Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
May 05, 2012
(Robert Altman, United States, 1982, 35mm, 109 min)
New 35mm print!
Preservation Funded by The Film Foundation and The Hollywood Foreign Press Association
Robert Altman’s Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean concerns, as the title implies, two Jimmy Deans: the James Dean whose fans flocked to McCarthy, Texas in 1955, where he was filming Giant; and one fan’s son, Jimmy, who is 20 years old when the fan club reunites in 1975. Is Jimmy really, as his mother claims, James Dean’s biological son? And what happened to Joseph, the only boy in the club, who liked to dress up in women’s clothing? Altman lovingly adapts a Broadway script that tackles themes of homosexuality and gender norms in its portrayal of a few old friends—survivors of the era that killed James Dean.
“Robert Altman…can make poetry out of fake poetry and magic out of fake magic.” – Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies