Choose Me
1984 film by Alan Rudolph From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Choose Me is a 1984 American romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by Alan Rudolph, starring Geneviève Bujold, Keith Carradine, and Lesley Ann Warren. The film is a look at sex and love in 1980s Los Angeles centered around a dive bar known as Eve's Lounge.
| Choose Me | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Alan Rudolph |
| Written by | Alan Rudolph |
| Produced by | |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Jan Kiesser |
| Edited by | Mia Goldman |
| Music by |
|
Production company | |
| Distributed by | Island Alive |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 106 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $835,000[1] |
| Box office | $2 million[1] |
Plot
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 | This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. (March 2024) |
After being released from a mental hospital, where his stories are perceived as lies, Mickey returns to Los Angeles in search of someone named Eve. Arriving at the bar that bears her name, he is attracted to the new owner, a former call girl also named Eve. She says she bought the bar after the old owner killed herself, "over some guy". The bar is a popular spot for patrons looking for one-night stands, as well as prostitutes looking for potential clients. Despite being also attracted to Mickey, Eve refuses to commit to any one man, confessing to French radio talk show host Dr. Nancy Love that she ruined too many marriages to have one of her own. That night, Eve rebuffs Mickey's advances and sleeps with a bartender, while avoiding Zack, the wealthy married man she is having an affair with.
That same night, Dr. Nancy Love answered Eve's ad for a roommate to share her house, and moves in the next day. Concealing her identity, Nancy begins to observe Eve's romantic entanglements while counseling Eve through her radio show. When Zack calls looking for Eve, Nancy asks penetrating questions and begins dispensing relationship advice, despite the fact that she herself has been unable to maintain a successful relationship. Zack in turn resumes his pursuit of Eve, although his wife, Pearl, has secretly begun to haunt the bar hoping to catch him in flagrante.
Mickey returns to the bar the next night when he cannot pay for a bus ticket home to Las Vegas. Pearl asks his opinion of a poem, and when she argues his interpretation, Mickey reveals that he taught poetry, as well as being a photographer and a former soldier. Eve is intrigued but cool, and Mickey leaves when Pearl offers to get him into a hot card game where he can obtain the money for a ticket home. When she drops him off, Mickey kisses Pearl and asks her to marry him. She laughs, calling him crazy, invites him to drop by her place, and gives him Eve's address and phone number. At the game, Mickey wins big, earning the ire of Zack. Zack warns Mickey not to come back, before going to meet Eve. She in turn sends Zack away, announcing their affair is over.
Mickey goes to Pearl's apartment to crash, and when he wakes up begins taking pictures as she sleeps. She is just waking up when Zack walks in, still stinging from Eve's rejection, and attacks Mickey, pulling a gun and taking back the money he lost. He slaps Pearl after Mickey runs out, assuming they slept together.
Mickey calls Eve's house, and when Nancy answers pleads to come over and crash, hanging up before he realizes who she is. When he arrives, Nancy tells him Eve is not home. Despite being confused, he welcomes the chance to bathe and eat when she allows him in. She snoops in his suitcase while he bathes, finding memorabilia showing the truth of his stories and travels. As he eats, they talk about Eve, but sensing her loneliness he sweeps her into bed, then asks her to marry him and accompany him to Las Vegas. Nancy laughs, but reveals she does not believe he is crazy. Then she tells him to leave before she goes to work.
Eve calls into Nancy's show, torn between her attraction for Mickey and her fear of making another mistake. Nancy's post-coital euphoria overcomes her normal intellectual approach, and she encourages Eve to give in to, rather than resist, her feelings. When Mickey comes looking for Eve at the bar that night, she is almost ready to let him into her life, when Zack appears and assaults Mickey again. Eve takes off while they are fighting, and at her home she is confronted by Nancy, who tells her everything. Eve is devastated when Nancy proposes that they should "share" Mickey's affection, and she says Nancy can have him, before rushing out.
Mickey returns to Eve's house to recover his suitcase, and Zack finds him there and assaults him again. Mickey prevails, recovering the money and leaving with his suitcase. He tries to catch a ride to the bus station, but spies Eve on the roof of the bar, and races up to see her. She pulls a gun and threatens to kill herself until he does the same; Mickey pulls a gun and promises to shoot himself the very moment Eve tells him to. Eve then breaks down and they embrace. While crying, Eve reveals that she did not actually load her gun with bullets and asks Mickey if it was the same in his case. Mickey says it was, but he has actually begun carrying a loaded gun after the fight with Zack.
Soon Mickey and Eve are on a bus as a couple, en route to Las Vegas, and when a fellow passenger asks if they are gambling, Eve reveals they are about to get married.
