The 1987 Movie "Shy People"

 Three Swayze movie were released in the year 1987:

1) Dirty Dancing, featuring Patrick Swayze

2) Steel Dawn, featuring Patrick Swayze

3) Shy People, featuring Don Swayze

Patrick Swayze (born in 1952) is an older brother of Don Swayze (born in 1958). 

Here is an image showing Don Swayze in the movie Shy People. 

Don Swayze (on the right) in the 1987 movie Shy People

=======

One of the stars of Shy People is the actress Jill Clayburgh. 

Jill Clayburgh in the 1987 movie Shy People

Clayburg was the star of the 1980 movie It's My Turn, the screenplay of which was written by Eleanor Bergstein, who wrote also the screenplay for Dirty Dancing.

In the movie's poster, you can see Clayburgh in the upper-right and Swayze in the lower left.

Click on the image to enlarge it.

Below is the movie's trailer:

Below is the entire movie:

======

Robert Ebert praised the movie, giving it four stars and suggesting that it should have been nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. However, Ebert explained that practically nobody saw the movie in 1987, because of shenanigans in the movie's distribution.

Of all of the great, lost films of recent years, Shy People must be the saddest case. Here is a great film that slipped through the cracks of an idiotic distribution deal and has failed to open in most parts of the country. At the 1987 Cannes Film Festival, Barbara Hershey won the best-actress award, and the film seemed poised to make an enormous impact. 

But it was a production of Cannon Films, then financially troubled, and when a major distributor made a substantial offer for it, it developed that a Cannon executive already had booked it into 300 Southwestern theaters in a quick-cash deal. The major distributor pulled out, the movie never received a proper launching, and only now [in May 1988] is it straggling into release.

.... With slightly different handling, Shy People could have been a best-picture Oscar nominee.

On the other hand, Roger Ebert did not like Dirty Dancing.

======

Something similar happened to the 1995 movie Let It Be Me, which was written and directed by Eleanor Bergstein. I thought that Let It Be Me was an excellent movie, but practically nobody was able to watch it, because of distribution shenanigans. My blog article about Let It Be Me is here.