| The Big Chill | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Lawrence Kasdan |
| Written by |
|
| Produced by | Michael Shamberg |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | John Bailey |
| Edited by | Carol Littleton |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 105 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $8 million[1] |
| Box office | $56.4 million[2] |
The Big Chill is a 1983 Americancomedy-drama film directed byLawrence Kasdan, starring anensemble cast consisting ofTom Berenger,Glenn Close,Jeff Goldblum,William Hurt,Kevin Kline,Mary Kay Place,Meg Tilly, andJoBeth Williams. The plot focuses on a group ofbaby boomers who attended theUniversity of Michigan, reuniting after 12 years when their friend Alex dies by suicide. It was filmed inBeaufort, South Carolina.[3]
The film was a box office hit and earned mixed to positive reviews, and was the first leading roles for many of the cast who went on to success in other films. The soundtrack featuressoul,R&B, andpop-rock music from the 1960s and 1970s, including tracks byCreedence Clearwater Revival,Aretha Franklin,Marvin Gaye,The Temptations,the Rolling Stones, andThree Dog Night.
The Big Chill was adapted for television as the short-lived seriesHometown. Later, it influenced the TV seriesThirtysomething andA Million Little Things.[4]
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After Alex Marshall's suicide, his fellowUniversity of Michigan alumni and close friends attend his funeral at the Tidalholm plantation inBeaufort, South Carolina. During the visit, everyone stays with Sarah and Harold Cooper.
His other friends include Sam Weber, a television actor; Meg Jones, once apublic defender and now a real-estate attorney; Michael Gold, a journalist forPeople magazine; former talk-radio psychologist Nick Carlton, now an impotentVietnam vet with a drug addiction; and Karen Bowen, an unfulfilled writer unhappily married to Richard, a conservative advertising executive. Also present is Chloe, Alex's girlfriend of four months who is much younger than Alex and had been living with him in Sarah and Harold's basement.
While out jogging early the next morning, Harold, violatingSEC rules, tells Nick that a large corporation is about to buy his small company, which will make him rich and triple the value of the stock. He told Alex, making it possible for him to buy property in the area.
Harold suggests Nick use the tip to get into a new line of work. During their conversation, it is revealed that Sarah and Alex had a brief affair five years earlier, which all the friends knew about. Nick comforts Harold by reminding him she did not marry Alex. Harold, Sarah, and Alex moved past it, but Sarah tells Karen her friendship with Alex was harmed by the affair.
Richard goes home the next day, but Karen stays. Harold, Nick, Michael, and Chloe drive out to see the old house that Chloe and Alex were renovating. Meanwhile, Meg tells Sarah she is fed up with failed relationships and intends to have a child on her own. Believing she is ovulating, she plans to ask Sam to be the father of her child. (She approaches Nick first, only to discover she's the last to know about his impotency.)
Michael, who continually flirts with Chloe, needs investors for a New York nightclub. At dinner, Sarah becomes tearful and wonders if their fervent '60s idealism was "just fashion". Later that night, Meg approaches Sam, but he declines, feeling fatherhood is too great a responsibility as he already has an estranged child. Nick shares his drugs, with varying effects.
The next day, Harold, a running shoe entrepreneur, gives everyone a pair. Nick goes to the old house and sits on the porch for hours, missing theMichigan football game. Michael offers to sire Meg's child, alluding to their one-time college encounter.
During a halftime game of touch football, a local police officer escorts a sullen Nick back to the house after he runs a red light and becomes belligerent. Recognizing Sam, the officer offers to drop charges if he will hop into Nick'sPorsche 911 the way his J. T. Lancer character does on TV. He tries but fails, injuring himself slightly. Nick angers Harold by accusing him of being friendly with cops. Harold chastises Nick, reminding him that this is his home and Nick's recklessness could put his reputation in danger.
Karen tells a surprised Sam that she is in love with him and wants to leave Richard. He tells her his first marriage failed because of boredom and he does not want her to make the same mistake. Feeling led on, Karen angrily stomps off.
Meg tells Sarah that Michael is the wrong choice. Sarah observes the warm phone conversation between her young daughter and Meg. Later, the group, confused over Alex's death, regrets losing touch with him. To everyone but Sam, it seems that Alex withdrew deliberately. Nick is particularly cynical and bitter about life, love, and friendship.
Karen follows Sam outside to mollify him, and they have sex. Sarah pulls Harold aside, embracing him, telling him she has a favor to ask: "It's about Meg..." Meg goes to him and they make love, tenderly. Chloe asks Nick to spend the night in the room she shared with Alex.
The next morning, Harold announces that Nick and Chloe will stay on to renovate the old house. Karen packs to return home to Richard. Michael ditches his nightclub plans. Nick shows everyone an old column that Michael wrote about Alex declining a prestigious fellowship. As the friends prepare to depart, Michael jokingly tells the Coopers they have taken a secret vote: They are never leaving.
According to a Newsday article, Lawrence Kasdan and Barbara Benedek began writingThe Big Chill in September 1980, five months after the release ofReturn of the Secaucus 7[5] They wrote the screenplay as a semi-autobiographical story inspired by their optimistic political activism while attending college in the 1960s and then their disillusionment at society in the 1970s. While attending the University of Michigan, Kasdan lived at theEugene V. Debs Cooperative House in the late 1960s, and his experiences at the co-op informed the direction of the screenplay. Many of the characters were based on his housemates, and the ways in which they cook communal meals and share their house echo the culture of Ann Arbor cooperatives.[citation needed] Kasdan and Benedek worked on the screenplay as Kasdan was directingBody Heat. While the other characters in the film weren't written with any specific actors in mind, Kasdan wrote the role of "Nick" forBody Heat's star, William Hurt, who gave Kasdan a commitment to doThe Big Chill.[5]
Kasdan first pitched the story toThe Ladd Company but was rejected. Richard Fischoff unsuccessfully tried to convinceParamount Pictures to film the screenplay after reading it in the summer of 1982. When this failed he turned the screenplay toMarcia Nasatir, who had recently departed her executive positions atUnited Artists andOrion Pictures to cofoundCarson Productions withJohnny Carson. Fischoff convinced Nasatir to finance the film as the studio's first production, and took over as supervising producer after she left the studio to work at20th Century Fox.[6]
Production on the film began on November 8, 1982, inAtlanta. Filming primarily took place at the Edgar Fripp House (called "Tidalholm") in downtown Beaufort, South Carolina, where the film was set.[6]
Kasdan's wife Meg was placed in charge of compiling period-appropriate songs for the soundtrack. She heard "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" for the first time in many years while picking her son up at camp, listening to aMarvin Gaye cassette, and was struck by how the song with no dialogue would make a perfect start to the film.[7]
It was decided before filming that "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" byThe Temptations would be used for the cleanup after dinner scene, so the cast were given headphones so that they could hear the song during filming, making it easier for them to keep the beat.[7]
JoBeth Williams recalled filming a scene flashing back to the characters in 1968. "It was just wonderful to shoot", she said. "They rented this big house in Atlanta and installed bead curtains, rock posters, incense, 1968Life magazines—it was a real time warp." Williams says that, in the scene, her character was living with William Hurt's character and ignoring Tom Berenger's. The Alex character, played byKevin Costner "looking like a scruffyJames Dean", was also in the scene. "That turned out to be the problem... Nobody could live up to that role after the build-up through the film, and audiences said they didn't want to see anybody try. So the last 10 minutes of the film were just cut out."[8] Filming concluded on February 7, 1983.[6]
Consequently, Costner only appears as the body of Alex in the coffin during the opening title sequence.[9] According to Kasdan, it was his decision to axe the scenes which were to appear at the end of the film as a flashback. "It didn't work," he said in an interview with the TorontoStar. "I felt so bad about it."[10] Costner was given a role in Kasdan's next film, the 1985 westernSilverado, as Jake, the younger brother of Emmett, played byScott Glenn, alongside fellowBig Chill cast member Kevin Kline, who played Paden.
OnRotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 69% based on reviews from 42 critics, with an average rating of 6.2/10. The site's critical consensus reads "The Big Chill captures a generation's growing ennui with a terrific cast, a handful of perceptive insights, and one of the decade's best film soundtracks."[11] OnMetacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 61 out of 100 based on reviews from 12 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[12]
At the time, Richard Corliss ofTime describedThe Big Chill as a "funny and ferociously smart movie", stating:
These Americans are in their 30s today, but back then they were the Now Generation. Right Now: give me peace, give me justice, gimme good lovin'. For them, in the voluptuous bloom of youth, the '60s was a banner you could carry aloft or wrap yourself inside. A verdant anarchy of politics, sex, drugs, and style carpeted the landscape. And each impulse was scored to the rollick of the new music: folk, rock, pop, R&B. The armies of the night marched to Washington, but they boogied to Liverpool and Motown. Now, in 1983, Harold & Sarah & Sam & Karen & Michael & Meg & Nick—classmates all from the University of Michigan at the end of our last interesting decade—have come to the funeral of a friend who has slashed his wrists. Alex was a charismatic prodigy of science and friendship and progressive hell raising who opted out of academe to try social work, then manual labor, then suicide. He is presented as a victim of terminal decompression from the orbital flight of his college years: a worst-case scenario his friends must ponder, probing themselves for symptoms of the disease.[13]
Vincent Canby ofThe New York Times wrote that the film was a "very accomplished, serious comedy" and an "unusually good choice to open this year's [New York Film Festival] in that it represents the best of mainstream American film making."[14]
Roger Ebert of theChicago Sun-Times gave the film two and a half stars out of four, observing "The Big Chill is a splendid technical exercise. It has all the right moves. It knows all the right words. Its characters have all the right clothes, expressions, fears, lusts, and ambitions. But there's no payoff and it doesn't lead anywhere. I thought at first that was a weakness of the movie. There also is the possibility that it's the movie's message."[15]
The film was parodied byT. C. Boyle in his short storyThe Little Chill. The story begins "Hal had known Rob and Irene, Jill, Harvey, Tottle, and Pesky since elementary school, and they were all 40 going on 60."[16]
| Award | Category | Nominee(s) | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Academy Awards | Best Picture | Michael Shamberg | Nominated | [17] |
| Best Supporting Actress | Glenn Close | Nominated | ||
| Best Screenplay – Written Directly for the Screen | Lawrence Kasdan andBarbara Benedek | Nominated | ||
| British Academy Film Awards | Best Original Screenplay | Nominated | [18] | |
| Directors Guild of America Awards | Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures | Lawrence Kasdan | Nominated | [19] |
| Golden Globe Awards | Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy | Nominated | [20] | |
| Best Screenplay – Motion Picture | Lawrence Kasdan and Barbara Benedek | Nominated | ||
| Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards | Best Screenplay | Runner-up | [21] | |
| National Board of Review Awards | Top Ten Films | 8th Place | [22] | |
| Toronto International Film Festival | People's Choice Award | Lawrence Kasdan | Won | [23] |
| Writers Guild of America Awards | Best Comedy – Written Directly for the Screen | Lawrence Kasdan and Barbara Benedek | Won | [24] |
In 2004, "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" finished #94 inAFI's 100 Years...100 Songs poll.
Ten of the songs from the film were released on the soundtrack album; four additional songs not from the film were added to the original CD release as "additional classics from the era". The rest of the film's songs (aside from theRolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want"), as well as the "additional classics" from the original soundtrack CD were released in 1984 on a second soundtrack album, titledMore Songs from the Big Chill. Both albums were re-mastered in 1998; the track list of the first album mirrored the original LP, without the "additional classics". In 2004,Hip-O Records released a Deluxe edition, containing 16 of the 18 songs from the film (again excluding "You Can't Always Get What You Want" and newly omitting "Quicksilver Girl" by theSteve Miller Band) and three additional film instrumentals. A second "music of a generation" disc of 19 additional tracks was included as well. Some of those tracks had appeared on theMore Songs release.
| The Big Chill | |
|---|---|
| Soundtrack album from the filmThe Big Chill by Various Artists | |
| Released | September 1983 |
| Recorded | 1963–1971 |
| Genre | R&B/Soul |
| Length | 43:38 |
| Label | Motown Records |
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |  link |
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Artist | Length |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" (extended version) | Norman Whitfield,Barrett Strong | Marvin Gaye (1968) | 5:03 |
| 2. | "My Girl" | Smokey Robinson,Ronald White | The Temptations (1965) | 2:55 |
| 3. | "Good Lovin'" | Rudy Clark,Arthur Resnick | The Young Rascals (1966) | 2:28 |
| 4. | "The Tracks of My Tears" | Robinson,Warren Moore,Marvin Tarplin | The Miracles (1965) | 2:53 |
| 5. | "Joy to the World" | Hoyt Axton | Three Dog Night (1970) | 3:24 |
| 6. | "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" | Whitfield,Edward Holland, Jr. | The Temptations (1966) | 2:31 |
| 7. | "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" | Gerry Goffin,Carole King,Jerry Wexler | Aretha Franklin (1968) | 2:41 |
| 8. | "I Second That Emotion" | Robinson,Al Cleveland | Smokey Robinson and The Miracles (1967) | 2:46 |
| 9. | "A Whiter Shade of Pale" | Keith Reid,Gary Brooker,Matthew Fisher | Procol Harum (1967) | 4:03 |
| 10. | "Tell Him" | Bert Berns | The Exciters (1963) | 2:29 |
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Artist | Length |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11. | "It's the Same Old Song" | E. Holland,Lamont Dozier,Brian Holland | The Four Tops (1965) | 2:45 |
| 12. | "Dancing in the Street" | Marvin Gaye,William "Mickey" Stevenson | Martha and The Vandellas (1964) | 2:38 |
| 13. | "What's Going On" | Gaye, Cleveland,Renaldo "Obie" Benson | Marvin Gaye (1971) | 3:52 |
| 14. | "Too Many Fish in the Sea" | Whitfield, E. Holland | The Marvelettes (1964) | 2:26 |
| Chart (1983/84) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Australia (Kent Music Report)[25]: 283 | 5 |
| United States (Billboard 200) | 17 |
| Chart (1988) | Peak position |
| Australian Albums (ARIA)[26] | 34 |
| Organization | Level | Date |
|---|---|---|
| RIAA – USA | Gold | December 12, 1983 |
| RIAA – USA | Platinum | March 29, 1984 |
| RIAA – USA | Double Platinum | September 27, 1985 |
| RIAA – USA | 4× Platinum | July 20, 1998 |
| RIAA – USA | 6× Platinum | October 15, 1998 |
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Artist | Length |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Bad Moon Rising" | John Fogerty | Creedence Clearwater Revival | 2:19 |
| 2. | "Wouldn't It Be Nice" | Brian Wilson,Tony Asher | The Beach Boys | 2:21 |
| 3. | "It's the Same Old Song" | Edward Holland, Jr,Lamont Dozier,Brian Holland | The Four Tops* | 2:44 |
| 4. | "When a Man Loves a Woman" | Andrew Wright, Calvin Lewis | Percy Sledge | 2:55 |
| 5. | "Dancing in the Street" | Marvin Gaye,William "Mickey" Stevenson,Ivy Jo Hunter | Martha Reeves & the Vandellas* | 2:37 |
| 6. | "What's Going On" | Marvin Gaye,Al Cleveland,Renaldo Benson | Marvin Gaye* | 3:51 |
| 7. | "In the Midnight Hour" | Wilson Pickett,Steve Cropper | The Rascals | 3:59 |
| 8. | "Quicksilver Girl" | Steve Miller | The Steve Miller Band | 2:42 |
| 9. | "Gimme Some Lovin'" | Steve Winwood,Muff Winwood,Spencer Davis | The Spencer Davis Group | 2:55 |
| 10. | "Too Many Fish in the Sea" | Norman Whitfield, Edward Holland, Jr. | The Marvelettes* | 2:26 |
| 11. | "The Weight" | Robbie Robertson | The Band | 4:33 |
*Selections not in the motion pictureThe Big Chill.
| Chart (1987) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Australia (Kent Music Report)[25]: 284 | 25 |
| Films directed |
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| Written only |
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| Television |
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| Related topics | |
