Johnny Suede

Johnny Suede (1991)

He's a heartbreaker... lover... loner. keeping up an image can be a full time job.

Johnny Suede (Brad Pitt) longs to be a teen-age idol like Ricky Nelson. He has a pair of black suede shoes, an impressive pompadour, a guitar, and some pals who will play backup for him. Yet he doesn't have much talent or drive.

Date of release
1991-08-18
TMDB
5.2 / 10 (77)
Runtime
1h 37m
Genres
Comedy, Romance
Director
Tom DiCillo

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Awards: 1 · Nominations: 0. Including: Golden Leopard

Johnny Suede is a 1991 American film, the directorial debut of Tom DiCillo, and stars Brad Pitt and Catherine Keener in some of their earliest roles, along with Calvin Levels and Nick Cave.

Production

Around 1985, while taking acting classes in New York City, Tom 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.

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] didn’t have much on his resume.

Original music for the film was performed by rockabilly guitar legend Link Wray. Subsequently, a version was released on Netflix that removed 8 minutes of Wray's music. DiCillo objected to this version and subsequently was allowed to re-edit the film himself, removing scenes and voiceover that had been added by the distributor.

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

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