USA comedy
1983
color 103 min.
Director: Lawrence Kasdan
CLV: Though not currently available, this title may be returning at a later date.
1 disc, catalog # CC1233L
The Big Chill , Lawrence Kasdan's second directorial effort, is
his most personal movie. Like the characters in his film, he attended
the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in the late sixties. After
spending a few years as an advertising copywriter, Kasdan broke into
film, writing scripts for the highly commercial Raiders of the Lost
Ark, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the
Jedi. Then with the critical success of his first directorial
outing, Body Heat, the time seemed right for him to write the
story he had wanted to film for years -- the story of his generation.
The sixties were a time of collective rebellion. Inspired by John
F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, college students embraced the Civil
Rights movement, the anti-war movement, drugs, sexual freedom and
women's liberation. The times were a-changin'. Somewhere along the
line, however, much of the Woodstock generation slipped away from its
utopian quest and joined the establishment. People cut their hair,
traded public sector jobs for the more lucrative private sector, got
married, had families.
What did it all mean? Was all this youthful idealism just fashion?
These were some of the issues Lawrence Kasdan addressed in his
screenplay for The Big Chill .
Despite warm responses to the script Kasdan wrote with his lawyer's
wife, Barbara Benedek, plus a commitment from Body Heat star
William Hurt to play a major role, the story was turned down as
uncommercial. The Ladd Company, producers of Body Heat, passed
on the project as did top executives at Paramount, Universal, MGM,
20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. It was Marcia Nasatir, then
president of Carson Films, who finally persuaded Columbia chairman
Frank Price and president Guy McElwaine to back the project. Chosen to
open the prestigious New York Film Festival in 1983, The Big Chill
went on to earn Oscar nominations for Glenn Close (Best Actress),
for Best Original Screenplay and for Best Picture.
The Big Chill is not the first film to contrast the past
and present lives of a group of school friends. Sidney Lumet's The
Group did it for eight Vassar graduates. In American
Graffiti, a closely-knit coterie of high school graduates ponders
the future during one long night in 1962. John Sayles' The Return
of the Secaucus 7 most closely resembles The Big Chill ,
dealing as it does with aging veterans of the sixties. But no previous
film so cleverly captured the tenor of the times, intertwining
melancholy nostalgia with contemporary concerns ranging from ticking
biological clocks to fears of selling out.
The title refers to the cold world of adult reality, as well as, of
course, to the Chill of mortality. Seven college friends: a doctor;
her husband, a wealthy manufacturer of running shoes; a wounded
drugtaking Vietnam vet; a corporate lawyer; a bored housewife; a
writer for People magazine; and a television actor gather one
weekend in the early eighties for the funeral of the eighth member of
their group, a suicide. During the weekend, the friends, joined by the
dead man's much younger girlfriend, reminisce about their past and
sort through their present lives.
Kasdan and Benedek drew upon memories of their own college friends
to create the characters. The ensemble of Glenn Close, Kevin Kline,
William Hurt, JoBeth Williams, Tom Berenger, Mary Kay Place, Jeff
Goldblum and Meg Tilly work together with the familiarity of old
friends. In order to create this intimacy, Kasdan brought his cast to
South Carolina, the setting of the movie, for a month's rehearsal in a
house outfitted with sixties memorabilia.
In addition to the easy comradery of the excellent, attractive
cast, the funny-poignant episodes and the bright dialogue, The Big
Chill has a terrific soundtrack brimming over with Motown and
other sixties hits. Meg Kasdan, the wife of the director, and also a
performer in the film, put together music by the Rolling Stones, Three
Dog Night, Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson and others
which functions as a kind of Proustian shorthand to set the mood,
comment on the action and spark private memories in the viewer. John
Bailey's photography and Ida Random's production design add to the
pleasures of this companionable film.
One of the first films to crystallize the dilemmas of baby boomers,
The Big Chill 's influence can be seen in everything from the
prevalent use of Greatest Hits soundtracks to the ensemble cast of
television's thirtysomething and L.A. Law. Although
ostensibly about sixties survivors, the film's exploration of the
deeper issues of friendship, loss and changing values ensure The
Big Chill 's continuing appeal to all generations.
-- TORENE SVITIL
Credits
Director: Lawrence Kasdan
Producer: Michael Shamberg
Executive Producers: Marcia Nasatir and Lawrence Kasdan
Screenplay: Lawrence Kasdan and Barbara Benedek
Director of Photography: John Bailey
Editor: Carol Littleton
Production Design: Ida Random
Music Supervision: Meg Kasdan
Transfer
This edition of The Big Chill was transferred from a 35mm
interpositive in its correct aspect ratio of 1.85:1. The soundtrack
was mastered from a 35mm magnetic track.
