Grace of My Heart is a 1996 film written and directed by Allison Anders, set in the pop music world of the late 1950's, starting off in New York's Brill Building era, weaving through the California Sound of the early 60's and culminating with a Martha's Vineyard-like comeback in the early 1970's.
The plot, which follows the personal life and career trajectory of its protagonist, Denise Waverly (played by Illeana Douglas), may strongly parallel those of singer-songwriter Carole King with some touches of Carly Simon on Martha's Vineyard and Judy Collins Colors of the Day. The soundtrack features a variety of songs by such artists as Burt Bacharach, Elvis Costello, Joni Mitchell and Jill Sobule, which replicate the musical style that emerged from the Brill Building, New York's legendary music factory during the heyday of girl groups and "pre-fab" acts like The Monkees.
Synopsis
Edna Buxton (Douglas) is a steel heiress from a prominent Chestnut Hill family in the affluent Main Line section of Philadelphia who desires to be a singer and enters a local talent contest. Edna wants a nice form-fitting simple black dress to wear, but her mother, (Christina Pickles) forces her to take an elegant but ill-fitting designer masterpiece.
Edna and her family go to the competition, all ready to sing "You'll Never Walk Alone", as Edna's philosophy is that the personal songs are nice, but they never win competitions. Backstage, she meets a blues singer named Doris Shelley who is musically belting out The Blues Ain't Nothin' (But a Woman Cryin' for her Man), a story of real life in the real world, a theme to which she would often return in her ensuing career as a songwriter.
Backstage, the girls duet on "Hey There" the Rosemary Clooney song, and after Edna swaps her dress for the simple black frock worn by Doris (which is straining to encase Doris' full-figured curves), Doris convinces Edna to go with her heart. After ditching "You'll Never Walk Alone" for "Hey There" at the last minute, she wins the contest and is sent to New York as a prize to record a demo. In a deleted scene, she records her contest-winning triumph "Hey There" in a more polished version than the somewhat raw contest performance, but the demo goes nowhere in the music world.
The `prize' is all a sham anyway, but Edna uses some of her own money to record a demo of her first song, In Another World. After a year of trying to peddle her musical wares by herself, she encounters an audition record producer (Richard Schiff) who has a producer friend Joel Milner (John Turturro) who might be interested in her. Milner hears and likes her demo of the heartfelt blues number In Another World but says nobody will buy a girl singer nowadays, especially a girl singer-songwriter.
Joel Milner becomes her agent, gives her the professional name "Denise Waverly" and invents a blue-collar-working girl persona. Milner reworks "In Another World" for an all male doo-wop group, the Stylettes (played by Portrait) that he manages and the song hits it big on the radio. Milner discourages Waverly from singing her own material though, telling her that in the modern music scene, people are singers or songwriters, not both. Milner signs Denise to his Charny Music Group and encourages her to be a songwriter instead, a feat with which she enjoys great success.
After partnering with Milner and his doo-wop act the Stylettes and getting her first hit, the newly rechristened Denise Waverly moves into a cramped office in the Brill Building, New York's famous songwriting haven. Suffering writer's block, she worries that she won't be able to come up with anything else with which to follow up "In Another World", but Joel says not to worry, that pain and suffering are everywhere, all you have to do is keep your eyes and ears open.
A few weeks later to prove his point, Joel takes Denise to The Blue Room, a mostly-black soul club in Harlem where they run into Howard Caszatt, a fellow tunesmith who writes controversial songs and is unable to get a record contract as a result. Howard is a boor and begins by trying to compliment Denise on In Another World, but the compliments are so left-handed that Denise, annoyed, asks if the thickness of the vinyl is the only thing Howard liked about her record. She slams the drink Howard has just gotten her into his stomach, and she walks out, seething. Howard thinks Denise wants him and is trying to play an odd hard-to-get.
On her way out, she runs across Doris, still wearing the dress she swapped for backstage at the competition. Doris says she `tried to return the dress' but Denise reaffirms that the dress looks a lot better on her anyway. Denise finds out that Doris and her two girlfriends perform a soul and blues act at the club, and Doris is having man problems. She pours her heart out to Denise in a hallway backstage, and Denise says she needs to forget about men for awhile and concentrate on her work. `My manager Joel I told you about is here tonight, so just go sing your song and pour all your feelings about him into the performance.'
