featuring a very young Angelina Jolie in her very first film. Sit at the blackjack table with these likable rogues. Place your bets. Hide your wallet.

In LOOKIN' TO GET OUT, Hal Ashby, who had directed Jon Voight in Coming Home, gives him free reign in a script Voight co-wrote, although much of it has the feel of spontaneous improvisation on the set, with Voight cracking up and doing odd bits of physical comedy. He stars as Alex Kovac, a charming, happy-go-lucky gambler who's ten thousand dollars in debt to the mob in New York, leading him to flee to Las Vegas with his adoring but none-too-bright bosom buddy, Jerry (Burt Young). He hopes to win money at blackjack but doesn't have the stakes.

Fate (or movie plotting) lends a hand when they are mistaken for high-roller friends of the hotel manager, Bernie Gold (Richard Bradford), and then given a free suite and advanced gambling money by the casino. Alex's ex-girlfriend, Patti (Ann-Margret), who's now, unknown to him, living in the hotel with Bernie Gold and their daughter, Tosh (Angelina Jolie), spots him in the lobby. But Alex is more interested in a waiter, Smitty (Bert Remsen), whom he remembers as a famous gambler from years ago. He hatches a plot with Smitty to win back the money, ending with an incredibly wild, although realistically staged, blackjack game.

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