The Fabulous Baker Boys

The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989)

For 31 years it's been just the Fabulous Baker Boys... but times change.

The lives of two struggling musicians, who happen to be brothers, inevitably change when they team up with a beautiful, up-and-coming singer.

Date of release
1989-10-13
TMDB
6.6 / 10 (384)
Runtime
1h 54m
Genres
Comedy, Drama, Music, Romance
Director
Steve Kloves

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Awards: 1 · Nominations: 4. Including: National Board of Review: Top Ten Films

The Fabulous Baker Boys is a 1989 American romantic comedy drama musical film written and directed by Steve Kloves. The film follows a piano act consisting of two brothers, who hire an attractive female singer to help revive their waning career. After a period of success, complications ensue when the younger brother develops romantic feelings for the singer. Brothers Jeff Bridges and Beau Bridges star as the eponymous Baker Boys, while Michelle Pfeiffer plays lounge singer Susie Diamond.

Production

Screenwriter Steve Kloves was inspired to write The Fabulous Baker Boys based on Ferrante & Teicher, a piano duo he had grown up watching perform on The Ed Sullivan Show during the 1960s. He found himself fascinated by "blue-collar entertainment – people who work in the arts in a kind of working class way." Remembering that during his childhood, parents typically enrolled their children in piano lessons simply to 'give them culture', he decided t…

A first draft of the screenplay was completed as early as April 1985, in which Kloves describes the titular characters as "a poor man's version of Ferrante and Teicher." The Fabulous Baker Boys was Kloves's directorial debut. The experience he gained writing his previous film, Racing with the Moon (1984), motivated him to direct The Fabulous Baker Boys himself because the final version of the former "wasn't what I saw in my head".

Kloves attempted to work on the film with director George Roy Hill, but they experienced creative differences. Following the dissolution of WW Productions, Weinstein became an executive consultant at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) under Alan Ladd Jr., while Rosenberg eventually left Warner Bros to found Mirage Productions with filmmaker Sydney Pollack.

When casting The Fabulous Baker Boys began, Kloves recalled that while studio executives often dismissed his script as "dreary and depressing", most actors considered for the film found it "funny and moving". Wallis Nicita was the film's casting director. Bill Murray briefly expressed interest in starring while the film was in early development.

Kloves, Rosenberg, and Weinstein personally visited Jeff Bridges at his home in Montana to offer him the role of Jack Baker. After spending an afternoon asking Kloves various questions about the film, Jeff accepted because "I've had very good luck with first-time directors." Shortly after being cast, Jeff suggested his own older brother Beau Bridges for the role of Jack's older brother Frank.

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