Renaissance Man is a 1994 comedy film, directed by Penny Marshall, starring Danny DeVito, Gregory Hines, James Remar, and Ed Begley, Jr. It also features Mark Wahlberg in one of his earliest roles. In Australia, the film is known under the title of Army Intelligence. The film was also remarketed several months after its initial release as a comedy, this time as a drama under the title of By the Book. The title is an allusion to a "Man of Knowledge" . Bill Rago is a divorced advertising executive down on his luck. When he loses his job in Detroit, the unemployment agency finds him a temporary... job; teaching in the U.S. Army training base, Fort McClane. Initially unenthusiastic about this assignment, Rago finds that he has only six weeks to teach a group of "squeakers", who are especially low achievers, the basics of comprehension and use of English language. Most of the soldiers are only semi-literate and equally unenthusiastic. Unable to connect with his pupils and desperate to spark their interest, Rago quotes from his favorite play, Hamlet by William Shakespeare, which they have never heard of.
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| Release date: | 1994 |
| Directed by: | Penny Marshall |
| Rated: |  |
| Runtime: | 128 Minutes |
| Producer: | Elliot Abbott, Sara Colleton, Robert Greenhut, Andrew George Vajna, Penny Marshall |
| Editor: | George Bowers |
| Music by: | Hans Zimmer |
| Cinematography: | Adam Greenberg |
| Screenplay by: | Jim Burnstein |
| Estimated budget: | $40,000,000 |
| Genre: | Comedy |