Cast
- Geneviève Bujold as Nancy
- Keith Carradine as Mickey
- Lesley Ann Warren as Eve
- Patrick Bauchau as Zack Antoine
- Rae Dawn Chong as Pearl Antoine
- John Larroquette as Billy Ace
- Edward Ruscha as Ralph Chomsky
- Gailard Sartain as Mueller
- John Considine as Dr. Ernest Greene (voice)
Production
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| This section contains too many or overly lengthy quotations. (April 2025) |
"...Chris Blackwell partnered with Shep Gordon and Carolyn Pfeiffer to form Island Alive. Their immediate purpose was to make an inexpensive test film with me and that became the documentary Return Engagement. Once it was completed and released by Island Alive, Shep suggested we next do a music video for his client Teddy Pendergrass. I said for a few thousand more I’d make an entire feature film highlighting the song. How many thousand more? I drew up a budget on the cocktail napkin and they looked it over and agreed. That napkin became Choose Me.[2] - Alan Rudolph
"Welcome to L.A. is a street opera like Choose Me (1984), with songs as stories."[2] - Alan Rudolph
Talent manager Shep Gordon offered around $500,000 to commission Rudolph to direct a music video for "You're My Choice Tonight (Choose Me)" by Teddy Pendergrass, who was paralyzed in a 1982 car crash. Rudolph suggested making a feature film, for a few hundred thousand dollars more instead. Rudolph listened to the Pendergrass song repeatedly for inspiration, summarizing it as "romantic roulette".[3][4][5]
For this contemporary love story set in Los Angeles with less than $10,000 for production design, according to the director, the major set is a smoky bar. Mr. Rudolph found a deserted street on the edge of downtown L.A. and, with production designer Steven Legler, created the stylized, neon-lit set called Eve's Lounge. And to decorate the bare walls of a character's apartment in a way that expresses her personality, they called a friend of Mr. Rudolph's to borrow his movie poster collection.[6]
Choose Me[7] and Night of the Comet (1984) use the 300 block of Boyd Street as a filming location.[8]
Costume designer[9] Tracy Peacock Tynan[10] (Kenneth Peacock Tynan's daughter) recalls that budget was so small ($640,000) that she couldn’t budget second costumes for actors if outfits were damaged or needed dry cleaning.[11]
Choose Me was written in one week and was shot in three weeks.[11]
"Virtually everyone on the production was working at short money[12][13] to move up in position."[2] - Alan Rudolph
"During editing, I wanted to use some old Teddy songs that unfortunately weren’t under Shep Gordon’s control. This would cost money we didn’t have so to pay for it, I agreed to take a directing job (Songwriter 1984) that everyone was turning down..."[2] - Alan Rudolph
Release
Choose Me was launched on the "festival circuit" (Toronto International Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival),[14] and feted at the new Independent Spirit Awards.[15]
Critical response
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The film is reviewed favorably in Pauline Kael's eighth collection of film reviews State of the Art: "The love roundelay[16] Choose Me, written and directed by Alan Rudolph, on a budget of $835,000, is pleasantly bananas. The songs are performed by Teddy Pendergrass and he's just right. The entire movie has a lilting, loose, choreographic flow to it...it's giddy in a magical, pseudo-sultry way, it seems to be set in a poet's dream of a red-light district...this low-budget comedy-fantasy has some of the most entertaining (and best-sustained) performances I've seen all year."
Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, both praised the film on their television show, At the Movies.[11]
The film was screened out of competition at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival.[17] Choose Me holds a rating of 95% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 21 reviews.[18]
Janet Maslin, reviewing the film in The New York Times, wrote: "Fortunately, Mr. Rudolph has paid perhaps even more attention to the film's minor touches than he has to its central action. Abundant, well-chosen paintings and posters comment on the characters, and the supporting cast includes the painter Ed Ruscha in a small but conspicuous role."[19]
Vincent Canby, reviewing the film, three months later, in The New York Times, wrote: "The cast...couldn't be better...There's a wonderful feeling of ensemble playing...plus Teddy Pendergrass, who is never seen but whose blues songs on the soundtrack underscore the screen action as if they were ironic subtitles, which are never to be taken too seriously, but simply enjoyed for the sly, knowing fun of them...Rudolph's favorite movie set is Los Angeles...as much a fairy-tale town as the Emerald City. It's this quality that makes Choose Me an adult fable of such expressive charm.[20]
New York magazine wrote: "Choose Me had the kind of Necco-wafer 'doomed' poetry, the fatalism of sexual adventure gone awry, that can be fun when the director doesn’t take it too seriously".[11]
In CINEFILE.info, Ben Sachs writes that Choose Me shows the influence of Robert Altman, in juggling multiple characters, with the film evoking "an intoxicating, amorous mood, the bold neon colors and balletic camera movements evoking a world where love is always in the air. Alternately funny, seductive, and unnerving, Choose Me channels the chaotic rush of emotions that comes with falling in love as few other movies do."[21]
Choose Me reinforces the core of sexism, that women are always looking for marriage, that their lives are not complete without marriage.[22] - New Indicator V10-#02 October 23rd 1984 - November 5th 1984 University of California, San Diego
Home media
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released Choose Me on DVD in 2001.[23] The Criterion Collection released the film on 4K and Blu-ray on March 25, 2025, with a restoration supervised by director Alan Rudolph and producer David Blocker.[24]
Further reading
- McGlone, Neil (11 December 2013). "Alan Rudolph interviews: in Vérité and Arrow Video's Blu Ray of The Long Goodbye (1973)". neilmcglone.wordpress.com 'There's No Place Like Home'. Retrieved 17 April 2025.
Early Beginnings to Choose Me (1984)
- Sallitt, Dan (1985). "Alan Rudolph". sallitt.blogspot.com. Toronto Festival of Festivals. Retrieved 17 April 2025.
10,000-word monograph for cancelled book project
- Flinn, Caryl (11 December 2023). Alan Rudolph's Trouble in Mind: Tampering with Myths. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0-472-90378-8.
See also
- round dance
- La Ronde (play), written by Arthur Schnitzler in 1897
- List of American films of 1984
References
External links
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