Doris dries her tears and as a result of Denise's talk, the girls' lay out a polished knockout performance of the same Blues Ain't Nothin' that Doris was singing backstage at the competition. Joel and Denise are spellbound, and seeing this, Denise asks Joel if he could please represent them. Joel refuses, saying `Now is not the time for girl singers', they go round and round until Denise drops the matter for the time being.
To prove her point once and for all, understanding that seeing or in this case hearing is believing, Denise invites the girl group up to Milner's office a few days later, to audition Denise's new song, Born to Love That Boy. The girls knock Joel out with their performance, the same as they did at the club, but Joel, in an annoyed tone, wonders aloud why Denise saves her best songs for girls, when in reality, even though she wrote it, the concept actually came from the girls' own lives and she was just merely following Joel's advice of `keeping her eyes and ears open and seeing the pain and frustration everywhere'.
Joel accuses Denise of holding out on him with such a great song, but she angrily reminds him that it was his own advice that resulted in the song in the first place. He argues back once again that he can't sell girl singers at this time. Denise, aggravated, hounds him to manage the group anyway and Milner takes a chance. Re-christened as The Luminaries, led by Doris Shelley (Jennifer Leigh Warren), the group enjoys unprecedented success with hit after hit being played on pop radio. As a result, Denise is credited by a friend of Howard's, a local DJ named John Murray (Bruce Davison) with `sparking the craze for girl groups at a time when female voices are scarcely heard on the airwaves'.
Flush with success, Denise becomes professionally and romantically linked with Howard and he proposes that the two of them write a song together about the urban condition of the working class Negro in New York City. Howard wants an existentialist viewpoint, but Denise maintains that reality is always the best sales agent. The result, in an homage to similar stark reality songs of the period such as He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss) by the Crystals is Unwanted Number, a song about an unmarried pregnant 12 year old girl, the niece of one of the Luminaries.
In a deleted scene depicting dates at the zoo, art cinema and other bourgeois entertainment, and after a subsequent long passionate night at her apartment, Denise tells Howard that she is an heiress, and that the whole blue collar persona was just a put-on invented by Milner. Howard rudely comments that she doesn't look all that much like an heiress, a distorted stereotype of which he proffers up in the form of Grace Kelly. Howard gets over his insecurities though and Denise has a new idea for a wedding song for the Luminaries. Howard however, shoots her down as being too cheesy for the gritty image they've been developing for themselves and after finding out that she is pregnant, the two marry and have a daughter seven months later.
At the same time, Denise mistakes a newly hired European songwriter named Cheryl Steed (Patsy Kensit) for yet another in a long line of Joel's secretaries, and befriends her especially after she and Howard flirt mercilessly with each other in Joel's office right in front of Denise.
Not long after, Joel asks Cheryl and Matthew, her husband, to write a song for The Luminaries, as the last few songs Denise and Howard wrote were all banned from the radio. They agree, and still being insecure about the future of girl singers, Joel asks Denise to the recording session looking for validation. Pleased, but annoyed that the song wasn't theirs, she congratulates Joel and storms off. Howard and Denise wake up to the radio a few weeks later to hear that Cheryl and Matthew's song I Do, I Do has taken the Luminaries to number 4 on the charts. Aggravated, Howard concedes to Denise that her instincts were right and they should have written their wedding song.
To keep the fires down between the foursome, who are now quarreling between themselves on a regular basis, a-la Carly Simon & James Taylor and Cynthia Weil & Barry Mann, Joel assigns the girls to write a song together for lesbian ingenue singer Kelly Porter, (Bridget Fonda), in an homage to Lesley Gore, however after their first meeting, Denise is overflowing and has to rush home to breastfeed Luma. Upon arrival, she finds Howard and another woman in their bed with Luma laying nearby in her crib. Disgusted, she tells Howard and the woman to stay, picks up Luma and her paraphernalia and takes a cab down to the studio where she tells Cheryl all. Cheryl comforts Denise in much the same way as Denise comforted Doris earlier and in a moment of deja-vu, she tells Denise that she is better off without him.
Following her own advice to Doris earlier, Denise throws herself into her work, achieving higher and higher accolades by herself as a result, proving to herself in an homage to the Equal Rights Amendment as well as to everyone else that she doesn't need a man in her life to be successful. Drawing from her own pain this time over the breakup with Howard, Denise pens Love Doesn't Ever Fail Us, (It Was Us Who Let Love Down) which is recorded by the Click Brothers in an homage to the Everly Brothers and becomes yet another chart hit.
