Taglines: Dreams do come true… Sometimes.
Straight Talk movie storyline. Shirlee Kenyon is a down-home country girl who, through a series of mistakes, is hired as a radio talk show host. Her show is wildly successful but her success is based on the lie that she is actually a clinical psychologist. She has to learn that giving advice and following it can be harder than she’d thought.
Shirlee starts off in the film as a dance instructor living in Arkansas. After she is fired for giving advice to her clients rather than teaching them dance, she attempts to convince her common-law husband (Michael Madsen) to move to Chicago with her. After he declines and then belittles her, she decides to move there without him.
Once she arrives, she is standing on a bridge enjoying the view of the city when she accidentally drops a twenty-dollar bill. As she climbs over the rail in an attempt to retrieve the money, Jack (James Woods), an investigative journalist, sees her from the office window of the newspaper for which he works, and assumes that she is trying to commit suicide. He runs out to rescue her, but as he attempts to grab her and “save” her, Shirlee loses her balance, and almost falls into the water below; she loses the money she had been trying to recover.
After they recover, and she informs Jack that she’d, in fact, not been attempting suicide, but was merely trying to recover a twenty dollar bill, Jack tries to give her money, saying she must need it more than he if she is willing to risk her life to retrieve it. She refuses and the two part. A bit later the same morning, Shirlee stops into a cafe for breakfast, and strikes up a conversation with another customer, Janice (Teri Hatcher), who is annoyed at having been stood up by her boyfriend the previous evening.
Shirlee tells Janice that he is taking her for granted, and advises her to end the relationship, only to realize that Janice’s boyfriend is, in fact, Jack; Jack shows up, and Janice tells him she no longer wants to see him, adding that Shirlee has helped her to realize how much Jack takes her for granted. Jack thanks Shirlee for “wrecking his entire day”, as he exits the cafe.
After a series of failed job interviews, a manager at a local radio station (Paula Newsome) reluctantly hires her as a switchboard operator, despite her lack of experience, and during her first day, she inadvertently walks into a studio, and is mistaken for the station’s new call-in therapist, and is put her on the air, and begins hesitantly talking with the show’s callers. Upon completion of the show, the program director arrives, and fires Shirlee, along with the producer and engineer, who’d made the mistake in putting her on the air.
Straight Talk is an 1992 American romantic comedy film distributed by Hollywood Pictures, directed by Barnet Kellman and starring Dolly Parton and James Woods. Parton did not receive solo star-billing in any other theatrically released films until the 2012 film Joyful Noise, alongside Queen Latifah. Her previous starring films had been 9 to 5 (1980), The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), Rhinestone (1984), and Steel Magnolias (1989).
The vast majority of this film was shot in historic downtown Lemont, Illinois. The “Flank Center” building was used to house the dance sequence scenes in the beginning of the film. Both Dolly Parton and James Woods ate at local establishments during filming off times. Most filming occurred in the early hours of the morning with the usage of high intensity floodlights to depict daytime. This was done to reduce interference with the general public who crowded the streets throughout the weeks of filming. The bar in the raining scene, Tom’s Place, and the Barber Shop are still open with some small movie memorabilia.
Straight Talk (1992)
Directed by: Barnet Kellman
Starring: Dolly Parton, James Woods, Griffin Dunne, Michael Madsen, Deirdre O’Connell, John Sayles, Teri Hatcher, Spalding Gray, Amy Morton, Paula Newsome
Screenplay by: Craig Bolotin
Production Design by: Jeffrey Townsend
Cinematography by: Peter Sova
Film Editing by: Michael Tronick
Costume Design by: Jodie Lynn Tillen
Set Decoration by: Daniel Loren May
Art Direction by: Michael Perry
Music by: Brad Fiedel
MPAA Rating: PG for mild language and sex related dialogue, and momentary sensuality.
Distributed by: Buena Vista Pictures
Release Date: April 3, 1992
Views: 217
