Heavy

Heavy (1995)

He's a man so shy, he doesn't even think he deserves love…

Victor is a cook who works in a greasy roadside restaurant owned by his mother, Dolly. It's just the two of them, a waitress named Delores, and a heavy drinking regular, Leo. But things change when Callie, a beautiful college dropout, shows up as a new waitress and steals Victor's heart. But Victor is too shy to do anything about it, and too self-consciously overweight to dream of winning Callie away.

Date of release
1995-12-29
TMDB
6.6 / 10 (95)
Runtime
1h 45m
Genres
Drama, Romance
Director
James Mangold

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Awards: 1 · Nominations: 0. Including: Sundance Special Jury Recognition for Directing

Heavy is a 1995 American independent drama film written and directed by James Mangold, in his directorial debut. It stars Liv Tyler, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Shelley Winters, and Deborah Harry. The plot focuses on an unhappy overweight cook (Vince) whose life is changed after an enchanting college drop-out (Tyler) begins working as a waitress at his and his mother's roadside tavern. The film explores themes of loneliness, false hope, unrequited love, and self-worth.

Production

Heavy was director James Mangold's directorial debut, as well as his first solo screenplay. According to Mangold, who grew up in the Hudson River Valley, he was inspired by a real-life classmate of his who was overweight and whose mother owned a local diner; like in the film, the father had died, leaving the mother and son to run the restaurant themselves.

Mangold wrote the script for the film in 1991 while attending filmmaking seminars at Columbia University under the instruction of director Miloš Forman. In making the movie, Mangold was very focused on expression versus dialogue, especially in the character of Victor; Mangold stated that he was striving to create a "silent film, with sound." Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show (1971) and Martin Ritt's Hud (1963) served as specific influence…

Mangold met Liv Tyler when she was sixteen years old; Tyler had little to no acting history but expressed great interest in it. She had been doing modeling work at the time and was cast in the film "without hesitation" after a brief video audition with Mangold.

Pixies frontman Black Francis was originally meant to be cast in the role of Victor but did not feel it was right for a debut acting role. In casting the part of Dolly, Mangold sought golden age Hollywood actress Shelley Winters, who was in her mid-70s at the time. Mangold tracked down the address to her Manhattan apartment and sent her the film script along with a letter stating his admiration of her work.

The last person to be cast was Pruitt Taylor Vince, as Mangold had been having trouble finding an actor to portray the "centerpiece" character. An associate producer/friend of Mangold, who had been shooting Nobody's Fool (1994) with Vince alongside Paul Newman, suggested him.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended