Taglines: A comedy of the heart and other organs.
The Road to Wellville movie storyline. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg opened a sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan, where he practiced his unusual methods for maintaining health, including colonic irrigation, electrical stimulus and sexual abstinence, vegetarianism and physical exercise. The sanitarium attracts well-to-do patients including William and Eleanor Lightbody, who are suffering from poor health following the death of their child. On their way to Battle Creek they meet Charles Ossining, hoping to make a fortune by exploiting the fad for health food cereals.
Ossining finds a partner in Goodloe Bender. Having enlisted the services of George Kellogg, the doctor’s estranged adopted son, they attempt to produce “Kellogg’s Perfo Flakes.” In the sanitarium, Will Lightbody is separated from his wife, and is soon harboring lustful thoughts toward Nurse Graves and patient Ida Muntz. His wife Eleanor, meanwhile, befriends Virginia Cranehill, who has a modern attitude toward sexual pleasure, influenced by the works of Dr. Lionel Badger. Will eventually succumbs to Ida Muntz’s charms.
Later he learns that Ida has died during treatment. Following the death of a patient in the sinusoidal bath, and the discovery of yet another death, Will suffers a breakdown, flees the sanitarium, gets drunk and eats meat. At a restaurant, he meets Ossining, and agrees to invest $1,000 in his health food business. Will returns drunk to the sanitarium, where he is reprimanded by Dr. Kellogg and is abandoned by a distraught Eleanor.
Ossining’s business is a disaster, with no edible product. He and the partners resort to stealing Kellogg’s cornflakes and repackaging them in their own boxes. Ossining meets his aunt, a potential investor, on visiting day at Kellogg’s sanitarium, and is there exposed as a fraud and arrested.
The Road to Wellville is a 1994 American comedy-drama film adaptation of T. Coraghessan Boyle’s novel of the same name, which tells the story of the doctor and clean-living advocate John Harvey Kellogg and his methods employed at the Battle Creek Sanitarium at the beginning of the 20th century. The film was written and directed by Alan Parker.
The film stars Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Kellogg, Matthew Broderick as William Lightbody, Bridget Fonda as his spouse Eleanor, John Cusack as Charles Ossining, Dana Carvey as the doctor’s adopted son George, and Colm Meaney as Dr. Lionel Badger. It was filmed in New Paltz, New York at the Mohonk Mountain House. Other locations were the North Carolina towns of Winnabow and Wilmington.
The Road to Wellville (1994)
Directed by: Alan Parker
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Bridget Fonda, Matthew Broderick, John Cusack, Dana Carvey, Michael Lerner, Colm Meaney, John Neville, Lara Flynn Boyle, Traci Lind, Monica Parker
Screenplay by: Alan Parker
Production Design by: Brian Morris
Cinematography by: Peter Biziou
Film Editing by: Gerry Hambling
Costume Design by: Penny Rose
Set Decoration by: Claudette Didul
Art Direction by: John Willett
Music by: Rachel Portman
MPAA Rating: R for sex-related humor.
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures
Release Date: October 28, 1994
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