Heavy (film)

Heavy was director James Mangold's directorial debut, as well as his first screenplay. According to Mangold, who grew up in the Hudson River Valley, he was inspired by a real-life classmate of his who was overweight, and whose mother owned a local diner; like in the film, the father had died, leaving the mother and son to run the restaurant themselves.[3] In directing his first feature, Mangold aspired to make a film stripped of "a certain Hollywood aesthetic,"[4] that followed a character who seemed a "most unlikely centerpiece of a motion picture."[5]

Mangold wrote the script for the film in 1991, while attending filmmaking seminars at Columbia University under the instruction of director Miloš Forman.[6] In making the movie, Mangold was very focused on expression versus dialogue, especially in the character of Victor; Mangold stated that he was striving to create a "silent film, with sound."[6] Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show (1971) and Martin Ritt's Hud (1963) served as specific influences.[7]

Mangold met Liv Tyler when she was sixteen years old; Tyler had little to no acting history, but expressed great interest in it.[8] She had been doing modeling work at the time, and was cast in the film "without hesitation" after a brief video audition with Mangold.[9] Through Tyler, Mangold got in touch with Deborah Harry, who was well-acquainted with young Tyler through the "rock and roll" scene in New York (Tyler being the daughter of Aerosmith front-man Steven Tyler); this resulted in Harry's casting as the part of the weathered, back-mouthing Delores. Evan Dando of The Lemonheads was cast as Tyler's guitarist boyfriend because of Mangold's admiration for his music, and in hope of bringing some star attention to the low-budget production.[10]

Pixies frontman Black Francis was originally meant to be cast as the role of Victor, but did not feel it was right for a debut acting role.

In casting the part of Dolly, Mangold sought golden age Hollywood actress Shelley Winters, who was in her mid-70s at the time. Mangold tracked down her address to her Manhattan apartment, and sent her the film's script along with a letter stating his admiration of her work. Within two days, Winters returned Mangold's contact and was subsequently cast.[11]

The last person to be cast was Pruitt Taylor Vince, as Mangold had been having trouble finding an actor to portray the "centerpiece" character.[12] An associate producer/friend of Mangold, who had been shooting Nobody's Fool (1994) with Vince alongside Paul Newman, suggested him.[13] After Vince was cast, Mangold and the crew began feeding Vince doughnuts and Kentucky Fried Chicken in order for the actor, who was not remarkably overweight at the time, to rapidly gain weight before filming commenced.[14]

Following the film's success at Sundance, it garnered generally positive reviews. Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars, and remarked its sense of realism: "You've been in places like this. You linger over a second cup of coffee and people-watch, trying to guess the secrets of the sad-eyed waitress and the drunk at the bar and the pizza cook who looks like he's serving a sentence. You don't guess the true horror of the place, which is that there are no secrets, because everyone here knows all about everyone else, inside and out, top to bottom, and has for years."[18] A decade later, Ebert — reviewing Mangold's 2007 remake of 3:10 to Yuma — called Heavy "extraordinary."[19] Jay Carr of The Boston Globe praised the film as a "small gem [that] specifies a world and populates it with unerring authority and a sure instinct for character."[20] The Statesman Journal's Ron Cowan similarly lauded the film for its deliberate lack of dialogue, writing that Mangold "often eschews" it, "detailing his story with gestures, glances and touches. There is no sex, violence or clichéd action or plot twists, just a sense that you're listening in on real life."[15] The New York Daily News's Jami Bernard described the film as a "slice of life" mood piece, praising Tyler's performance as "forceful," adding that "the film moves as carefully as Vincent [sic] himself, as if afraid to displace too many molecules at once. It's a welcome respite from the crash-bang movies of summer."[21] Barbara Creed of the Australian publication The Age noted the film as a "delicate and remarkable debut," and likened elements of it to the Carson McCullers novel The Ballad of the Sad Café.[22]

Critic James Berardinelli wrote that "Mangold captures the nuances of life perfectly, and, by never cheapening his vision through facile resolutions, he fashions a memorable cinematic portrait."[23] Berardinelli subsequently included the film in his book Reel Views: The Ultimate Guide to the Best 1,000 Modern Movies in 2005.[24] Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called the film "a small, quiet miracle of a movie in which tenderness, compassion and insight combine to create a tension that yields a quality of perception that's almost painful to experience", comparing its cinematography to the work of R.W. Fassbinder, and remarking the effectiveness of Thurston Moore's score for the film.[25] Edward Guthmann of the San Francisco Gate called the film "an act of faith in itself — an argument for the kind of subtle, humanistic traces that used to be familiar on screen but somehow became all too scarce,"[17] while Barbara Shulgasser of the San Francisco Chronicle noted: "There is nothing cutesy or gimmicky about Heavy, which may be why something in its grimness recalls the work of Ingmar Bergman."[6]

Other critics were less laudatory of the film, including Jeff Millar of the Houston Chronicle, who wrote: "Even at 80 minutes, Heavy would have been weighted with redundancies. So you can imagine what happened on the way to making it 105 minutes long."[26] Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune felt its portrayal of its characters was exploitative, noting: "Instead of the poetry of common people, Heavy romanticizes the mundane or grotesque. Mangold seems to be trying to revive some of the emotional quality of the late '40s-early '50s work of Southern Gothic writers like Carson McCullers, Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams. But presenting Victor as an exemplary sufferer–a wounded soul trapped in the body of a lovelorn pizza cook, with Farrah Fawcett posters in his bedroom–makes him a little ridiculous, without quite making him funny. In Heavy, the sensitivity is so thick, the characters can hardly breathe."[27]

The internet film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, as of 2019, has the film ranked at 86% fresh (or positive), with 24/28 reviews being in favor of the film. The site's consensus states: "With Pruitt Taylor Vince's naturalistic performance and sympathetic direction from James Mangold, Heavy soars as an affecting exploration of loneliness."[26]

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released Heavy on DVD on September 21, 1999.[28]