In a deleted scene, despite her raging success as a songwriter, her mother is still nagging her to come home to the glitz and glamour of Chestnut Hill and resume the boring but privileged life of a steel heiress. Denise, bound and determined as ever, sends her mother packing back to Philadelphia alone in a storm of emotion. This section is said to mirror the early career of Joan Rivers coming to Manhattan's earthy, bohemian East Village to launch her career from privileged Larchmont.
Shortly afterward, Denise has a doomed affair with Howard's already-married DJ friend John Murray, (Bruce Davison) a relationship which in a deleted scene is revealed to be completely non-sexual. She just wants company, somebody to talk to and laugh with, although without the deleted scene, the tone implies Denise is a rabbit laying down with whoever strikes her fancy.
After the breakup with Howard, Denise finds out she is pregnant again with Howard's second baby, and during the subsequent recording session for the Kelly Porter song, Cheryl urges Denise to go to an obstetrician in Pennsylvania who will perform the illegal abortion and `give her a shot of penicillin and a night's rest instead of bleeding to death alone in a Harlem elevator shaft'.
In a deleted scene, Denise's growing friendship with fellow songstress Cheryl Steed has deepened once her husband, songwriter Matthew Lewis (Chris Isaak) also leaves due to his own infidelities. Cheryl, pregnant, decides to keep her baby however, and he is born later that year.
In another deleted scene, Denise and Howard reconcile enough to remain friends, and Luma sees her daddy and his new wife every other weekend. Denise writes "Heartbreak Kid" about the experience, and it charts as well for the Click Brothers.
In yet another deleted scene, once again due to his infidelity, Caszatt's new wife throws him out and he and Matthew, Cheryl's ex, find each other uptown, both still trying to write controversial songs and get a record contract, but are instead reduced to living in squalor among the very people about which they espouse to write music, finally getting the biggest dose of their existentialism they want so much. Subsequently, the boys move in together, become alcoholics together and die fighting one another, falling out of a window of their 5th floor tenement.
In still another deleted scene, Denise tells Cheryl that she's an heiress, and that the whole blue collar persona was just a put-on invented by Milner. In a touching moment, we find out that unlike the crass response she got earlier from her then-future husband, so-called European sophisticate Cheryl Steed is actually none other than working-class Joyce Blevins from Moonachie, New Jersey. The girls laugh as they discover they've been pretending to live each others' lives all these years and both feel miserable as a result. Denise gives Cheryl enough money to get started on her own, and Cheryl finds enough success to mentor other female artists behind her, becoming one of the first female agents to be spawned from the Brill Building.
A further deleted scene finds the boys' landlady, cleaning up after the accident and finding all the unreleased tapes and scores they have produced. She turns them all in to an acquaintance in the Brill Building, and the boys are signed to a contract posthumously, with almost all their songs becoming hits in the ensuing years, the proceeds of which in a twist of irony all go to a trust fund for the kids, administered by Cheryl and Denise.
Seeing that she is eager to begin singing, Milner introduces Denise to Jay Phillips, a popular singer/producer (Matt Dillon). Denise hates so called surf-and-turf music, but goaded by the replay in her head of her mother's comment about not having sung anything of her own yet, she agrees to a one-single contract for "God Give Me Strength".
During an extended scene which fades gradually from Jay watching Denise record the demo vocal with piano to seeing Jay teach Denise the frustrating yet creative process in which a record goes through from scratch vocal and piano to final polished production, Jay comments on the song in a voice over during the instrumental break that the song has to sound big to get the right effect, trailing off and mumbling to himself about strings and horns and the whole bit.
The resulting record comes out and bombs, Denise is seen commenting that she `put too much of herself in the song' in an homage to some extremely personal work by Joni Mitchell, Denise finds out her married DJ pal John Murray is moving to Chicago, and she pens the plaintive lament "Truth Is, You Lied" about her feelings, which John plays on his last radio show in New York as a tribute to Denise and their time together.
At the same time, the British Invasion of acts that write and perform their own material is in full swing, and the Brill Building era of songwriters tailoring a piece to a specific singer is coming to a close. Milner tells Denise she shouldn't be so sad because together she forced him to take chances he would have never had the courage to tackle alone.
Disappointment notwithstanding, Waverly resettles in California with Jay during the hippie movement and waning days of the Golden 60's and struggles through yet another doomed romantic relationship.
After hanging up her agent's hat and returning to songwriting, Cheryl uses the remainder of Matthew's money to move to L.A., finds Denise there and together they write songs for a musical TV show called Where the Action Is.
The relationship between Denise and Jay is doomed due to the childlike and reclusive nature of Dillon's character and Denise's need to spread her own wings. He accuses Denise of stealing tapes he was working on. By this time the rest of Jay's group, the Riptides, have distanced themselves from their genius, leaving Jay to finish work on the project himself. As a result, Jay spends an enormous amount of money securing the recording studio, already isolated by a rickety staircase overlooking the ocean. Denise, walking down the staircase, and runs across the tapes she was accused of stealing earlier, sitting on a stool. She confronts Jay about it; he confesses that he threw the reels over the studio balcony in a fit of aggravation, forgot that he had done so, and discovered the reels all bent up and warped laying on the rocks below the following day.
Jay's detachment from reality then becomes fully apparent to Denise when it culminates in Jay taking the children to the museum and coming home without them. The children are found by security hiding in an old abandoned ice cream truck after closing time, forcing the police to bring them home.
Fearing that Jay's increasing detachment from reality is becoming dangerous for both himself and his family, Denise calls in his friend Dr. Jones (David Clennon) to try and talk some sense into him. Denise listens at the intercom and hears only the first half of the conversation which depresses her to no end. Having no idea that Jay actually sees Denise as having saved him from oblivion and treasures their relationship over his own life, she remains despondent.
On the eve of his big comeback for his long-awaited magnum-opus, said to mirror Smile, Jay, seeing Denise's lingering depression sends her off to party with Doris from The Luminaries who has also resettled in L.A. and sings backup on many sessions of the period.
While out having a good time, Jay suffers from writer's block. Unable to finish the record, he goes out to the deck of the recording studio and sits on a narrow precipice overlooking the ocean. Directionless and disoriented, Jay wanders off into the surf; his body is found the next morning. Denise is heartbroken.
In a deleted scene taking place simultaneously to the funeral on the top of the cliff at the property, a group of hippie fans in tie dye congregate below on a nearby beach and perform a simple song in Jay's memory entitled "A Wave Dies".
In a final blow, Jay's magnum opus is rejected by the record company and apart from a couple of singles it deems commercially viable, said to mirror the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations," it returns the master tapes to Denise's care. Devastated, Denise escapes to an artists' commune. The director there, Guru Dave (Peter Fonda) tells Denise that she has to forgive herself as well as Jay in order to free her from the guilt she feels over Jay's death, over which she had no control. Joel finds Denise, her daughter, her babysitter Annie, the niece of one of the Luminaries about which the song "Unwanted Number" was written so long ago, and her son all in the commune and convinces the four of them to return to the `real world' where opportunity awaits.
Denise rents a small house with its own studio on what is presumed to be the artists' enclave on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. While on the Vineyard, Denise writes everything she can think of and with help from beyond in the form of Jay's spirit, records, mixes and masters everything herself, unheard of for a woman in 1971 and then chooses the best to put on her own album.
Joel Milner has found himself on the Vineyard as well, desperate to get away from the New York commercial and counterculture craziness of the late 60's and begins the 70's anew himself, assisting Denise anyway he can. The result is her own Magnum Opus entitled Grace of My Heart with a cover vaguely reminiscent of Judy Collins Colors of the Day and said to mirror Carole King's Tapestry. "Boat on the Sea", a song she wrote after Jay's funeral, becomes a smash hit off the album as it resonates strongly with listeners in these periods of heavy casualties in Vietnam. As a result, the album goes double platinum, and in the closing scene we see her mother with whom she'd been previously estranged being shown throwing her full support behind Denise as a singer.
In a deleted epilogue, Denise pays homage to Jay, forcing her record company to release the shelved project some 40 years after it was shelved in lieu of her own next work. It charts at #1 and Denise is now beloved the world over for singing, songwriting and her memories of Jay.
Over the credits, Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello are shown singing and playing their own fully orchestrated version of their co-penned work "God Give Me Strength", which receives far greater hit status in the real world than it did in the movie. As a result, over the ensuing two years, Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello expanded their collaboration to include an entire album Painted from Memory, which was itself covered to great success by jazz guitarist Bill Frisell.
Released in 1999 on Decca Records, The Sweetest Punch consisted of jazz arrangements of the Painted From Memory songs done by Frisell and his studio group, featured vocals by Costello on two songs, and jazz singer Cassandra Wilson on two songs, one of which is a duet employing both.
Real life influence
Goffin-King connection
In real life, Carole King and her first husband Gerry Goffin were based in the Brill Building and penned such hits as "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" (recorded by The Shirelles), "The Loco-Motion" (introduced by Little Eva, the Goffin-King's babysitter), "One Fine Day" (a hit for The Chiffons) and many others. In Grace of My Heart, "One Fine Day" is paid tribute in "Born to Love That Boy," the first song Waverly composes for The Luminaries (per the lyric, "I don't care what the other girls say/One fine day he'll marry me"). "Born to Love That Boy," written by Goffin and Larry Klein, also recalls the thematically similar "He's A Rebel," a Gene Pitney penned tune made famous by The Crystals. Louise Goffin, daughter of Goffin and King, shares songwriting credit with her father on "Between Two Worlds" (performed on the soundtrack by Shawn Colvin). The elder Goffin's stamp can also be found on "In Another World," the tune that establishes Waverly as a hit songwriter; the band Los Lobos also contributes to the track. Finally, the album that shares the film's name, Grace of My Heart, is analogous to King's 1971 breakthrough album Tapestry. The Grace of My Heart album is depicted as Waverly's second attempt to sing her own songs in a commercially viable way, and she succeeds on a platinum scale (sales over one million). In real life, Tapestry was King's second serious attempt to sing her own songs in a commercially viable way, and she succeeded on an even greater scale than is shown in the film, as Tapestry sat at U.S. #1 for 15 weeks and stayed on the charts for over six years, going platinum 10 times over.
Stand-ins for Phil Spector, Lesley Gore, Ellie Greenwich, etc.
Elsewhere, real life permeates Grace of My Heart in several forms, such as Turturro's character who invites comparisons to both Phil Spector and Don Kirshner, while The Luminaries' Doris Shelley suggests both Shirley Owen and Doris Coley of The Shirelles. Also, former teen duo, David and Andrew Williams (nephews of crooner Andy Williams), are featured as Everly Brothers soundalikes. Similarly, Bridget Fonda has an extended cameo as Kelly Porter, a dewey faced ingenue not unlike Lesley Gore, well known for bubblegum angst like "It's My Party" and "You Don't Own Me." The lush ballad "My Secret Love" hints at Porter's lesbianism in a nod to Gore's own professed sexuality. Gore co-wrote the song, which is dubbed by Miss Lily Banquette of retro-lounge band Combustible Edison. Further, the radio moniker of Davison's character, John Murray, evokes memories of Murray the K. Just as in real life Murray the K was an early, ardent supporter of The Beatles, in the film John Murray explains to Denise Waverly how The Fab Four are about to revolutionize the music industry.
Besides King, Goffin and Spector, the Brill Building was home base for songwriting duo Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry, as well as Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. In Grace of My Heart, these artists, and Greenwich in particular, are referenced musically via "I Do", The Luminaries' stylistic match for "Chapel of Love," originally written by Spector, Greenwich and Barry for The Ronettes but best remembered for the version produced by Leiber and Stoller for The Dixie Cups. The "doo-whaddy-whaddy" refrain of "I Do" also invites comparisons to Greenwich's "Doo-Wah-Diddy", which was recorded by The Exciters and Manfred Mann. Like King, however, Greenwich has no actual contributions to the movie soundtrack. '"I Do" is instead credited to Carole Bayer Sager and Dave Stewart (formerly of Eurythmics).
Brian Wilson Connection
Matt Dillon portrays a singer/producer later in the movie, with whom Waverly falls in love. His character, Jay, is the lead singer of a surf music band who is highly respected for his creative genius. However, he becomes obsessed with his latest musical project (replete with theremin) and becomes a self-destructive recluse. In all these aspects, his character begs comparison with real-life Beach Boys' driving-force Brian Wilson.
However, while in the movie his character becomes romantically involved with Waverly and eventually commits suicide by drowning, in real life Wilson and King were not romantically involved, and Wilson is still alive. In fact, the finale more closely parallels the classic closing scenes to the remake of A Star is Born: suicide at sea, survivor talked out of her despondency by long-time professional friend, and a musical redemption (art triumphs over human frailty).[1]
Music
Though actress Illeana Douglas apparently sings throughout the movie, her singing is always dubbed by singer Kristen Vigard, notable for being the very first girl to portray Annie in the 1976 workshop production before going to Broadway the following year.
In the beginning of the film, her character Edna/Denise performs a version of "Hey There," which was originally heard in the musical The Pajama Game, and was later popularized by singers such as Rosemary Clooney. Another of Denise's big musical moments occurs when she goes into the studio to lay down vocal tracks for "God Give Me Strength," an expensively produced single that fails to generate much excitement on the charts, thus alluding to Spector's recording of "River Deep, Mountain High" for Tina Turner (written by Spector, Greenwich and Barry). Singer Elvis Costello, who co-wrote "God Give Me Strength" (with Burt Bacharach) for the film, also wrote "Unwanted Number," which, in the movie, is crafted by Denise and Cazsatt as a tune for The Luminaries. The song causes a scandal because it tells a sympathetic story of an unmarried pregnant preteenager — bold for the early '60s, though comparable to similarly groundbreaking real-life songs of the era such as He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss) about Little Eva, the Goffin-King's babysitter who was being regularly beaten by her boyfriend at the time.
Soundtrack CD
Exclusions
Although Grace of My Heart is chock full of musical sequences, the selections were pared down for the soundtrack CD. For instance, the fictional Luminaries, dubbed by girl group For Real, perform a half dozen tunes onscreen but are limited to three selections on the CD: Born to Love That Boy, I Do, and Unwanted Number. Likewise, the Williams Brothers, nephews of Andy Williams perform two songs in the film, Heartbreak Kid and Love Doesn't Ever Fail Us, but only the latter song appears on the soundtrack disc. Both Kristen Vigard's renditions of Hey There in the form of the contest version and the more polished demo are excluded from the CD, and her In Another World is jettisoned in favor of the fictional Stylettes' rendition (via Portrait). Vigard's performance of God Give Me Strength is also not on the soundtrack; instead the Elvis Costello/Burt Bacharach performance appears.
Inclusions
Also on the CD, Jill Sobule sings the countrified waltz "Truth Is You Lied," complete with easy listening-style background chorus reminiscent of The Anita Kerr Singers.
Joni Mitchell
"Man From Mars" was written by Joni Mitchell, and the song appears on the CD with Kristen Vigard singing the vocal from the film (dubbing Illeana Douglas's performance). A version of the song which featured Joni Mitchell's vocal, with the same music, was on the initial pressing of roughly 40,000 soundtrack CD copies. This CD version was recalled and the soundtrack was re-released one week later with Kristen Vigard's vocal, as heard in the movie.[2] Mitchell later re-recorded the song with different-styled music for her 1998 album Taming the Tiger. The Mitchell version of "Man from Mars" from Grace of My Heart is very hard to come by.
The soundtrack was produced by Larry Klein, who had been Joni Mitchell's husband and producer for years but had divorced her prior to the making of this soundtrack. He contributed to the writing of several songs on the soundtrack and appears briefly several times in the movie as a recording engineer.
Additional credits
Martin Scorsese is listed in the credits as Grace of My Heart's executive producer, and the film was co-edited by Thelma Schoonmaker, who won Academy Awards for her work on Scorsese's Raging Bull, The Aviator, and The Departed. Francois Sequin is the production designer, and the costumes are by Susan Bertram. The cast is rounded out by Lynne Adams, Peter Fonda, Chris Isaak, Lucinda Jenney, Patsy Kensit, Christina Pickles and Richard Schiff.
Place in cinema history
The movie was released in the fall of 1996, just ahead of Oscar winning actor Tom Hanks' directorial debut That Thing You Do!, which likewise covered the early to mid 1960s pop music scene and featured original, retro-styled songs on the soundtrack.
Grace of My Heart was Anders's fourth feature film, and followed her Border Radio (1987), Gas Food Lodging (1992), and Mi Vida Loca (1993).
References
External links
