Terms of Endearment
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Terms of Endearment | |
 Theatrical release poster |
|
| Directed by | James L. Brooks |
|---|---|
| Produced by | James L. Brooks |
| Written by | James L. Brooks Larry McMurtry |
| Starring | Shirley MacLaine Debra Winger Jack Nicholson Danny DeVito Jeff Daniels John Lithgow |
| Music by | Michael Gore |
| Cinematography | Andrzej Bartkowiak |
| Editing by | Richard Marks |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
| Release date(s) | November 23, 1983 |
| Running time | 131 min. |
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $8,000,000 |
| Gross revenue | $108,423,489 |
| Followed by | The Evening Star |
Terms of Endearment is a 1983 romantic comedy-drama film adapted by James L. Brooks from the novel by Larry McMurtry.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
The film is about the thirty-year mother-daughter relationship between two women: stubborn brunette Emma (Debra Winger) and her devoted, possessive, blond, widowed mother Aurora Greenway (Shirley MacLaine).
Before the opening credits, the film portrays Aurora as a worried, new mother who checks on her baby every five minutes in the middle of the night and imagines the worst. In the baby's bedroom, she stares at the crib of her infant daughter and imagines crib death: "Rudyard, she's not breathing." She shakes her baby out of its quiet and peaceful sleep, causing the infant to wail — and Aurora to claim: "That's better."
Later, as a young adult, Emma rebels against Aurora's attentions, and against her advice marries literature student Flap Horton (Jeff Daniels). As the independent-minded, individualistic Emma is getting in the car with her family to move from Houston, Texas to Des Moines, Iowa, away from her managing mother, she tells her:
| “ | Mama, that's the first time I stopped hugging first. I like that. | ” |
As they suffer from unpaid bills (in a wrenching supermarket scene, young Teddy (Huckleberry Fox) hands back a Clark candy bar to the checkout clerk with a simple: "I don't need it"), young mother Emma also discovers that her feckless husband, a college literature professor, is unfaithful and sleeping with one of his graduate students, and she retaliates with her own brief affair with a timid Iowa bank officer Sam Burns (John Lithgow).
Meanwhile, middle-aged Aurora dodges the womanizing flirtations of her next-door neighbor, a boozy, beer-bellied, over-the-hill, former astronaut Garrett Breedlove (Jack Nicholson), even though she has turned 50 and is now free to date. They have a nervous December-December love affair — on their first, much-delayed luncheon date, he boldly tells the proper, well-mannered and stiff Bostonian woman wearing a frilly pink dress:
Breedlove: "You're just going to have to trust me about this, this one thing. You need a lot of drinks."
Aurora: "To break the ice?"
Breedlove: "To kill the bug that you have up your ass."
In an unforgettable scene after lunch, Aurora and Breedlove ride in his silver Corvette as he drunkenly steers with his feet, sitting on the open roof and yelling: "Breedlove at the helm! Just keep pumping that throttle!" Soon after he cries: "Fly me to the moon," he is projected from the car into the water of the Gulf of Mexico. She splashes out in the knee-deep water to apologize and ask "How are you?" Characteristically, he jokes:
| “ | If you wanted to get me on my back, you just had to ask me. | ” |
Although they kiss, she fights back when his hand reaches for her breast inside her blouse, and accuses him of ruining their time together by getting drunk. When they arrive back home and she invites him in, he replies: "I'd rather stick needles in my eyes." Their barbed conversation continues:
| “ | Breedlove: I'll tell ya, Auror-eye, I don't know what it is about you, but you do bring out the devil in me. | ” |
Although she considers Breedlove "arrogant, self-centered, and yes, a somewhat entertaining man," she phones him up and invites him to her bedroom one evening soon after to look at a Renoir painting as a pretext for sex (after fifteen years of celibacy): "I'm inviting you to come over and look at my Renoir." He quickly interprets her meaning: "You're inviting me to bed." And she responds: "Yes, it happens to be in my bedroom." Again, he cajoles and cackles: "Is the Renoir under the covers?" The self-indulgent, horny playboy deliberately stalls and carries on a double-entendre conversation:
Even though she calls herself a "grandmother," they clench and kiss voraciously. They stand on opposite sides of her bed for a final confrontation — and the strong-willed Aurora wins.
The lights go off.
In the heartbreaking, unexpected, tragic, cathartic and touching finale, Emma is hospitalized and dying of cancer. She is slowly reconciled with her mother during her terminal illness. In a stunning hospital scene, Aurora runs completely around the hospital desk while yelling at two hospital nurses to give her ailing daughter a pain-killing shot.
Emma says a final goodbye to her two young sons Teddy and bratty Tommy (Troy Bishop) in her Lincoln General Hospital room just before her death. After she has makeup applied to her face to cover her pale pallor, she speaks to them, but is unable to break through to her distant, over-critical oldest son Tommy.
After a hug from Teddy and a reluctant kiss from Tommy, she asks Teddy as he leaves the room: "I was so scared. And I think it went pretty well, don't you?"
Soon after, she expires with one final glance at Aurora as Flap sleeps unawares. Aurora blames herself: "I'm so stupid, so stupid. Somehow, I thought, somehow I thought when she finally went that — that it would be a relief. Oh, my sweet little darling. Oh dear, there's nothing harder."
After the funeral, Garrett supportively pays special attention to Emma's long-neglected son.
