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Peggy Sue Got Married (1986)
Starring Kathleen Turner, Nicolas Cage, Joan Allen, and Jim Carrey. Cinematography by Jordan Cronenweth. Edited by Barry Malkin. Produced by Paul R. Gurian. Written by Jerry Leichtling and Arlene Sarner. Directed by Francis Coppola.
Peggy Sue Bodell is a forty three year old housewife with an unfaithful husband. One day she decides that enough is enough and breaks up the marriage. She attends her twenty fifth high school reunion with her daughter as her date. When she sees Charlie, her soon to be ex-husband, enter the room she faints.
When Peggy Sue finally comes to she is suddenly a teenager again. She is back living with her parents, going to high school, and dating her future husband. The irony is that she still has her forty three year old mind in tack and is now able to rethink the difficult decisions she was presented with as a kid.
Times were tough for Francis Ford Coppola. After basically owning 1970’s cinema, the 80’s had brought him a handful of critical and financial disasters that hurt him professionally. With his seemingly endless ambition he has purchased an entire film studio only to see it sold five years later. He had strived to present new material with experimental techniques, but in the end he was left questioning his future in the movie business.
What he needed was a fresh project to get him back on his feet, and after years of staying on the cutting edge of filmmaking, he found unlikely success in a simple and intimate story. Coppola was the third director behind Jonathan Demme and Penny Marshall to be involved with Peggy Sue Got Married (the title of which is lifted from a Buddy Holly song), but he turned out to be the perfect compliment to the already well written film.
The production of Peggy Sue Got Married started in the late summer of 1985 and lasted eight weeks. To help reestablish his reputation Coppola strived to keep the project on time and under budget. When the film was released in the later part of 1986, it was difficult to not link it with the similarly themed project Back to the Future, which was released the year before.
And while it may have only found a fraction of Back to the Future’s financial successes, Peggy Sue Got Married still earned a healthy profit and was even reviewed by some critics more favorably than its predecessor. The film still holds strong today and may even prove to be more powerful to audiences who are able to see it during different stages of their lives. Peggy Sue Got Married turned out to be Coppola’s biggest hit of the decade and lit a fire under the career that he was trying to rekindle.
Budget: $18,000,000
Total US Gross: $41,382,841
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Runtime: 104 Minutes
US Release Date: 10/10/86
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Awards: Academy Awards: Nominated for best cinematography, best costume design, and best actress. Golden Globes: Nominated for best actress in a comedy or musical and best comedy or musical.
Tagline: Knowing What You Know Now, What Would You Do Differently?
Quote: “Well, Mr. Snelgrove, I happen to know that in the future I will not have the slightest use for algebra, and I speak from experience.”
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