Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean

Plot

Early on September 30, 1975, in McCarthy, Texas, at a Woolworth's five-and-dime store, its owner Juanita listens to gospel music on the radio. She gets ready for the day, opens the store, and addresses someone as "Jimmy Dean". The all-female fan club Disciples of James Dean is having a reunion meeting at the store, to honor the twentieth anniversary of the actor's death. Disciple Sissy comes in tardy; she had been helping out at the truck stop. Juanita says that more members could arrive soon: Disciple Mona ought to have already been there, but her bus is running far behind schedule. Sissy worries about the weather, as it is "118 degrees in the shade".

The story flashes back to a stormy night in 1955. Sissy shelters inside the store and asks after three employees who are friends of hers: Mona, Sydney, and Joseph "Joe" Qualley. Joe is there, busy stocking new issues of Photoplay magazine. Mona arrives, having been delayed by the weather. Sissy, Mona, and Joe go up to the front counter and sing the contemporary doo-wop song "Sincerely". Juanita is chagrined, as she only approves of gospel music.

The main storyline returns. Disciples Stella Mae and Edna Louise make their way to the five-and-dime; they have one of the red jackets that the club members used to wear. Mona joins them and explains that her bus had broken down and required repair. Amidst the excited reunion celebration, she looks at a group picture made with James Dean. Mona recalls the last time that the Disciples—all dressed in their jackets—had come together.

Mona's 20-year-old memory segues into another flashback. Mona has recently moved back to McCarthy from college, claiming that the atmosphere at college had inflamed her asthma and led to an attack, with her doctors then advising her to return to McCarthy. Later, the overjoyed Disciples find Sissy and break the news that Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, and James Dean will be in Marfa, Texas, to film Giant—62 miles away from McCarthy. Auditions for extra cast members will be carried out across the area. Mona idolizes Dean and she dreams of playing beside him in the film. Joe drives her to Marfa so she can fulfill her desire.

In the modern storyline, Mona claims that when she went to Marfa, Dean chose her to bear his son, and on that night he fathered her child Jimmy Dean. She says that her boy Jimmy Dean is mentally deficient, and she isolates him from the community. Sissy says that Mona has been "warped and demented" to hide her son. Mona loses her temper and insults Sissy, who goes outside to "cool off".

Production

After directing 1980's critically panned Popeye and selling his Lion's Gate studio (not to be confused with Lionsgate), Altman turned his attention to the stage. One of his first tasks in this field was acquiring and directing Ed Graczyk's Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, a drama originally performed in Columbus, Ohio in 1976. Altman's work on the play, despite its bad reviews and short run, convinced him that a film version was imminent. "On stage it was humorous and bawdy," he commented. "On film it's more emotional." Jimmy Dean was his first feature adaptation of a play; he followed this effort with 1983's Streamers and 1987's Beyond Therapy, among others.

Altman then made a deal with the play's production executive, Peter Newman, and retained the original cast members. The filmmaker received over US$800,000 from Viacom Enterprises, through game show company Mark Goodson Productions, almost as much money as the play had cost him. It was his intention to shoot Jimmy Dean for the cinema; "the initial press report that it was made for cable is not true," he said.

Of his preparations for Jimmy Dean, Altman added, "I didn't do what they told me I had to do, I hired the people I wanted." The production was his first to involve Pierre Mignot, a Canadian cinematographer; they would collaborate on five more films. Filming took place on just one set: a "redressed" version of its Broadway counterpart. Altman used Super 16 equipment during the nineteen-day shoot; this was later converted to 35 mm stock for the first answer print. For the film's flashbacks, he built a double set with two-way mirrors that were controlled by computerized lighting techniques—which became problematic for both him and the film's critics.

Release

Altman took Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean to the Montreal and Toronto film festivals in Canada, as well as those in Belgium, Venice and Deauville. The film received its U.S. premiere on September 30, 1982 (the 27th anniversary of the late James Dean's death) at the Chicago International Film Festival, where it received a ten-minute standing ovation. After this screening, Altman discussed various aspects of the production during a question-and-answer session.

The filmmaker refused to let any major U.S. studio handle Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, due to the problems he had with 20th Century-Fox over his 1979 production HealtH. Instead, he enlisted Cinecom Pictures, an independent distributor in New York City, to open it in arthouse theaters "to guarantee a long play"; it became the first release for that company.

Home media

Jimmy Dean aired on the Showtime cable network in May 1983. Embassy Home Entertainment released it on VHS that same year, and on laserdisc in 1984; a video re-issue from Virgin Vision followed in June 1989. It was released on Blu-ray on November 18, 2014, by Olive Films, under license from Paramount Pictures.

Restoration and re-release

A restored version of the film was released in 2011. The film was restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive (in cooperation with Sandcastle 5 Productions) as "the first fruit of a new, larger project ... to preserve Mr. Altman's artistic legacy." The preservation was funded by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and The Film Foundation.

The new print was made "from the original Super-16mm color negative, a 35mm CRI, a 35mm print, and the original ½ inch analog discreet mono D-M-E track."

The restoration premiered at the UCLA Festival of Preservation on March 3, 2011 and was screened at other North American cities in 2011 including New York City, Chicago, and Vancouver.

Reception

Box office

The film opened on a limited basis in just two theaters on November 12, 1982, grossing $22,298 and placing 18th at the North American box office that weekend. By its fourth week, it made $177,500 after expanding to four venues; during its entire run, it grossed $840,958.

Critical response

On its original release, The Boston Globe's Michael Blowen hailed Jimmy Dean as "[Altman's] best film since Nashville". He added, "[The director] is having fun again. He seems more comfortable in a desolate Woolworth's than he did on the frozen tundra of Quintet. In contrast with A Wedding, in which Altman cynically patronized his characters, he seems to love these three women. And why not?" The Associated Press' Bob Thomas said, "The film is a heartening example of how good writing ..., gifted direction and solid acting can produce something worthwhile on a tiny (under $1 million) budget."

The New York Times' Vincent Canby gave Jimmy Dean a mixed review. "There are some interesting things about [the film]," he observed, "but they have less to do with anything on the screen than with the manner in which the film was produced and with Mr. Altman's unflagging if misguided faith in the project." He complained that "The actresses are not treated kindly, either by the material or by the camera," and noted that Sandy Dennis' character, Mona, received most of the close-ups. "The only person in the film who comes off well," he said, "is Miss [Sudie] Bond." New York's David Denby wrote: "Altman uses cinema to celebrate theater, and his technique is so fluidly self-assured that he almost makes you forget the rubbishy situations and lines created by playwright Ed Graczyk. Almost, but not quite."

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars out of four and wrote: "This is not a great drama, but two things make the movie worth seeing: Altman's visual inventiveness and the interesting performances given by everyone in the cast." Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote that "only the Karen Black character develops any appealing substance, and Altman must share the credit for that with Black herself, who turns in the film's best performance. Cher's role is nothing more than a country-western sketch. Surprisingly, she isn't bad, and I suspect that this explains the plaudits her performance has earned."

Pauline Kael wrote in 5001 Nights at the Movies: "When Robert Altman gives a project everything he's got, his skills are such that he can make poetry out of fake poetry and magic out of fake magic. Moving in apparent freedom, the principal actresses ... go at their roles so creatively that they find some kind of acting truth in what they're doing. They bring conviction to their looneytunes characters." Film critic Leonard Maltin gave Jimmy Dean two and a half stars out of four in his Movie Guide, writing, "Strong performances, and Altman's lively approach to filming [Graczyk's] Broadway play can't completely hide the fact that this is second-rate material." Halliwell's Film Guide stated "[Jimmy Dean] descends from cynicism through gloom to hysteria and is never very revealing."

Themes and criticism

Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean has been noted to address the subject of feminism. In Robert Altman: Hollywood Survivor, Daniel O'Brien wrote that "[Jimmy Dean] is in part an attempt to explore the way women are forced to suppress their emotions and personalities in order to be accepted by the male-dominated society around them". In his 1980 book A Cinema of Loneliness: Penn, Kubrick, Coppola, Scorsese, Altman, film historian and critic Robert P. Kolker noted that Come Back to the 5 & Dime dealt with the "crisis of women confronting the oppression of patriarchy by dissolving them into neuroses. Unable to struggle, these figures first collapse within themselves and then extrapolate their delusions as protections against the world that surrounds them."

On the film's sexuality issues, Robin Wood said: "What is especially interesting about Come Back to the Five and Dime is the connection it makes between the oppression of women and patriarchy's dread of sexual deviation and gender ambiguity. Joe (the only male character to appear in the film, in flashback) is clearly (and sympathetically) presented as feminine (as opposed to the stereotypically effeminate), woman-identified, and gay; as Don Short has perceptively shown, the film implies that he has become a transsexual ... because his society had no place for a gay male."

In his 1985 book on Altman, Gerard Plecki wrote: "The reference to the James Dean myth is a clue to Altman's pervasive film message. Altman knows that James Dean had the kind of screen presence and magic that caused people to 'give in' to cinema." He added that "In each film [the director] strives to reinforce and respond to that essential need—to give in to cinema." Plecki observed that "It is fascinating that, after The James Dean Story, Altman would select another project touching upon the life of [the late actor]."

O'Brien criticized the character development of the supporting roles, while Plecki said that, compared to those in previous Altman films, none of the characters "are immediately likable". "The reasons for the limited appeal of the characters are quite complex," Plecki wrote. "Most of the women's problems are physical or sexual ones."

In Jimmy Dean, Altman frequently uses mirrors as a device to seamlessly connect scenes between the present and the past. Reflections in mirrors are part of many of the film's frame compositions. As noted by Daniel O'Brien in Robert Altman: Hollywood Survivor, they "[become] a window into 1955, enabling the characters to gaze into the past".