Actor John Cusack is returning to Atlanta in September to discuss and screen the 1997 Gen X comedy “Grosse Pointe Blank.”
He came to the Atlanta Symphony Hall in 2019 for a Q&A and screening of the 2000 classic “High Fidelity,” speaking with local media personality Mara Davis. He will be back at the same location on Sunday, Sept. 10. Ticket presales begin Thursday, May 11, with general admission tickets available on Friday at Ticketmaster.
Ticket prices have not been released. Last time he was here, the promoter charged $39 to $69 with $250 VIP tickets guaranteeing a meeting with the actor.
Now 56, Cusack has enjoyed a career spanning four decades covering a wide range of genres from the 1980s (”The Sure Things,” “Better Off Dead,” “Say Anything,”), the 1990s (”The Grifters,” “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil”) and the 2000s (’Serendipity,” “Adaptation,” “Hot Tub Time Machine”).
Cusack’s “Grosse Pointe Blank” was not his biggest hit by any means, generating only $28 million in the movie theaters, but it grew into one of his more beloved films.
In it, he plays Martin, a tortured soul of a hitman who reluctantly ends up at his 10th year high school reunion and rekindles a relationship with high school sweetheart Debi played with bite by Minnie Driver. It came out two weeks before the lighter, frothier and far less violent “Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion,” which grossed almost the exact same amount of money while focusing on two high school female besties at their 10th year high school reunion.
Between the two movies, “Grosse Pointe Blank” got slightly better reviews and Rotten Tomatoes audience members gave it an 87% positive take vs. just 65% for “Romy.”
During a 25th anniversary take on both movies last year, Paste magazine said “Grosse Pointe Blank,” despite its very cool 1980s soundtrack, has a particular timelessness to it, noting that “the existential material in ‘Grosse Pointe Blank’ echoes across the quarterlife-crisis movies that would follow in its wake, and has more Noah Baumbach spikiness than ‘Reality Bites’ mush.”
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