Johnny Suede [1991] Brad Pitt

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Johnny Suede (1991)


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104567/

Johnny Suede is the 1991 film directorial debut of writer-director Tom DiCillo. It starred Brad Pitt and Catherine Keener with early appearances from Samuel L. Jackson and Nick Cave.

Brad Pitt ... Johnny Suede
Richard Boes ... Man in Tuxedo
Cheryl Costa ... Woman in Alley
Michael Luciano ... Mr. Clepp
Calvin Levels ... Deke
Nick Cave ... Freak Storm

Around 1985, while taking acting classes in New York City, DiCillo was impressed with the local punk movement and the resurgence of rockabilly led by acts like Elvis Costello, The Stray Cats and The Clash. Spinning personal experiences into monologues, he created a character whose vulnerability is obscured by a superficial fifties era cool, exaggerated to the point of foolishness. DiCillo first wove what he had into a one hour one-man show, before setting the first draft of the screenplay to paper. Eight months later he had completed the fourth draft. Having received positive feedback from his friend Jim Jarmusch, DiCillo approached German television, ZDF, who gave him eighty thousand dollars. Additional funding came from the National Endowment for the Arts for twenty-five thousand dollars, as well as a Panavision package and help with the script from the Sundance Lab. Around 1988 to 1989, while at the Cannes Film Festival, DiCillo stumbled into a deal with a South African producer wherein he sold worldwide rights to his film for three hundred thousand dollars; an arrangement he would later call, "A shaky thing but still I felt it was worth the risk so I decided to go ahead with it."

Pre-production, early casting and the search for Johnny quickly followed. By August 1989, having not found what they were looking for in New York, DiCillo and his casting director, Marcia Shulman, went to Los Angeles, where Brad Pitt was the second to last guy seen. DiCillo recalls, "He didnΓΓé¼Γäót have much on his resume. In fact he only had two things; heΓΓé¼Γäód done a small Canadian TV series and heΓΓé¼Γäód just finished shooting what heΓΓé¼Γäód listed as his only real film credit ΓΓé¼ΓÇ¥ something called Thelma and Louise that no one had heard about because it hadnΓΓé¼Γäót even been edited yet." Convinced Pitt was Johnny Suede, DiCillo forced the casting on his South African producer, who was shortly thereafter replaced by Ruth Waldburger when the South African's option expired. The film was ultimately shot in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in 30 days, from November to December 1990.

Original music for the film was performed by rockabilly guitar legend Link Wray.

The film was entered into competition at the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland, where it was seen by Mark Tusk from Miramax who, convinced Pitt would become a film star, urged Harvey Weinstein to make the unprecedented step of purchasing the rights to a film he had not yet seen. Johnny Suede won Best Picture at the festival, and the distribution deal was sealed.

The movie reportedly grossed $90,091 in the US box office, against a production budget of $500,000., though this was in one cinema - its widest release.

Johnny Suede is another one of those modest flicks that, despite having garnered rave reviews at 1991 's London Film Festival and the presence of the then Levi's boy Brad Pitt - Mr. Young Buns hot off the back of Thelma (quite literally) & Louise - somehow skipped by unnoticed at the box office. Director Tom Di Cillo, drawing unashamed inspiration from Jim Jarmusch, which is no surprise since he was the cinematographer on Stranger Than Paradise, dishes up the tale of retro-chic dumbster Johnny (Pitt), a rebel in dire need of a cause, whose kicks are gained from digging Ricky Nelson on his Dansette, spanking his plank and sculpting his huge escarpment of a quiff. Inhabiting a sort of post-Eraserhead world, Johnny possesses everything in life except a rock 'n' roll career, a girlfriend and a decent pair of shoes to replace the deeply crap pair of size nines he scuffs around in. And so when a pair of svelte suede loafers land, quite literally, on his head during the process of reporting a piece of sexual harassment to the police (these are, after all, the 1990s), the key is provided to knocking his life into some semblance of shape as he gets his guitar out of hock and reinvents himself as aspiring teen idol Johnny Suede.And that, basically, is it, although Johnny's fate is, of course, neither here nor there. Of far greater interest are the various oddball characters that shuffle in and out of his lonesome existence - principally girlfriends Darlette and Yvonne (the deliciously schizoid Moir and hard-talking Keener) and, with a performance that establishes a new landmark in the field of overacting, Nick Cave as peroxide singer Freak Storm - as various elements conspire to wreck Johnny's dream.As the rock 'n' roll Candide, Pitt is superb, a wholly innocent holy innocent who wanders his spartan flat with his hands down his fulsome underpants, fumbling around his "strictly Plutonic" relationships, while spouting his own brand of psycho-philosophy in a kind of David Lynch meets Hal Hartley fashion - "I'm not into 'now'; 'now' is a fly's fart in the wind" - as he tries in vain to get some kind of handle on the opposite sex, ultimately bringing about his own undoing. Offbeat, stylish and packed with some wonderfully bizarro moments - such as a TV Western full of vertically challenged cowboys and a real gem of a scene in which Johnny attempts to explain away an act of infidelity to a dumbstruck Yvonne - wider access on DVD will, in time honoured tradition, deservedly prod Johnny Suede in the direction of that status marked "cult".