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Released
1994 · FILM

Spanking the Monkey

“A gripping comedy about letting go.”

Directed by
David O Russell
Written by
David O Russell
Runtime
106 min
ComedyDrama

Synopsis

Raymond Aibelli, a promising young medical student, is compelled to put his crucial internship on hold when his mother, Susan, is recovering from a broken leg. While managing the routine aspects of Susan's recovery, Raymond turns to Toni Peck, a girl from the neighborhood, for distraction. However, as Susan becomes increasingly dependent on her son for both physical care and emotional support, Raymond begins to experience troubling and unbidden desires.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Production Designer
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 18

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Pamela MartinShot by Michael MayersScored by David CarbonaraDesigned by Susan Block

Box Office

1994 · Box office

💰 Box-office hit — grossed 6.8× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$1.4M

Budget$200K
Worldwide gross$1.4M
break-even (2.5×)

Opening weekend: $35K — 3% of its US run. It had legs — it kept earning long after opening weekend.

Peak 3 theaters

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