Johnny Suede **** (1991, Brad Pitt, Catherine Keener, Richard Boes, Cheryl Costa) – Classic Movie Review 1782

Writer-director Tom DiCillo’s gleefully quirky and playful 1991 debut comedy is now a firm cult favourite. But it took awhile to gain its status after opening in only one cinema in America, before getting good reviews and much acclaim on its UK release and then making its name finally in the US on home video.

It is most memorable now as showcasing a showy early role in the movies for the 27-year-old Brad Pitt, who gets his big chance for big screen stardom after much TV work,  playing Johnny Suede, a struggling, shoeless young musician and devoted fan of the Fifties pop star Ricky Nelson.

Johnny decides he wants to be just like his idol and become a rock star too when a pair of suede shoes falls from the sky. He wears them proudly and soon falls for Darlette (Alison Moir), who then returns to her boyfriend. But then he meets Yvonne (Catherine Keener), and she gets him to face up to life.

Influenced by the work of Jim Jarmusch and David Lynch, this cool Nineties cult movie style exercise is offbeat, comic and charming, with an astringent view of New York City’s eternal hopefuls and the sad flotsam and jetsam of the Lower East Side. Pitt grabs hold of his star-making role. Samuel L. Jackson, Tina Louise, Ashley Gardner, Peter McRobbie and Nick Cave (as Freak Storm) are also in the cast.

Johnny Suede runs 95 minutes, is written by Tom DiCillo, shot by Joe DeSalvo, produced by Yoram Mande and Ruth Waldburger, scored by Jim Farmer and Link Wray, and designed by Patricia Woodbridge.

Enterprisingly, DiCillo parodies the making of this film in his next movie, Living in Oblivion (1995).

DiCillo was never satisfied with the film’s cinema cut. So in March 2014 when Johnny Suede appeared on Netflix, DiCillo asked to re-edit it, dropping a voiceover added by producer Harvey Weinstein and cutting seven minutes, bringing it down to 90 minutes. ‘It’s distilled and improved the film so much,’ DiCillo says. Weinstein credits DiCillo for finding Pitt before anybody knew about him – he cast him before Thelma and Louise was released. ‘I love that movie. I didn’t discover Brad Pitt; Tom DiCillo did,’ Weinstein says.

However, Pitt had already starred in The Dark Side of the Sun in 1988, Cutting Class in 1989 and Across the Tracks in 1990.

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1782

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