Bill Pullman's Best Films: from Spaceballs to Lost Highway

Bill Pullman comes to GFF this year with flinty western The Ballad of Lefty Brown and will give an extended In Person Q&A at the festival. Ahead of his Glasgow visit, we count down his finest five performances

Feature by Jamie Dunn | 16 Feb 2018

Weird Pullman: Zero Effect

This sorely underrated 1997 comedy sees Pullman at his most manic. He plays Daryl Zero, a socially inept but brilliant private investigator who’s hired by a business tycoon (Ryan O' Neal) to discover who’s been blackmailing him. It’s basically a modern riff on Sherlock Holmes, with Ben Stiller playing it straight as Zero’s frustrated Watsonesque sidekick. We’re betting Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss are fans, but Pullman’s genius investigator is a far more compelling figure than Cumberbatch’s asshole take on the great detective. We doubt Pullman ever had more fun on screen.

Scary Pullman: Lost Highway

Lynch’s 1998 film is one of his most confounding puzzles, but it’s also impossible to forget. Pullman dominates the first half of the movie as a worryingly intense jazz saxophonist who makes love like he makes music: menacingly. He may also have carved up his femme fatale wife (Patricia Arquette) in a fit of jealousy. We never actually find out as he inexplicably transforms into Balthazar Getty’s teenage garage mechanic halfway through the movie, but by then Pullman has left an impression.

Sleazy Pullman: The Last Seduction

Poor Bill has rings run around him by Linda Fiorentino in this wonderful neo-noir. He plays a sleazy trainee doctor whose main interest in the profession seems to be the easy access to narcotics; she plays his deliciously ruthless wife. After convincing Pullman to take part in a dangerous drug deal, Fiorentino absconds to the sticks with the cash and finds herself a hunky young boyfriend, leaving Pullman and his thumbs at the mercy of some vicious loan sharks. Despite being completely done over, you don’t sympathize with him for a second.

Silly Pullman: Spaceballs

As Captain Lone Starr, Pullman has the unenviable task of combining puppy dog Luke Skywalker and rogue flyboy Han Solo in this hugely likable Star Wars spoof from Mel Brooks. It hits most of its parodic targets and Pullman has wonderful comic chemistry with John Candy as his half-man, half-dog Chewbacca stand-in. For what it’s worth, Pullman is pretty great at this derring-do nonsense. Maybe in another galaxy far, far away he’d have made a winning action hero. 

Presidential Pullman: Independence Day

Talking of Pullman the action hero, the closest he got is in this gloriously daft Roland Emmerich flick that combines the paranoid alien-invasion thriller with the huge ensemble disaster movie. As cheesy as this sci-fi spectacle is, we defy anyone not to get a lump in their throat when Pullman’s commander-in-chief rallies the troops before the climatic dogfight with the alien invaders. It’s the high watermark that all movie Presidents since have had to aim for; shame about the IRL US Presidents, though.


The Ballad of Lefty Brown screens at Glasgow Film Festival: Thu 22 Feb, GFT, 8.15pm
Bill Pullman In Person: Fri 23 Feb, GFT, 1.15pm

Read more about Glasgow Film Festival in The CineSkinny – in print at Glasgow Film Theatre and the CCA, and online at theskinny.co.uk/film/cineskinny