[edit] Production
 |
This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2008) |
Actor Jack Nicholson's character, astronaut Garrett Breedlove, does not appear in the novel. The part was created for Burt Reynolds, but he was already committed to another film, so it was handed to James Garner. Garner quarreled with the director over differing interpretations. The part then went to Harrison Ford who turned it down because he didn't like the age difference between himself and Shirley MacLaine. The role wound up going to Nicholson. Louise Fletcher and Sissy Spacek were the original choices for the mother and daughter roles. Shirley MacLaine, frustrated by the director's sudden changes of conception and Winger's and Nicholson's pranks, quit in mid-production, saying to Brooks "You can take the Oscar and shove it up your keister." She later returned to the film. The film was originally rated R for sexual content and language but re-rated PG on appeal.
[edit] Trivia
The film is one of the few big Hollywood releases of the 1980s featuring a mono soundtrack, although it has been remixed in Dolby Surround for its DVD release.
[edit] Cast
- Shirley MacLaine as Aurora Greenway
- Debra Winger as Emma Greenway Horton
- Jack Nicholson as Garrett Breedlove
- Lisa Hart Caroll as Patsy Clark
- Danny DeVito as Vernon Dahlart
- Jeff Daniels as Flap Horton
- Betty King as Rosie Dunlop
- John Lithgow as Sam Burns
- Megan Morris as Melanie Horton
- F. William Parker as Doctor
- David Wohl as Phil
- A. Brooks (voice) as Rudyard Greenway
- Mary Kay Place (voice) as Doris
[edit] Sequel
In 1996, a sequel called The Evening Star was released, featuring MacLaine and Nicholson reprising their original roles. It was not a success with audiences or critics.
[edit] Reaction
The film was generally well regarded by critics, and maintains a 89% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.[1] Gene Siskel, who gave the film a highly enthusiastic review, predicted accurately upon its release that it would go on to win the Oscar for Best Picture of 1983. However, playwright Rebecca Gilman disparagingly mentioned Terms of Endearment when discussing dramatic shortcuts. "Look at Terms of Endearment. We’re going along and going along, and there’s not really a plot. Then...oh, she gets cancer. You get it all the time when people don’t quite know what to do, and I think in those cases it is a shortcut to tragedy."[2]
The film also was commercially successful. On its opening weekend, it grossed $3.4 million ranking #2 until its second weekend when it grossed $3.1 million ranking #1 at the box office. Three weekends later, it arrived #1 again with $9 million having wide release. For four weekends, it remained #1 at the box office until slipping to #2 on its tenth weekend. On the film's eleventh weekend, it arrived #1 (for the sixth and final time) grossing $3 million. For the last weekends of the film, it later dwindled downward.[3] The film grossed $108,423,489 in the United States.[4]
[edit] Awards
[edit] Wins
The film won five Academy Awards and four Golden Globes:[5]
- Academy Award for Best Picture
- Academy Award for Directing – (James L. Brooks)
- Academy Award for Best Actress – (Shirley MacLaine)
- Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor – (Jack Nicholson)
- Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay – (James L. Brooks)
- Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Drama
- Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama – (Shirley MacLaine)
- Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - (Jack Nicholson)
- Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay - Motion Picture – (James L. Brooks)
- DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures – (James L. Brooks)
- New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Film
- New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress - (Shirley MacLaine)
- New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor - (Jack Nicholson)
[edit] Nominations
- Golden Globe Award for Best Director – (James L. Brooks)
- Academy Award for Best Actress – (Debra Winger)
- BAFTA Award for Best Actress – (Shirley MacLaine)
- Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama – (Debra Winger)
- Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor – (John Lithgow)
- Academy Award for Best Art Direction - (Polly Platt, Harold Michelson, Tom Pedigo, Anthony Mondell)
- Academy Award for Film Editing – (Richard Marks)
- Academy Award for Original Music Score – (Michael Gore)
- Academy Award for Sound – (Donald O. Mitchell, Rick Kline, Kevin O'Connell, James R. Alexander)
[edit] References
- ^ "Terms of Endearment Movie Reviews, Pictures". Rotten Tomatoes. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/terms_of_endearment/. Retrieved on 2008-02-10.
- ^ Gilman, Rebecca. Personal Interview. 3 March 2007.
- ^ "Terms of Endearment (1983) - Weekend Box Office Results". Box Office Mojo. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=weekend&id=termsofendearment.htm. Retrieved on 2008-12-05.
- ^ "Terms of Endearment (1983)". Box Office Mojo. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=termsofendearment.htm.
- ^ "NY Times: Terms of Endearment". NY Times. http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/49104/Terms-of-Endearment/awards. Retrieved on 2009-01-01.
[edit] External links
- Terms of Endearment at the Internet Movie Database
- Terms of Endearment at Allmovie
- Terms of Endearment at Box Office Mojo
| Awards and achievements | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Gandhi |
Academy Award for Best Picture 1983 |
Succeeded by Amadeus |
| Preceded by E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial |
Golden Globe for Best Picture - Drama 1984 |
Succeeded by Amadeus |
| Preceded by A Christmas Story |
Box office number-one films of 1983 - 1984 (US) December 4, 1983 January 2, 1984 - January 22, 1984 February 5, 1984 |
Succeeded by Sudden Impact |
| Preceded by Sudden Impact |
Succeeded by Silkwood |
|
| Preceded by Silkwood |
Succeeded by Unfaithfully Yours |
|
|
|||||||||||
|
|||||
|
|||||
