Peggy Sue Got Married is a 1986 comedy-drama film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and starring Kathleen Turner as a woman on the verge of a divorce, who finds herself transported back to the days of her senior year in high school.
The film was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Actress (Turner), Best Cinematography and Best Costume Design. In addition, Turner was nominated for Best Foreign Actress at the Premis Sant Jordi de cinema.
Peggy Sue Got Married ranked number 17 on Entertainment Weekly's list of "50 Best High School Movies."[1]
According to Box Office Mojo, Peggy Sue Got Married opened with $6,942,408 and ended up grossing $41,382,841 in the U.S. It was the first box-office success for Coppola since Apocalypse Now.[2]
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 former high school sweetheart, now husband, Charlie (Nicolas Cage), and is wary of attending the reunion because of everyone questioning her about the absence of Charlie; they have been married 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 finds she’s gone back to the spring of 1960, her senior year of high school, having passed out after donating blood. Peggy at first believes she died at the reunion, but then comes to accept that she has gone back in time. 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 - in one of his earliest roles - 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.) She also makes a get-rich-quick reference of going to England to discover The Beatles.
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 an algebra teacher she knows — for a fact — that she will never need algebra in her life). She also uses this opportunity to repair an estranged relationship with her younger sister, Nancy (Sophia Coppola). 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 tells Peggy Sue that he loves her and he gives her the locket she was wearing at the beginning of the film. Realizing at the moment that she cannot cheat fate, Peggy Sue and Charlie kiss and begin to make love, which would again lead to Peggy Sue getting pregnant and marrying Charlie. In the next moment Peggy Sue is transported back to the present day.
Peggy Sue wakes up in a hospital, with Charlie at her side. However, the idea that she may have dreamed the entire ordeal is called into doubt when she sees that Michael Fitzsimmons has dedicated a book to her and their night together. Charlie, meanwhile, is deeply regretful of his adultery and tells Peggy Sue he wants her back. She then looks at Charlie with new eyes and it seems there's hope for them possibly reconciling their differences.
Production
In his February 15, 2007 appearance on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Nicolas 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. The writers felt that Cage had damaged the movie with his odd voice characterization of Charlie.
The character of Rosalie (Lucinda Jenney), a classmate of Peggy Sue's, appears in a wheelchair at the 1985 reunion, but seemingly does not have a 1960 counterpart (although she can be seen in several shots during Maddy's party when Charlie and his group are performing). In the original script, Rosalie was a gymnast who was injured in an accident that put her in the wheelchair. One of Peggy Sue's goals in 1960 was to help prevent that accident. This was based on a high-school friend of writer Jerry Leichtling, Mark Solomon, who was a promising gymnast that was crippled in a gymnastic accident - because of how the movie was edited, this created a loose end in the final cut that was never explored or explained.
Also Peggy Sue is supposed to have two children, a daughter (played by Helen Hunt) and a son, but the son, who appears in the credits as "Scott Bodell played by Randy Bourne" is never seen (at least not in a speaking role) and never mentioned.
The original choice for Peggy Sue had been Debra Winger. The original director was Penny Marshall. However, the writers felt that Ms. Marshall was turning their partly serious work into "Laverne and Shirley Go to High School", and so they hired director Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola was finishing up a project and by the time he was done, Debra Winger was no longer available, so the producers chose Kathleen Turner - however she was still working on her own project, "The Jewel of the Nile", and so the film was further delayed. All told, Peggy Sue Got Married took almost two years to complete.
Steven Spielberg, a friend of the writers, and their first choice as director, remained interested in the concept of a time-travel/high school movie, and so brought Back to the Future off the shelf, and had it completed before Peggy Sue Got Married could be released, due to its many delays.
Title song
The title song, played over the opening credits, is a Buddy Holly 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 overdubbed for commercial posthumous release, adding background vocals and an electric guitar track that drowned out Holly's own playing.
Adaptation
The film was 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.
Cast
References
External links
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Patton (Writer, 1970) · THX 1138 (Executive Producer, 1971) · American Graffiti (Producer, 1973) · The Great Gatsby (Writer, 1974) · The Black Stallion (Executive Producer, 1979) · Kagemusha (Executive Producer: International Version, 1980) · Hammett (Producer, 1982) · Koyaanisqatsi (Producer, 1982) · The Black Stallion Returns (Executive Producer, 1983) · Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (Producer, 1985) · Tough Guys Don't Dance (Executive Producer, 1987) · Lionheart (1987, Executive Producer) · Powaqqatsi (Executive Producer, 1989) · Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (appearance, 1991) · The Junky's Christmas (Producer, 1993) · Frankenstein (Producer, 1994) · Don Juan DeMarco (Producer, 1995) · Lani Loa (Producer, 1998) · The Florentine (Producer, 1999) · The Virgin Suicides (Producer, 1999) · Sleepy Hollow (Producer, 1999) · Jeepers Creepers (Executive Producer, 2001) · Lost in Translation (2003, Executive Producer) · Jeepers Creepers II (Executive Producer, 2003) · Kinsey (Executive Producer, 2004) · The Good Shepherd (Executive Producer, 2006) · Marie Antoinette (Executive Producer, 2006)
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