As successful as Coppola was in the 1970s, with four consecutive films garnering massive critical and/or box office success, the 1980s proved to be a much more tumultuous decade. Always adamant that he wished to make artistically daring work, with or without Hollywood-backing, Coppolla cashed in his substantial clout as a “visionary” for a series of films that would prove to be his financial undoing. Of course, this doesn’t make the films bad; with the benefit of hindsight, Coppola’s run from 1982’s One From the Heart to 1988’s Tucker: A Man and His Dream represent a sustained series of wildly varied, formally adventurous films that are, ultimately, truer to the spirit of Coppola’s art than the elephantine Godfather films or Apocalypse Now. Nevertheless, almost all of his ‘80s films were unsuccessful — spectacularly so in the case of One From the Heart; after its disastrous release, he would be forced to sell his Zoetrope Studio land holdings and spend the rest of the decade managing debt. In 1983, Coppola would film The Outsiders and Rumble Fish simultaneously, although only the former proved a success. Next was The Cotton Club, essentially a work-for-hire gig for Coppola that has its own storied history thanks to years of behind-the-scenes shenanigans courtesy of writer-producer Robert Evans. It was another box office fiasco, and once again Coppola found himself struggling to pay debts and finance his own projects.
Enter producer Ray Stark and his Rastar company; Peggy Sue Got Married was the brainchild of writers Jerry Leichtling and Arlene Sarner, and had already been in some form of pre-production for several years at this point. Originally set to star Debra Winger with direction by Jonathan Demme, the latter would leave the project over creative differences and be replaced by Penny Marshall. Winger then left in solidarity with Demme, followed by Marshall, who presumably had had enough of the musical chairs. The job was eventually offered to Coppola, who would retain final cut as long as the film was delivered on time and on budget. Coppola obliged, and was rewarded with his first unequivocal critical and commercial success in years (not to mention attention from the Academy Awards; ever the consummate outsider, Coppola still relished validation from his peers in the industry).
Peggy Sue Got Married is an odd project, partially indebted to something like Back to the Future (released just a year prior, and the highest-grossing film of 1985), while also part and parcel with numerous ‘80s body swap comedies. And it is a comedy, sometimes a broad one, despite an undercurrent of regret and a general malaise about middle age. One might even be tempted to call it Coppola’s mid-life crisis movie; he was, at the time, in his late-’40s, had been married for 20-odd years, fathered three children, lost one of them, and gone to battle on the sets of at least three huge productions. If Peggy Sue has a sort of rueful tone, an underpinning of “what could’ve been,” it’s also, ultimately, a story about reconciling oneself to their life choices.
When we first meet Peggy Sue Bodell (Kathleen Turner) in 1985, she is preparing to attend her 25th high school reunion. Her teenage daughter Beth (a young Helen Hunt) is helping her get her dress on, and will also be accompanying her to the event. Peggy and husband Charlie (Nicolas Cage) are recently separated, due to his chronic philandering. Once at the reunion, Peggy runs into old friends Maddy (Joan Allen) and Carol (Catherine Hicks) and their husbands, all of whom lament the absence of Charlie. As the night progresses, Peggy continues to mingle with former classmates, and when she is crowned “reunion queen” alongside “king” Richard (Barry Miller), the school nerd who grew up to become a billionaire, she faints on stage. When she awakes, she’s suddenly been transported back to Spring 1960, only weeks away from prom and graduation. The catch — she still has the consciousness of her 43-year-old self, plus the knowledge of everything that has transpired between 1960 and 1985. The film then settles into a groove of sorts; there’s comedic beats based on Peggy Sue’s awareness of life beyond high school, but also a newfound determination to change her future by altering her relationship with high school sweetheart Charlie. She knows that she will get pregnant with Beth on the evening of prom, forcing her and Charlie to get married and placing Charlie’s dreams of rock stardom on the backburner. She’s also determined to fulfill one of her deepest regrets: not sleeping with school intellectual/bad boy Michael (Kevin J. O’Connor).
According to legend, Cage did not want to make the film with his Uncle, and it took some coercion on Coppola’s part to talk him into the role. Coppola was on a tear discovering and highlighting new, young talent; The Outsiders gave key early roles to Matt Dillon, Rob Lowe, Patrick Swayze, Diane Lane, Tom Cruise, and Ralph Macchio, amongst others. Several of these actors would also appear in Rumble Fish alongside Mickey Rourke, fresh off of a star-making turn in Diner, and Peggy Sue Got Married features early turns from Joan Allen, Helen Hunt, Jim Carrey, and Kevin J. O’Connor (his film debut). For his part, Cage had already appeared in a couple of Coppola films, as well as the generally well-received Birdy in 1984, and his eclectic approach to acting and shaping performances was already virtually fully-formed. Controversially, Cage opted to wear fake teeth and use a nasally falsetto voice for Charlie, a choice that led to strife with co-star Turner as well as special mentions in many of Peggy Sue‘s contemporaneous reviews. Mileage will vary, as they say, but it’s a remarkable piece of work from Cage, imbuing Charlie with a combustible mixture of macho swagger and little-kid insecurity, as if he’s playing at being an adult version of himself. It’s a tricky balancing act, and Turner would certainly argue that the imbalance is ultimately detrimental to the project. But Peggy and Charlie share a real chemistry on screen, and their tentative reunification at the end is hard earned. For her part, Peggy seems determined to learn from her past mistakes; she praises her parents for their hard work and forgives them their lapses in caretaking, while trying very hard to rekindle a relationship with younger sister Nancy (played by a 14-year-old Sofía Coppola). Peggy does manage to fulfill her dream of sleeping with Michael, but realizes that despite his Kerouac-inspired non-conformity, he ultimately expects a woman to take care of him while he chases a dream (in his case, writer and poet).
Despite the high-concept shenanigans on display, Peggy Sue features a couple of remarkable sequences of devastating emotional honesty; the first, when Peggy, well aware of what their future as a couple entails, lambasts the younger version of Charlie and tells him to abandon his dream because he will never become a star; the second, an uncomfortable scene where Peggy, far removed from conservative social mores of 1960, attempts to screw Charlie, only for him to have a sort of emotional breakdown over her “liberated” advances. Ultimately, Peggy Sue is returned to her own modern time, and the narrative flirts with a “maybe it was all a dream” resolution. But the film succeeds not as a fantasy about undoing past mistakes or reliving one’s youth, but instead as a film about facing the unknown with a newfound optimism and a heart open to change and forgiveness. It’s a lovely notion, and one that hopefully served Coppola well as he entered the tumultuous 1990s.
Published as part of Francis Ford Coppola: As Big As Possible.
