Maxie

Maxie (1985)

Her big movie comeback has a ghost of a chance.

When Nick and Jan move into their new apartment in San Francisco, the batty landlady upstairs tells them about a girl who used to live there in the 20's: a brash young party girl named Maxie, who died in a car crash the morning before her big audition for a Hollywood studio. The trouble is, Maxie, or rather her ghost, hasn't left the house. Worse, she can take over Jan's body. And the only way she's going to leave is if she gets that audition.

Date of release
1985-09-27
TMDB
5.0 / 10 (21)
Runtime
1h 38m
Genres
Comedy, Fantasy, Romance
Director
Paul Aaron

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: California

Maxie is a 1985 American fantasy comedy film directed by Paul Aaron, and starring Glenn Close, Mandy Patinkin, Valerie Curtin, Ruth Gordon and Barnard Hughes. The plot is based on the novel Marion's Wall (1973) by Jack Finney about a woman who is possessed by a very outgoing female ghost — a budding actress from the 1920s — named Maxie, who wants to fulfill her destiny. The character of Maxie is seen very briefly, using archival footage of Carole Lombard.

Production

The novel was published in 1973. (It was later adapted into a 1997 musical, Maddie.)

In 1978 film rights were in the control of Meredith MacRae who wanted to produce a feature version. By the end of the decade film rights were in the hands of Paul Aaron who spent six years developing it.

Filming began in October 1984 under the title Free Spirit. Location work took place in San Francisco.

Glenn Close and Mandy Patinkin were both coming off Broadway successes when they made the film (The Real Thing and Sunday in the Park with George). "This is the hardest thing I've ever had to do," said Close.

The surviving film clip of Maxie is that of Carole Lombard from The Campus Vamp (1928). The ending of the film differs from the novel where the audition was of a nude scene; the film changes this to a scene similar to one in Cleopatra (1963) where Jan wears a metal snake brassiere in homage to Theda Bara in the 1917 version of the film.

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

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