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Mask
Mask theatrical poster
Directed by	Peter Bogdanovich
Produced by	Martin Starger
Written by	Anna Hamilton Phelan
Starring	Cher Eric Stoltz Sam Elliott Laura Dern
Music by	Dennis Ricotta
Cinematography	Lászlo Kovács
Editing by	Barbara Ford
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date(s)	March 8, 1985
Running time	120 min/127 min. (director's cut)
Country	United States
Language	English
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

This article is about the 1985 Peter Bogdanovich film. For the 1994 comedy starring Jim Carrey, see The Mask.

Mask is a 1985 drama film directed by Peter Bogdanovich, and starring Cher and Eric Stoltz. Sam Elliott and Laura Dern are featured in supporting roles. Cher received the 1985 Cannes Film Festival award for Best Actress.

The film concerns the life and early death of Roy L. "Rocky" Dennis, a boy who suffered from craniodiaphyseal dysplasia, an extremely rare disorder known commonly as lionitis due to the disfiguring cranial enlargements that it causes.

Taglines:

• They told 16-year-old Rocky Dennis he could never be like everyone else. So he was determined to be better.
• Sometimes the most unlikely people become heroes.

The son of freewheeling biker, Rocky Dennis (Stoltz) is accepted without question by his mother's boyfriends and motorcycle friends, but treated with pity, condescension, and disgust by much of the outside world. Rocky's mother Rusty Dennis (Cher) is determined to give the boy as normal a life as possible, despite her own wild ways as a member of a biker gang. She fights to have him included in a mainstream junior high school, when the principal would rather classify him with mental retardation so that he can be sent to a special education school.

Rocky goes on to thrive at school, gradually overcoming discrimination and eventually accepts a job as a counselor's aide at a summer camp for the junior blind. Now that he has his own life in order, Rocky sets about to wean his chronically depressed mother from her drug habit. He also falls in love with Diana Adams (Dern), a blind girl who cannot see his deformed countenance and is entranced by the boy's kindness and compassion. At the end of the film, Rocky dies quietly in his sleep at the age of 16. In the words of a grieving Rusty, "Now you can go anywhere you want, baby."

The commercial success of Mask was a milestone in the career of Bogdanovich, who had directed a string of critical and financial failures following his three successful films of the early 1970s. It also helped launch the careers of Stoltz and Dern, and firmly established Cher as a serious actress.

• In an episode of the 1990s hit drama The X-Files entitled "The Post-Modern Prometheus" (first aired November 30, 1997), the Great Mutato is a similarly deformed character who loves Cher, and, in one scene, is shown watching the reunion between Rocky and his mother.
• In 2004, Swedish pop musician Jens Lekman published Rocky Dennis in Heaven, an EP containing four songs about Rocky and his portrayal in the film.
• A parody of a scene from the film was done in an episode of Family Guy, "Petarded".
• In a lyric to the song Dear Kate by Dynamite Hack it says "Like Eric Stoltz in Mask".
• The line "If you wanna look like Rocky Dennis better drink your milk" appears in a rap song by the Bloodhound Gang on the track "Legend In My Spare Time" off their 1995 "Use Your Fingers" album.

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Mask (film)

• Mask at the Internet Movie Database
• Mask at All Movie Guide
• Mask at Rotten Tomatoes
• Eric Stoltz interview

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