Peggy Sue Got Married
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| Peggy Sue Got Married | |
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| Directed by | Francis Ford Coppola |
| Produced by | Paul R. Gurian |
| Written by | Jerry Leichtling Arlene Sarner |
| Starring | Kathleen Turner Nicolas Cage |
| Cinematography | Jordan Cronenweth |
| Distributed by | TriStar Pictures |
| Release date(s) | October 10, 1986 |
| Running time | 104 min |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Peggy Sue Got Married is a 1986 comedy / drama film which tells the story of a woman, on the verge of divorce, who finds herself transplanted back to the days of her senior year in high school. The movie was written by Jerry Leichtling and Arlene Sarner, and it was directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
It was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Kathleen Turner), Best Cinematography and Best Costume Design. Also, Turner was nominated for Best Foreign Actress in Premis Sant Jordi de cinema.
This movie ranked number 17 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the 50 Best High School Movies.
Tagline: Knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?
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[edit] Cast
- Kathleen Turner – Peggy Sue
- Nicolas Cage – Charlie Bodell
- Barry Miller – Richard Norvik
- Catherine Hicks – Carol Heath
- Joan Allen – Maddy Nagle
- Kevin J. O'Connor – Michael Fitzsimmons
- Jim Carrey – Walter Getz
- Lisa Jane Persky – Delores Dodge
- Barbara Harris – Evelyn Kelcher
- Don Murray – Jack Kelcher
- Sofia Coppola – Nancy Kelcher
- Helen Hunt – Beth Bodell
- Glenn Withrow – Terry
[edit] Filming locations
[edit] Synopsis
Peggy Sue Bodell (Kathleen Turner) sets off for her 25-year high school reunion, albeit hesitantly, with her daughter (Helen Hunt) coming along as company. Peggy Sue has just separated from her high-school-sweetheart-turned-husband, Charlie (Nicolas Cage), and is wary of attending the reunion because of everyone questioning her about the absence of Charlie, who has been forever at her side since she became pregnant at the end of high school.
Peggy Sue arrives at the reunion and is happy to reconnect with her old friends (played by Joan Allen and Catherine Hicks), and all start to comment on old high school memories and how times (and classmates) have changed. Charlie unexpectedly arrives at the reunion, causing an awkward scene with Peggy Sue ignoring him. The awkwardness is ended when the event MC announces the reunion’s "king and queen." The king is Richard Norvik (Barry Miller), a former class geek turned multi-millionaire computer whiz. Peggy Sue is named the queen; but on arriving at the stage, she faints.
When Peggy Sue awakens, she’s back in her senior year of high school, circa 1960, having passed out after donating blood. She’s in shock to see her old family members so young and even gets to talk to relatives who have since died. She attends high school classes and meets with her old (now-young) friends as well as their now-young boyfriends (Jim Carrey is one such boyfriend). Plenty of humorous moments follow as she answers simple questions with adult answers. (For example, when her mother asks her if she and Charlie had a fight, she replies yes — but about "house payments," talking about their future divorce.)
Though Peggy Sue is confused by this new/old world, she’s fascinated to get to live high school all over again and say things she always wanted to say (such as telling off rude girls and informing a calculus teacher she knows — for a fact — that she will never need advanced math in her life). One thing Peggy Sue is not happy about is that she’s still dating Charlie. She breaks up with him and has a one-night stand with Michael Fitzsimmons (Kevin J. O'Connor) — the guy in school she always wished she’d slept with.
But Peggy Sue soon sees that this Charlie (at 18 years) is not the same as the adulterous Charlie she left in 1985 — and Peggy Sue starts to fall in love with him all over again, though the relationship still has its problems. Meanwhile, she contacts the young (ever geeky) Richard and asks for his advice on time travel. Her inquiries into time travel lead her to her grandfather, who agrees to try a strange séance ritual with buddies to send her forward in time. She is kidnapped in the middle of it by Charlie and he takes her to a greenhouse of sorts, while everybody at the lodge thinks the ritual worked... Charlie proposes to her and, though refusing at first, she changes her mind. In the next moment Peggy Sue is transported back to the present day.
Peggy Sue wakes up on the auditorium floor, having apparently hallucinated the entire long trip. She looks at Charlie with new eyes and it seems there's hope for them possibly reconciling their differences.
[edit] Title song
The title song, played over the opening credits, is a Buddy Holly song, his sequel to "Peggy Sue". It is unusual because it is the rarely-heard original version recorded by Holly in his New York City apartment, accompanied only by his own guitar, essentially a demo or practice tape. The version normally heard was "enhanced" for commercial posthumous release, by adding background vocals and an electric guitar track that drowned out Holly's own playing.
The movie was also adapted into a full-length musical theater production which opened in London's West End theater district in 2001. Despite receiving solid reviews [1], the production closed before the end of the year.
[edit] Trivia
On his February 15, 2007 appearance on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Cage stated that he based Charlie's unusual voice on Pokey from The Gumby Show. He also stated that Coppola (his uncle) and the studio were unhappy with his voice and almost fired him. But he was able to convince Coppola who in turn convinced the studio not to fire him.
[edit] External link
| The Godfather series | The Godfather (1972) | The Godfather Part II (1974) | The Godfather Part III (1990) |
|---|---|
| 1960s | Battle Beyond the Sun (with Aleksandr Kozyr and M. Karzhukov) | The Bellboy and the Playgirls (with Fritz Umgelter and Jack Hill) | Tonight for Sure | Dementia 13 | You're a Big Boy Now | Finian's Rainbow | The Rain People |
| 1970s | The Conversation | Apocalypse Now |
| 1980s | One from the Heart | The Outsiders | Rumble Fish | The Cotton Club | Peggy Sue Got Married | Gardens of Stone | Tucker: The Man and His Dream | New York Stories (with Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese) |
| 1990s | Bram Stoker's Dracula | Jack | The Rainmaker |
| 2000s | Youth Without Youth |
| Productions | The Junky's Christmas (1993) | Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994) | Don Juan DeMarco (1995) | Lani Loa (1998) | The Florentine (1999) | The Virgin Suicides (1999) |
