My Favorite Year (1982)

From the title, I assumed that the story would take place over the course of a year. Instead, it's only a few weeks, tops. All we really get from the title is a setting in the past and an occasion that is, like most comedies, happy in the end.

In 1954 New York, junior sketch comedy writer Benjy Stone (Mark Linn-Baker) is excited to have Alan Swann (Peter O'Toole), an Errol Flynn knockoff, guest-star on his show. Alas, the now burnt-out Swann is prone to stinking drunkenness, philandering, and tardiness if not absenteeism. Stone pleads with Sid Caesar-like show star Stan Kaiser (Joseph Bologna) to give Swann a chance all the same. Kaiser agrees on the condition that Stone watch Swann like a hawk. No problem, right?

The Stunt Man (1980)

Cult classic time! I had never heard of director Richard Rush (appropriate surname on an action flick) or any of his other works. Nor had I heard of star Steve Railsback (incredible surname). Some of his other roles are as real-life serial killers, so it figures he'd be cast as a fugitive, albeit not as bad as the police make him out to be.

The fugitive, Cameron, accidentally runs onto a movie set, has a misunderstanding with a stunt man, and evidently sends him to his death in self-defense. The intrigued director, Eli Cross (a middle-aged Peter O'Toole), decides to shoo off the police by claiming that Cameron is that same stunt man and treating him as such, more or less, thereafter. Just about everyone on the set knows he's a fugitive, but none of them squeal or even give him much grief for it. He merely comes to understand how precarious his situation is, which doesn't stop him from getting a little unruly. Or developing a relationship with main actress Nina (Barbara Hershey).