Taglines: The toughest act to follow was their dreams.
Georgia movie storyline. Sadie is desperately looking up to her older sister Georgia who is a famous C&W artist. Sadie wants to be a famous artist like her sister, but is always doing everything wrong. Her desperate need to be accepted by her sister is constantly complicated by her drug and alcohol problems. Georgia lives a very ordered life with husband, house and children, and Sadie does everything to get her attention.
Georgia is a 1995 American independent film starring Jennifer Jason Leigh and Mare Winningham. In the film, Leigh played Sadie Flood, a punky barroom singer who has a complicated, jealous but loving relationship with her older sister, Georgia, played by Winningham. Georgia is a successful, talented and well-adjusted folk music singer and a happily married mother of two. Sadie is passionate but self-destructive and untalented. While she seeks fame, she destroys herself through drug abuse. Although the movie focuses largely on Sadie, it was apparently titled Georgia because Sadie defines her own identity so much through her older sister.
John Doe of the punk band X played a supporting role and performed as a member of Sadie’s band. The music in the film consisted of 13 songs which were recorded live and performed by the actors (“a risk that has paid off spectacularly in terms of emotional intensity”, according to Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan). These included covers of songs by Lou Reed, Elvis Costello and, most famously, Van Morrison: in the talked-about centrepiece of the film, Sadie drunkenly performs a raw, gruelling 8½-minute version of Morrison’s “Take Me Back” in a ragged Janis Joplin-style gut howl at an AIDS benefit concert.
The film was a very personal project for Jennifer Jason Leigh: it was written by her mother, Barbara Turner, Leigh and Turner co-produced it themselves, and she chose as her co-star her longtime real-life friend Mare Winningham, whom she had known since the age of 13. It was directed by Ulu Grosbard, a friend of her mother’s.
Georgia (1995)
Directed by: Ulu Grosbard
Starring: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Mare Winningham, Ted Levine, Max Perlich, John Doe, John C. Reilly, Tom Bower, Jason Carter, Smokey Hormel, Rachel Rasco
Screenplay by: Barbara Turner
Production Design by: Lester Cohen
Cinematography by: Jan Kiesser
Film Editing by: Elizabeth Kling
Costume Design by: Carol Oditz
Set Decoration by: Crista Schneider
Art Direction by: Rondi Tucker
MPAA Rating: R for substance abuse, language and a sex scene.
Distributed by: Miramax Films
Release Date: May 19, 1995 (France), December 8, 1995 (United States)
Views: 196
