Taglines: Everybody loved him… Everybody disappeared.
Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise) is a successful sports agent. The biggest clients, the respect, a beautiful fiancée, he has it all. Until one night he questions his purpose. His place in the world, and finally comes to terms with what’s wrong with his career and life. Recording all his thoughts in a mission statement Jerry feels he has a new lease on life.
Unfortunately his opinions aren’t met with enthusiasm from his superiors and after dishonorably being stripped of his high earning clients and elite status within the agency Jerry steps out into the sports business armed with only one volatile client (Cuba Gooding Jr.) and the only person with belief in his abilities (Renée Zellweger) with the impossible task of rebuilding what he once had. Along the way he faces the harsh truths which he’d ignored in the past and a host of hardships that he’d never faced before.
Jerry Maguire is a 1996 American romantic comedy-drama sports film written, produced and directed by Cameron Crowe, and stars Tom Cruise, Cuba Gooding Jr. and Renée Zellweger. Produced in part by long time Simpsons producer James L. Brooks, it was inspired by sports agent Leigh Steinberg, who acted as Technical Consultant on the crew. It was released in North American theaters on December 13, 1996, produced by Gracie Films and distributed by TriStar Pictures.
The film received critical acclaim, with critics praising its acting and writing. The film was a financial success, bringing in more than $273 million worldwide, against its $50 million budget. It was the ninth top-grossing film of 1996.
The film was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Tom Cruise, with Cuba Gooding Jr. winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. The film was also nominated for three Golden Globes, with Tom Cruise winning for Best Actor, and three Screen Actors Guild Awards, with Cuba Gooding Jr. winning Best Supporting Actor.
The film debuted at number one. It earned $17,084,296 its opening weekend, and eventually grossed $153,952,592 in North American box office and approximately $119.6 million overseas for a $273,552,592 worldwide total, on a budget of $50 million. It is the ninth top-grossing film of 1996 and the fourth highest-grossing romantic drama film of all time.
Jerry Maguire spawned several popular quotations, including “Show me the Money!” (shouted repeatedly in a phone exchange between Rod Tidwell and Jerry Maguire), “You complete me,” “Help me help you,” “The key to this business is personal relationships” and “You had me at ‘hello'” (said by Renée Zellweger’s Dorothy Boyd after a lengthy romantic plea by Jerry Maguire), and “Kwan,” a word used by Cuba Gooding Jr.’s Tidwell meaning love, respect, community, and money (also spelled “quan” and “quawn”) to illustrate the difference between himself and other football players: “Other football players may have the coin, but they won’t have the ‘Kwan’.”
These lines are largely attributed to Cameron Crowe, director and screenwriter of the film. Zellweger said of filming the famous “hello” line, “Cameron had me say it a few different ways. It’s so funny, because when I read it, I didn’t get it — I thought it was a typo somehow. I kept looking at it. It was the one thing in the script that I was looking at going, ‘Is that right? Can that be right? How is that right?’ I thought, ‘Is there a better way to say that? Am I not getting it? I just don’t know how to do it.'”
Brandt stated in 2014 that “I definitely noticed an uptick of young people becoming interested in the agent business after Jerry Maguire”. “Some of what happened to the agent industry would have happened without ‘Jerry,’ but definitely not as fast as it did,” noted Peter Schaffer, who has been a sports agent since 1988.
Jerry Maguire (1996)
Directed by: Cameron Crowe
Starring: Tom Cruise, Cuba Gooding Jr., Renée Zellweger, Kelly Preston, Jerry O’Connell, Jay Mohr, Bonnie Hunt, Regina King, Jonathan Lipnicki, Ingrid Beer
Screenplay by: Cameron Crowe
Production Design by: Stephen J. Lineweaver
Cinematography by: Janusz Kaminski
Film Editing by: Joe Hutshing, David Moritz
Costume Design by: Betsy Heimann
Set Decoration by: Clay A. Griffith
Art Direction by: Clayton Hartley, Virginia L. Randolph
Music by: Nancy Wilson
MPAA Rating: R for language and sexuality.
Distributed by: TriStar Pictures
Release Date: December 13, 1996
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