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Johnny Suede is a young man with an attitude and an immense pompadour, who wants to be a rock n’ roll star like his idol Ricky Nelson. He has all the stylistic accoutrements, except a pair of black suede shoes. One night, after leaving a nightclub, like manna from heaven, a pair of black suede shoes falls at his feet. Soon afterward, the recently completed Johnny meets Darlette, a sultry bohemian with whom he beds down for the night.
In spite of Darlette’s abusive gun-toting boyfriend, Johnny begins to see Darlette every day. But when Johnny is forced to pawn his guitar for rent money, Darlette mysteriously leaves him. Johnny’s pal Deke fronts him the money to get his guitar out of hock, and the two form a band. Depressed about Darlette’s desertion, he wanders aimlessly, and he meets Yvonne, a woman much wiser than Johnny who teaches him that there are things in life much more important than a pair of black suede shoes.
Johnny Suede is a 1991 American film the directorial debut of Tom DiCillo, and stars Brad Pitt, Catherine Keener, Calvin Levels, Alison Moir, Nick Cave, Tina Louise, Wilfredo Giovanni Clark, Peter McRobbie, Wayne Maugans and Calvin Levels.
Film Review for Johnny Suede
Tom DiCillo, who photographed Jim Jarmusch’s classic “Stranger Than Paradise,” now makes his own debut as a writer and a director with “Johnny Suede,” a comedy so lazily hip and so laid back that it often seems to be asleep. When it stirs, which is now and then, it exhibits a sweetly embarrassed charm, as if apologizing for causing a commotion, no matter how unobtrusive.
The movie, which opens today at the Angelika Film Center, is set in a large city that has no visible center and where time seems to have stopped in 1961. Johnny Suede (Brad Pitt) longs to be a teen-age idol like Ricky Nelson. He has a pair of black suede shoes, an impressive pompadour, a guitar and some pals who will play backup for him. Yet he doesn’t have much talent or drive.
His adventures, all small ones, involve Darlette (Alison Moir), who is startlingly beautiful and writes terrible poetry; Darlette’s equally beautiful mother (Tina Louise), who has eyes for Johnny; Deke (Calvin Levels), his best friend, and most important of all, Yvonne (Catherine Keener), a schoolteacher Johnny falls in love with (to his disgust), even though she doesn’t use eye liner.
Mr. DiCillo never quite finds the right tone for his comedy, whose images come and go on the screen like daydreams. There are a few genuinely funny moments, as when Deke tries to persuade Johnny to consider the pros and cons of living with Yvonne. Although “Johnny Suede” is as ephemeral as smoke, somehow it is very good to its cast members, all of whom are attractively off the wall.
Mr. Pitt, who played the unreliable hitchhiker in “Thelma and Louise,” seems to be a genuine movie personality with some of the characteristics of a young Jack Nicholson. Ms. Keener would also seem to be a very promising new screen presence, and Mr. Levels takes a small number of not hilarious lines and makes them both comic and, for a brief moment, important.
Something is going on in “Johnny Suede,” though what is anybody’s guess.
Johnny Suede (1992)
Directed by: Tom DiCillo
Starring: Brad Pitt, Catherine Keener, Calvin Levels, Alison Moir, Nick Cave, Tina Louise, Wilfredo Giovanni Clark, Peter McRobbie, Wayne Maugans, Calvin Levels
Screenplay by: Tom DiCillo
Production Design by: Patricia Woodbridge
Cinematography by: Joe DeSalvo
Film Editing by: Geraldine Peroni
Costume Design by: Jessica Haston
Set Decoration by: Stephanie Carroll
Art Direction by: Laura Brock
Music by: Jim Farmer
MPAA Rating: R for language and elements of sexuality.
Distributed by: Miramax Films, Paramount Pictures
Release Date: August 14, 1992
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