The Big Brass Ring

Directed by George Hickenlooper, The Big Brass Ring is a 1999 American drama following Blake Pellarin, a Missouri politician with a questionable past, in the run-up to the gubernatorial election. Played by William Hurt, Pellarin is confronted by his former mentor Kim Minnaker (Nigel Hawthorne), who fled the country years earlier after a scandal and now resurfaces with photographs that could derail the candidate's political ambitions. At the same time, Pellarin's marriage to his alcoholic wife Dinah is falling apart while he grows close to the journalist Cela.

The screenplay, heavily rewritten by Hickenlooper and F. X. Feeney, is based on an early 1980s script by Orson Welles and Oja Kodar that was never filmed for lack of financing. Co-starring Irène Jacob, Jefferson Mays and Miranda Richardson, the film earned Richardson a Golden Globe nomination for her performance.