MovieChat Forums > Blood & Orchids (1986) Discussion > affair between Kristofferson and Sean Yo...

affair between Kristofferson and Sean Young?


What was the point of the affair between Kris Kristofferson's character and Sean Young's? Was that part of the story from the book? I guess you could say it was an attention getter.

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[deleted]

I hated that subplot and I couldn't stand their scenes.

I really like this TV movie when I was very young. I don't like it as much now With my more mature and well-rounded familiarity with movies, I can see how uneven and average this TV movie is so I can understand why it has been forgotten and not put on DVD.



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I agree totally. The novel was a nerve beater, but the mini-series, except for the performances of Jane Alexander (she's always great) and Jose Ferrer (the 1950 Academy-Award winner for Best Actor), was bland and mediocre.

In the book, the supposed victim was a blonde; in the T.V. movie, the brunette Madeleine Stowe was cast in that part. She was unknown then and it's wonderful that she went on to become a bigger star. But having read the novel before I saw the show, I was deeply disappointed. Especially by Kris Kristofferson and Sean Young, because the chemistry between them was zero. Kristofferson is one of my heroes so that made it worse to bear.

The character played by Sean Young was also blonde in the book, so I was also taken aback by this, too. And in the novel, Capt. Maddox with whom Lenore has an affair is a native, not a haole (white person) as portrayed by the multi-talented Kristofferson. I wish they had cast a real Hawaiian in the Maddox part and somebody else as Lenore, but that would have been asking for too much.

By the way, Kris Kristofferson is a real Renaissance figure: he was born into a well-to-do military family, and as the son of a General, he graduated from elite schools and later became a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, and an instructor at West Point. After that he drifted into Hollywood's drug culture and worked for sometime as a janitor. Then he wrote songs and teamed up with his first wife Rita Coolidge, and the rest, as they say, is cultural history. He's never been regarded as a good actor, but I thought he was great in Flashpoint, a 1984 HBO film that had a sensational plot about the JFK assassination twenty years on; an added bonus: the physical chemistry between Kris and Tess Harper in that movie was terrific.

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I've never cared for KK as an actor but he more than held his own in that Coen Brothers movie, where he plays the trigger happy, sadistic sheriff. Can't remember the name of the movie; Chris Cooper was in it as well as the good guy sheriff. Duh on me. Got it! "Lone Star".

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