Romancing the Stone (1984) Romancing the Stone (1984)

See also: _Index | Plot Structure (Romancing the Stone) | Backbeats (Romancing the Stone)

Quick Facts

• Director: Robert Zemeckis
• Screenplay: Diane Thomas (working title: Jewel)
• Starring: Kathleen Turner (Joan Wilder), Michael Douglas (Jack T. Colton), Danny DeVito (Ralph), Manuel Ojeda (Colonel Zolo), Zack Norman (Ira), Alfonso Arau (Juan)
• Cinematography: Dean Cundey
• Editor: Donn Cambern, Frank Morriss
• Music: Alan Silvestri
• Runtime: 106 minutes
• Budget: approximately $10 million
• US Box Office: approximately $76.5 million
• Release Date: March 30, 1984 (US)
• MPAA Rating: PG
• Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox

Overview

A New York romance novelist who lives alone with her cat and writes the kind of sweeping adventures she never gets to have receives a treasure map in the mail from her recently murdered brother-in-law just as her sister Elaine is kidnapped in Colombia and held for the map's ransom. Joan Wilder flies to Cartagena, gets onto the wrong bus, and ends up stranded in the jungle with Jack T. Colton, an opportunistic American expatriate who agrees to help her for a fee, while a crooked Colombian official (Colonel Zolo) and a pair of cousin-smugglers (Ralph and Ira) chase the map. Zemeckis's first hit before Back to the Future, the film shifts the romance-novel template into the body of the woman who writes them — the writer learns to do the things her heroines do, and the mercenary discovers the emerald is not the prize he thought it was.