Open For Discussion

[Wayne Goodwin]

You remember this movie , It came on tonight .

Have you ever felt you went through The Big Chill ?

Can you relate ?

The Big Chill is a 1983 American comedy-drama film directed by Lawrence Kasdan, starring Tom Berenger, Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum, William Hurt, Kevin Kline, Mary Kay Place, Meg Tilly, and JoBeth Williams. It is about a group of baby boomer college friends who reunite briefly after 15 years due to the suicide of a friend. Kevin Costner was cast as the dead character Alex, but all scenes showing his face were cut.

The Big Chill was filmed entirely on location in Beaufort, South Carolina and was shot at the same antebellum house used as a location for The Great Santini. The soundtrack features ten late '60s/early '70s pop/rock songs, including "The Weight", "Good Lovin', "In the Midnight Hour" (the Young Rascals version), "You Can't Always Get What You Want", "I Heard It Through the Grapevine (the Marvin Gaye version)", "A Whiter Shade of Pale", "My Girl" (the Temptations version), "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" and "Joy to the World" (the Three Dog Night version).

The television show thirtysomething was influenced by The Big Chill.[1] Earlier, however, the movie was directly adapted to television in CBS' short-lived 1985 comedy-drama Hometown.

Plot

Harold Cooper (Kevin Kline) is bathing his young son when his doctor/wife, Sarah (Glenn Close), receives a phone call at their Richmond home telling her that their friend, Alex, has committed suicide by slashing his wrists in the bathtub of their vacation house in South Carolina, where he has been staying.

At the funeral Harold and Sarah are reunited with college friends from the University of Michigan in the 1960s. They include Sam (Tom Berenger), a famous television actor now living in Los Angeles; Meg (Mary Kay Place), an unhappy chain-smoking former public defender who is now a real estate attorney in Atlanta, who wants a child; Michael (Jeff Goldblum), a sex-obsessed People journalist; Nick (William Hurt), a Vietnam veteran and former radio host who suffers from impotence; Karen (JoBeth Williams), a housewife from suburban Detroit who's unhappy in her marriage to her advertising executive husband, Richard (Don Galloway), an outsider. Also present is Chloe (Meg Tilly), Alex's much-younger girlfriend at the time of his suicide.

After the burial, everyone goes from the cemetery to Harold and Sarah's vacation house, where they are invited to stay for the weekend. During the first night there, a bat flies into the attic while Meg and Nick are getting reacquainted. Sam later finds Nick watching television and they briefly talk about Karen. The two then go into the kitchen and find Richard, her husband, making a sandwich, and the three make small talk which turns into a discussion about responsibility and adulthood.

The next morning Harold and Nick go jogging; Harold tells Nick that his running shoe company is about to be bought out by a large corporation, and that he's about to become rich. Harold confides with Nick that Sarah and Alex had an affair five years earlier. Nick comforts Harold by saying, "She didn't marry Alex."

Richard returns home to look after his and Karen's kids, but she decides to stay for the weekend. Nick, Harold, Michael and Chloe go for a drive while Sam and Karen go shopping. Meg reveals to Sarah that she wants to have a child, and that she is going to ask Sam to be the father, knowing now that Nick can't. Out in the countryside, Harold listens to Michael's plans to buy a nightclub. Chloe takes Nick to the abandoned house that she and Alex were going to renovate; she tells him that he reminds her of Alex, to which Nick replies, "I ain't him."

During dinner Sarah starts tearing up over Alex as the group talks about him. Harold puts "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" by The Temptations on the stereo and everyone dances while cleaning up the dishes. While the others sit around and get high, Meg asks Sam to father her baby, but he declines.

The next morning Nick, Sam, and Harold go jogging, and the subject of Alex's suicide comes up again. Harold's surprise arrives: sneakers for everyone to wear during the upcoming Michigan football game. The group, minus Nick, watches the game on TV while Sarah tells Karen about her brief affair with Alex and how it affected their friendship negatively. She is subtly warning Karen to rethink her plans to have an affair with Sam.

During the game Michael offers to father Meg's child, alluding to the fact that they had sex many years ago during the March on Washington in their college years. At halftime, Chloe, Sam, Harold, and Michael go outside to play touch football. Nick returns, with a police car following him. The officer says that Nick ran a red light and was belligerent, but says that he will drop the charges if Sam would hop into Nick's Porsche as his TV character, J.T. Lancer, always does. Sam is unsuccessful and hurts himself, but the officer drops the charges anyway and apologizes to Harold.

Karen later tells Sam that she loves him, wants to leave Richard and live with Sam and her two sons. When they kiss, Sam pulls away and tells Karen not to leave Richard, as she will regret it in the long run. He confesses that it was "boredom" that caused his own marriage to fail, and he doesn't want her to make the same mistake. Karen feels misled and angrily storms into the house.

Harold is on the phone with his daughter, Molly, and lets Meg talk to her. Observing their interaction on the phone, Sarah decides to let Harold impregnate Meg, but does not tell him yet.

The group once again discusses Alex. Nick says, "Alex died for most of us a long time ago," but Sam disagrees and leaves. Karen follows him and the two have sex outside. Sarah tells Harold about Meg's situation while Chloe and Nick go to bed together, even though he warns her of his condition. Meg and Harold then have sex – she says "I feel like I got a great break on a used car" – while Michael and Sarah joke around and interview each other with a video camera.

In the morning while Karen is packing her clothes, she subtly tells Sam that she has decided to stay with Richard. At the breakfast table Harold reveals that Nick and Chloe will be staying in the guest house for a while, then Michael sarcastically states, "Sarah, Harold. We took a secret vote. We're not leaving. We're never leaving." They all laugh and "Joy to the World" plays as the credits roll.

[Karin M Fichtner]

My best friend slept with my first husband when she knew I was desperately trying to hang on to my marriage.....is that Big Chill enough? 

[Wayne Goodwin]

I would think so indeed ..

[Wayne Goodwin]

 I can iimagine us all sitting around  as the movie plays out . Am I crazy or not .love the music of the movie .

[Snagg]

I identify the most with the Kevin Costner character.

[frenchy]

well i saw the big chill back in 83 when it came out and it is one of them kind of films that just stays with you .. if i had to make a list of my top 10 movies of all time it would be on it .. and i could see a little bit of me in all the characters .. not so much the alex guy played by costner because while i've had my times of bein depressed like anyone else i've never seen a need to kill myself . no matter how bad things got .. i could relate to the beringer character not so much cause he was an actor but because of the loose ends he had with the married woman and boy do i know how that feels .. oh man do i know .. eeeeeeeeeee.. and the jeff goldblum character too because while he was supposed to be enroute to another story for his magazine he KNEW  this was the much bigger story and had to stay to write it .. and havin run my own business i also could understand kevin kline's happiness with his business's success .. and for a time i also wandered aimlessly not sure what i wanted to do next just gettin high like wiliam hurt .. and i could relate to the hurt that glen close felt at the loss of costner .. and the unhapiness that jobeth williams felt in her dead end marriage .. and mary kay place's disillusion at bein a public defender , no lover , and no kids .. thinkin that a kid just might complete her .. ehh.. probably not .. but the whole idea of how they were all gonna be world beaters and make a difference .. it reminded me of somethin my mom told me .. you think the world is gonna change for you but it ain't never gonna happen .. you , have to change for the world if you're ever gonna fit in .. and she was right .. and that movie made me see that so much clearer .. all these college educated people were just findin that out .. and it became so much clearer to all of them when they got back together again and got to see where all their lives had gone .. and how much different they were from where they thought they would be .. i was talkin to my son not too long ago and we were talkin about music and guitar amps and i told him that at some point he was gonna quit luggin around these huge amps and just find a smaller one that he could mike thru the p.a. system .. them big amps are so 70's before that had the p.s. systems that they have today and weren't needed anymore .. and he told me i didn't know what i was talkin about .. and i said ya know eric , i can remember bein 40 like it was yesterday so i've been where you are so i understand you .. but you however have never been 60 so you have no idea what its like to be 60..so if anybody here doesn't know what they're talkin about its you .. i doubt he got it .. but in 20 years a light will go on in his head and he'll say oh shit .. now i know what he meant .. and that movie was a lot like that .. nobody saw themselves where they were a dozen or so years earlier and if someone had told them they would have denied it .. said oh no i won't .. thats not me .. i'll never do that .. life has a funny way of happenin to you while you're makin other plans .. here we are in the years .. 

[frenchy]

here we are in the years .. a song by neil young that was on his first solo album .. it came out around the time the other songs for this movie did .. and the words kind of fit this story ..it could have easily been the closin song on the soundtrack..   so listen and see if you agree while you read along the lyrics..lives become careers , children cry in fear, let us out of here ..  

Now that the holidays have come
They can relax and watch the sun
Rise above all
of the beautiful things
They've done.

Go to the country take the dog
Look at the sky without the smog
See the world laugh
at the farmers feeding hogs
Eat hot dogs.

What a pity
That the people from the city
Can't relate to the slower things
That the country brings.

Time itself is bought and sold.
The spreading fear of growing old
Contains a thousand foolish games
That we play.

While people
planning trips to stars
Allow another boulevard to claim
A quiet country lane
It's insane.

So the subtle face is a loser
This time around.
Here we are in the years
Where the showman
shifts the gears
Lives become careers
Children cry in fear
Let us out of here!

[frenchy]

and for those who have never seen the movie .. ( altho i can't think of anyone who missed it ) 

[frenchy]

funny thing about that song , almost all of the music for the film actually . they didn't know ahead of time what songs they were gonna get the rights to .. they knew which songs or round about what songs they wanted .. but they didn't know if they would be able to use them so for a lot of the scenes there was no music while they filmed it .. the music was added later .. but in this kitchen scene they were pretty sure they could get ain't too proud to beg . but just to be sure in case they couldn't they had the actors wear little earbuds and piped the music in so only they could hear it so if they had to reshoot they wouldnt have to scrap the whole scene .. just certain parts . luckily they got the song and its as we see it today .. but if you saw the actual scene as they shot it they're dancin around the kitchen to what appears to be nothin at all .. and that ain't easy .. to act like you all hear the same song .. in the same time signature .. and there ain't no music at all ..  the magic of hollywood .. yeah this was a great film .. probably the wizard of oz for grownups .. cause their lives are spun all around like dorothy but they come out the other side different .. maybe not what they thought .. but they deal with it .. just like we all do .. 

[Karin M Fichtner]

You know, it's funny you should say that about the "Woodstock Generation".  Years ago my youngest son took me to see Billy Joel in concert.  Of course, Billy sang, "We Didn't Start the Fire", and on the way home, my son told me I came from the "happening" generation.  He was known as "Generation X".....and he said his generation couldn't claim one thing that was their signature event.  I don't know if he's right, but I do know I found it interesting that he looked at it that way.  He was in his 20s at the time. 

[dwalt]

Don't feel bad Karin.  My now ex did the same.  I left and they are now married.  karma is great becaause now she knows what an ass he is.