Taglines: It’s not what he knows. It’s what he understands.
Little Man Tate movie storyline. Dede Tate (Jodie Foster) is a single mother, a working-class woman of average intelligence raising her seven-year-old son, Fred (Adam Hann-Byrd), who shows every indication of being a genius. Fred’s reading and mathematics abilities are remarkable, and he plays the piano “at competition level,” but his intellect isolates him from his public school classmates.
Fred’s intellect comes to the attention of Jane Grierson (Diane Wiest), a former music prodigy and now a psychologist running a school for gifted children. She seeks permission from Dede to admit Fred to the school in order to develop his intellectual gifts in a way that a public school cannot. Dede is reluctant, preferring that Fred have a normal upbringing but when no one comes to Fred’s seventh birthday party, Dede consents.
Fred fits in better at the institute, and he meets one of his heroes who is one of Jane’s prized pupils, the brilliant but slightly bizarre “Mathemagician” Damon Wells (P.J. Ochlan), a whiz at math who wears a black cape wherever he goes. After unintentionally upstaging Damon at a competition for gifted youth, Fred is enrolled at a university where he studies quantum physics while his mother, aunt and cousins travel to Florida for the summer.
Damon is an unruly child at first, but warms up to Fred when out horseback riding, and is Fred’s first insight to a world outside academia when Damon tells him, “it is not how much IQ a man has; it is how he uses it”. Jane attempts to become more nurturing, but is unable to relate to Fred as anything other than a case study. An adult student named Eddie (Harry Connick Jr.) accidentally hits Fred with a globe when goofing around.
To make it up to Fred, Eddie takes Fred out for a ride on his moped and shows him events like shooting pool, which improves Fred’s personality spending time with someone who is not a genius. However, when Fred by mistake comes to Eddie’s room when he is in bed with a coed, Fred runs out. Eddie chases after him, then says he cannot be a babysitter to Fred; while he enjoys Fred’s company, he says that Fred needs to find friends closer to his age. The return to isolation takes a toll on Fred, as he suffers from nightmares where he is viewed as a freak.
Little Man Tate is a 1991 drama film directed by and starring Jodie Foster. The film marked her directorial debut. Other starring are Dianne Wiest, Adam Hann-Byrd, Michael Shulman, Nathan Lee, Celia Weston, Danitra Vance, David Hyde Pierce and Debi Mazar.
It tells the story of a seven-year-old child prodigy, Fred Tate (Adam Hann-Byrd), who struggles to self-actualize in a social and psychological construct that largely fails to accommodate his intelligence. Foster plays Fred’s mother Dede Tate, who attempts to give her son a “normal” childhood while feeding his intellectual curiosity.
Little Man Tate (1991)
Directed by: Jodie Foster
Starring: Jodie Foster, Dianne Wiest, Adam Hann-Byrd, Michael Shulman, Nathan Lee, Celia Weston, Danitra Vance, David Hyde Pierce, Debi Mazar
Screenplay by: Scott Frank
Production Design by: Jon Hutman
Cinematography by: Mike Southon
Film Editing by: Lynzee Klingman
Costume Design by: Susan Lyall
Set Decoration by: Samara Schaffer
Art Direction by: Adam Lustig
Music by: Mark Isham
Distributed by: Orion Pictures
Release Date: October 18, 1991
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