When writer/director Tom Schiller wrote this line of dialogue for his film Nothing Lasts Forever, he couldn’t have had any idea he was predicting his own future with the movie. Nothing Lasts Foreveris the best cult film you’ve (probably) never seen and most haven’t heard about. Produced almost thirty years ago, the studio MGM refused to release it. Even after MGM’s library was sold to Warner Bros the film has never been available on VHS or disc. Schiller said he was in touch with the studio for years, receiving a number of different reasons for the delay including music and stock footage clearance problems. He was always promised release was close in coming, but as of 2012 this promise has not been fulfilled. Schiller described the treatment of his film as saddening.
The movie is a whimsical comedy loosely set in the 1930’s. It alternates between black and white for scenes set in ‘reality’ and color for its more fantastical moments; much like The Wizard of Oz. It’s story follows Adam Beckett (Zach Galligan of Gremlinsfame) as an aspiring artist who returns to his home of New York City to find it under martial law by the Port Authority due to a transit strike. He is forced to work as a bridge monitor (Dan Aykroyd makes an appearance as Beckett’s boss). Eventually he makes friends with a hobo who takes him underground and reveals that all the cities of the world are run by a secret network of hobos. Furthermore, America has a secret base on the moon and the bums want him to travel up there and meet the love of his life. This in turn leads to him accidently getting on a bus that is in fact bound for the moon. Eddie Fisher (famous singer and father of Princess Leia) makes a cameo as himself while Bill Murray stars as the man running a vast conspiracy to keep senior citizens shopping on the moon.
The plot is not as incoherent as it would seem because it is in keeping with the films absurdist style. Nothing Lasts Forever has the feel of a Terry Gilliam movie with the surreal comedic elements of Top Secret. Tom Schiller worked on Saturday Night Live in its early years and with Lorne Michaels as Producer, the humor of early SNL is in the DNA of this movie; especially when Aykroyd and Murray are on screen.
Actors that appear in this film also starred in huge hits that year such as Gremlins and Ghostbusters. That fact is part of the baffling mystery of why Nothing Lasts Forever has been held back. Schiller states that two years in a row he had offers to show the film at Cannes and both years MGM refused to allow it. Nothing Lasts Forever is certainly offbeat and it is debatable if the film would have been popular with a wide audience (the resolution feels frustratingly incomplete with no explanation of what was really achieved by going to the moon), but the star power alone should have warranted a theatrical or home video release.
Bizarrely enough, as of right now, the only “official” way to see the movie is on European television, or catch one of the rare, random screenings at a festival or theater. At a recent Q&A, Tom Schiller said that he was very happy that at least the movie got seen and he liked the experience of being with the audience when they saw it. In essence, it was everything he wanted, just not in the way he expected.
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