Joe Biden recently told America that his uncle Ambrose, known to the family as Uncle Bosey, was possibly eaten by cannibals. This reminded me that my mother’s favorite movie of all times was also a cannibal movie. And since the Uncle Bosey story hit the news around Mother’s Day, I thought I’d do a review of my late mother’s most favorite film of all time. Although she rarely saw movies twice, she saw this one at least three times that I know of. It’s Fried Green Tomatoes, a movie that goes under the title Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe in the United Kingdom.
Based on the 1987 novel by Fannie Flagg, this 1991 movie is hard to describe because it has more in common with stories like Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer that defy conventional literary paradigms. In fact, Harper Lee who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird loves this film, and she suggested that one of the characters in this movie would have been a good wife for Huck Finn.
Fried Green Tomatoes is at least two movies (it has the story-within-a-story format) and spans the genres of comedy and drama. The plot is sort of like a sandwich or maybe a wrap: the outside story that holds it together is the friendship of a middle-aged woman, Evelyn Couch (played by Kathy Bates), and an older woman, Ninny Threadgoode (played by Jessica Tandy). Ninny is the tale-teller and recounts to her new friend Evelyn a strange, sad, bizarre, wonderful, frightening story about Idgie Threadgoode (played by Mary Stuart Masterson) who ran the Whistlestop Café in a tiny deep-South town during the Depression. The movie jolts you in and out of flashbacks, but somehow they do not seem disorienting. But there are two stories going on: the story about Ninny and Evelyn and the story about Idgie and the Whistlestop Cafe.
Directed by Jon Avnet in his directorial debut (he also directed The War, Up Close and Personal, and most recently Four Good Days) the flashback story revolves around Idgie Threadgoode, an unconventional Southern woman, and her friendship with the more conventional Ruth (played by Mary-Louise Parker). Ruth starts out as Idgie’s friend but makes a poor marriage and moves away with a drunken, wife-beater of a racist husband.
Idgie is one of those anomalies who crops up frequently in the South. She is a white woman in the starkly segregated South who was raised by a Black (they said “colored”) woman named Sipsey (played by Cicely Tyson—can this cast get any better?) Sipsey’s son Big George helps out at the café. Idgie’s establishment serves people: she serves people of color, people with no money, hobos who ride the rails, and drunks down on their luck. That is, Idgie tries to serve Black people until the local Democrats, I mean Ku Klux Klansmen, come out to put a stop to all that liberté, egalité, and fraternité.
Meanwhile, Ruth—who has been dragged off to Georgia by her Neanderthal of a husband, is rescued by Idgie. Frank comes to nose around to find out what happened to his battered wife.
Then Frank disappears.
So the movie-within-a-movie is partly a murder mystery about who killed Frank. And in case you’ve never seen the movie, I won’t spoil it. All I will say that the reason they never find the body is that he is cooked up and barbecued. And that made me think of Uncle Bosey Biden.
Parts of the story are true. Fannie Flagg modeled the Whistlestop Café after the Irondale Café, which was a family business. Even back in the Jim Crow days of the South, there were businesses that served people of all races, even in towns with strong KKK presences. And there really are men who abuse their wives.
My mother liked this film so much she read the book, which differs a bit from the movie. In the book, Idgie’s relationship with Ruth is more romantic than in the movie. The novel tells the story of Idgie from the perspective of Ninny, but the film sort of suggests that maybe Ninny may have been Idgie, and she was just telling Evelyn her life story in the third person. That seems unlikely, and the book makes it clear that Idgie was her own person.
Evelyn is the “owner” of this film. She enters the film by visiting her aunt at a nursing home, when she meet a talkative old woman she calls Miz Threadgoode. Ninny Threadgoode is older than Joe Biden and talks in one scene openly about being ready for death, but she’s a born Southerner and not about to go to her death without sharing just one or two more stories. She’s a talker and a tale-spinner and the perfect embodiment of a certain type of Southern lady—the kind who observes, who reports, and who is not nearly as judgmental as one might think. As Miz Threadgoode parses out the story of Idgie and Ruth and Frank in installments, a remarkable change occurs in Evelyn.
In a way, Evelyn is as abused by her husband Ed as Ruth was abused by Frank. Ed does not beat Evelyn, but he deflates her self-esteem, ignores her, and devalues her. He is altogether decent to her, at least on the surface, but he neglects everything she needs that is not material. Miz Threadgoode’s stories about strong bold women in the past inspires the timid and overweight Evelyn, and she gradually overcomes her lack of confidence. Part of this revolves around a code word in the film: Towanda. Towanda is a fictional character, sort of an alter ego for Idgie at first. But when Evelyn hears about how Idgie had an inspirational character to gather her courage, she adopted Towanda for herself. Towanda is an Amazon warrior, a conqueror, a queen, and a woman who cannot be scared off from doing what is right.
The famous parking lot scene in the movie shows Evelyn not only taking her revenge against two rude nasty young women who take her parking place—it has her crying out the name, “Towanda!” Over the course of the film, Evelyn finds ways to assert herself. She’s new at it, so she makes a few mistakes.
This is not a movie about racism, but racists are all through movie. Idgie serves people of color at the café; Sipsey is the chief cook. She considers Big George a friend and brother (they were raised together). While most of the town accepts this, the KKK makes trouble. It is the same with Idgie’s curious relationship to Ruth. Most of the town takes a “it’s none of my business” approach to whether Idgie and Ruth were friends or lovers.
But besides being a comedy, a tragedy, and a murder mystery, this is a movie about cannibalism. Frank disappears but he disappears because he has been murdered and then is cooked up and served to the investigators trying to figure out what happened to poor missing KKK man Frank. So maybe the real title of this film should be Barbecued Frank at the Whistlestop Café. It is amazing to me that this very female movie—the main characters are all women and the men in the story seem almost peripheral—revolves around cannibalism.
Roger Ebert liked the film. It got good critical reviews and did far better at the box office than studios expected. The performances by the four main characters are off-the-chart spectacular.
Now for a horrifying bit of information. Back when Fannie Flagg’s novel was being considered as a potential movie, one of the people working in development suggested to director Jon Avnet that Fried Green Tomatoes be a musical. Fortunately, Avnet was appropriately appalled at the idea. However, it would not have been the first musical about cannibalism—Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street holds that honor.
Some will minimize this film—it’s a bit of a tearjerker at times, occasionally sentimental, and it’s unabashedly told from the female perspective without being a romantic comedy—but it’s a landmark film. At its core, it is about surviving the Great Depression, it’s about living as justly as you can in an unjust world, it’s about protecting people you love, and it’s about bad people who do terrible things.
Great review of a fantastic movie. My mom and I watched it together just a few months ago. Not for the first time but had not for some time. It definitely stands the test of time. Kathy Bates is definitely one of the best actors of our time. (Deloris Clayborne, Misery, and even Failure to Launch, and The Blindside) are all stellar performances !!! Then Jessica Tandy, Cicely Tyson, and Mary Stuart Masterson (also loved her in the oddball Benny and Joon and Some Kind Of Wonderful)
Bill and I often state that “The Secret’s In The Sauce” with a chuckle when entertaining company. although for the record we haven’t cooked or eaten any relatives (or even strangers 😅)