Spoiler Alert: never have tried. Too scared. And I've eaten raw habanero peppers.
THE BOOK-Written by Fannie Flagg, released 1987
THE MOVIE (as "Fried Green Tomatoes")-Directed by Jon Avnet, written by Fannie Flagg & Carol Sobieski, released 1991
THE STORY-Bored with her husband, scared of her children, and deprived of anyone or anything that might point her in a healthier direction, Evelyn Couch is about to go crazy. Then she meets an old lady whose memories and philosophies are every bit as edifying as they are endless.
MIND THE GAP-When in doubt...listen. Evelyn was on a one-way sugar-coated trip to the boneyard when she met Ninny Threadgoode. A motormouth nostalgia factory, Ninny longs for the old days. She waxes ecstatic about a wild-hearted, wind-spirited tomboy called "Idgie," and a clock-stopper named Ruth, who owned and operated the best damn chow joint in Alabama. And that's all it takes for Evelyn's life to change.
Entrusted with dazzling moviegoers were a first-time director and a cast headed by two recent Academy Award winners. Jessica Tandy, winding down the sterling silver phase of her life/career, is charm personified as Ninny, a sweet old lady whose refusal to relinquish the past actually bettered her present. Kathy Bates plays Evelyn, the portly pushover led out of the doldrums and into the daydreams by someone else's memories. Save for Gary Basaraba (who was born to play a cop, just not a southern one), the cast is damn flawless. Mary Stuart Masterson's Idgie is one of the few blondes (fictional or otherwise) I've ever given an "F" grade. Another Mary, -Louise Parker, hits the static target as Ruth, sugar-free tea accent aside. (I'll drink it, but I'm cracking jokes on it the whole time.) Coulda done with an entire movie of just Idgie and Ruth, livin' and lovin' in a world where cancer doesn't exist, hoppin' on trains, tossin' hams, bakin' pies and chuckin' rocks at sheet-covered cretins.
The script turns Evelyn's husband Ed from a misogynist sleaze into an oblivious, loving lump. What a great change. Bates and Gailard Sartain together are biscuits and gravy.
Calling Fried Green Tomatoes "women's fiction" or a "chick flick" is foolishly reductive. Does a story where an abusive husband gets brained, barbecued and served up to the cop investigating his disappearance sound girly to you?
The comings, goings, and doings of a time and region where women ask for death before divorce, and men answer to "Smokey," "Inky" and "Chattanooga Red," hold limited appeal. Furthermore, stories set in the Jim Crow South are a tricky sell to modern audiences, whose distance from said bygone era, combined with a hyper-focus on identity politics, potentially mars their impartiality. Fannie Flagg is still better known for her work as an actress than as an author, and her most famous written work is uninterested in probes and ponders of society's problems. FGT is a celebration of resilience and repasts. There are no overt reckonings for the numerous racists we meet throughout...so, reader, be aware.
BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-I can't beat the drum too loudly for either book or movie. The script is a wisely-condensed document. Time constraints aside, the discarded vignettes weren't terribly interesting anyway. Although I prefer the book's ending by a country mile, the film more adeptly plays cat's cradle with the heartstrings.
Evelyn Cook is easy to root for on the page; on screen, however, she becomes someone I'd die for. Enough cannot be said about Kathy Bates. By itself, the scene where Evelyn outlines her game plan as feminist crusader "Towanda" to a non-plussed Ninny as they walk down the nursing home hallway catapults the adaptation over the original.
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