00:09Good evening. Ben Mankiewicz with you. Glad you're watching TCM where we've arrived at the back half
00:14of tonight's Sissy Spacek double feature. We began with her career-defining Oscar-winning
00:20performance as Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter. We're following it up with a sleek
00:25and effectively disquieting political thriller from Universal in 1982, Missing. Director Costa
00:32Gavras made an international impact in 1969 with his political thriller Z, a fictionalized account
00:39of the very real 1963 assassination of anti-war Greek politician Gregoris Lambrakas. In Missing,
00:48Costa Gavras and writer Donald Stewart returned to the same type of disturbing landscape. Missing
00:54tells the story of the disappearance of American writer Charles Horman, who vanished during the
01:00American-backed Chilean coup of 1973 that overthrew a popularly elected left-wing president, Salvador
01:07Allende. Spacek plays Horman's distraught wife, Horman's dad, so Spacek's father-in-law is played
01:15by Jack Lemmon. He arrives in South America hoping to smooth over what he's certain must be a simple
01:21misunderstanding with the U.S. Embassy. They'll tell him where to find his son, and they'll all go
01:27home. However, Lemmon quickly discovers a reality far darker and a conspiracy far deeper than he could
01:34have imagined. Sissy Spacek was thrilled at the opportunity to work with Jack Lemmon, but that is
01:41not what drew her to missing. The story of the Horman family got her. Unlike Coal Miner's Daughter,
01:47where Spacek met and connected with Loretta Lynn, helping Spacek play her so effectively,
01:54Costa Gavras didn't want Spacek to meet Joyce Horman, the character Spacek plays, though the name
02:01has changed in the movie. Spacek and Horman eventually became close after production. Spacek told Fort Worth,
02:09Texas celebrity interviewer Bobby Wygant in 1982 that if she had met Joyce beforehand, she would have added
02:15more gestures to the character and picked up Joyce's Minnesotan accent. I can't shake my own accent,
02:23said Spacek, but I can mimic others. The film was controversial at the time. It's a little hard to
02:29understand now. It's a powerful movie telling a fundamentally true story, a look at what can happen
02:36when a dictator is given carte blanche in a country. Missing did only lukewarm business at the box office,
02:44barely breaking even on its nine million dollar budget after three weeks. Critics praised the film,
02:50however, and it won the Palme d'Or at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, as well as the Academy Award
02:56for
02:56Best Adapted Screenplay. Picked up four nominations in all, including Best Picture, Best Actress for Sissy
03:03Spacek, Best Actor for Jack Lemmon. Here it is from 1982. Missing.
03:15Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing.
03:19Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing.
03:19Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing.
03:19Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing
