Taglines: good times never seemed so good.
Beautiful Girls movie storyline. New York based jazz pianist Willie Conway heads back to his small hometown of Knights Ridge, Massachusetts for a high school reunion. The trip is as much to go to the reunion and see his old friends – none of whom left Knights Ridge after graduation – as it is to get away from his current life, at which he is at a crossroads both personally and professionally. He is just eking out a living with his piano playing gigs, and as such he is thinking about taking a sales job. He’s also not sure if he’s ready to marry his long time girlfriend, lawyer Tracy Stover.
Most of Willie’s Knights Ridge blue collar friends’ best days were in high school, they still having that “trophy” mentality of girlfriends and wives. Only Michael “Mo” Morris is happily married with a family. Paul Kirkwood, whose room is plastered with magazine pictures of models, wants his waitress ex-girlfriend Jan back only because he knows now that he can’t have her.
And Tommy “Birdman” Rowland, who was the big man in high school, is trying to end his affair with his now married high school girlfriend, Darian Smalls. Despite knowing about Darian, Tommy’s current girlfriend, Sharon Cassidy, stands by her man through bad and worse.
A cousin of their bar owning friend Stanley “Stinky” Womack, the beautiful Andera who is visiting from Chicago, may provide the voice of reason for this group of friends in dealing with their women problems. Some reason is what Willie may need in trying to figure out why he is attracted to Marty, his father’s thirteen year old neighbor, especially as Willie learns that Tracy has decided to join him for the reunion.
Beautiful Girls is a 1996 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Ted Demme from a screenplay written by Scott Rosenberg, starring Matt Dillon, Lauren Holly, Timothy Hutton, Rosie O’Donnell, Martha Plimpton, Natalie Portman, Michael Rapaport, Mira Sorvino and Uma Thurman.
Screenwriter Scott Rosenberg was living in Needham, MA, waiting to see if Disney would use his script for Con Air. He said in an interview, “It was the worst winter ever in this small hometown. Snow plows were coming by, and I was just tired of writing these movies with people getting shot and killed. So I said, ‘There is more action going on in my hometown with my friends dealing with the fact that they cannot deal with turning 30 or with commitment’—all that became Beautiful Girls.”
Originally, James L. Brooks was interested in directing the film, according to actress Leslie Mann, who auditioned for a role but was not cast. Ted Demme had the entire cast come to Minneapolis and live together for two to three weeks so that they could bond. Filming took place in the Twin Cities Metro Area communities of Edina, Marine-on-St. Croix and Stillwater, with Demme wanting to make sure that the setting was a character unto itself.
He “wanted to make it look like it’s Anytown USA, primarily East Coast. And I also wanted it to feel like a real working class town”. To this end, Demme drew inspiration from Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter (1978). “The first third of the film is really an amazing buddy movie with those five actors. You could tell they were best friends, but they all had stuff amongst them that was personal to each one of them”.
Beautiful Girls movie trailer.
Beautiful Girls (1996)
Directed by: Ted Demme
Starring: Matt Dillon, Noah Emmerich, Annabeth Gish, Lauren Holly, Timothy Hutton, Rosie O’Donnell, Uma Thurman, Martha Plimpton, Natalie Portman, Michael Rapaport, Mira Sorvino
Screenplay by: Scott Rosenberg
Production Design by: Dan Davis
Cinematography by: Adam Kimmel
Film Editing by: Jeffrey Wolf
Costume Design by: Lucy W. Corrigan
Set Decoration by: Tracey A. Doyle
Art Direction by: Peter Rogness
Music by: David A. Stewart
MPAA Rating: R for strong language and nude pin-ups.
Distributed by: Miramax Films
Release Date: February 9, 1996
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