A River Runs Through It (1992) on Netflix
Norman and Paul Maclean grow up in Missoula, Montana, raised by their Presbyterian minister father and devoted to fly fishing. Norman goes to college; he comes home to a hard-drinking Paul.
- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb7.2/1072,100 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes80%
Trailer
Plot summary
In Missoula, Montana, Rev. John Maclean, a Presbyterian minister, home-schools his sons Norman and Paul and teaches them to fly fish for trout in the Blackfoot River. Norman heads to Dartmouth; six years later, during Prohibition, he comes back to find Paul working as an investigative reporter in Helena, drinking heavily and fishing with real skill. At a Fourth of July dance Norman meets Jessie Burns, a flapper from Wolf Creek whose father keeps the general store. Smitten, he telephones her the next morning and arranges a double date at the Lolo Hot Springs speakeasy, where Paul brings Mabel, a Cheyenne woman the white crowd treats as an inferior.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about A River Runs Through It (1992)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film had a profound impact on the sport of fly fishing: popularity of the sport grew dramatically, and in the two years following the film's release the fly fishing industry more than doubled in size.
- Robert Redford, captivated by the novella and drawn to its Scottish immigrant characters through his own Scottish-Irish heritage, met Norman Maclean three times over six weeks to describe his vision. Maclean was impressed and granted him an option that gave the author first-draft script approval.
- Author Norman Maclean grew distrustful of Hollywood after Richard Sylbert's 1976 option on his novella lapsed, and for the next ten years he met every further attempt to option it with immediate reluctance, including one by William Hurt.
- Elmer Bernstein was originally hired to score the film but was replaced after he and Redford disagreed over the tone of the music. Mark Isham, rushed for time, completed the whole score within four weeks at a Hollywood studio.
- Redford auditioned 26 actors plus the author Wallace Stegner to provide the film's narration, then decided to do it himself, despite his concerns about it coming off as egocentric and self-indulgent.
- Carolco Pictures agreed to finance the film only if Redford kept the budget below $10 million and agreed to act in one of the company's future films, but Carolco then dropped out anyway owing to financial troubles.
- Brad Pitt was hard on his own performance afterwards, saying he did not think he was skilled enough and could have done better, and citing the pressure of playing someone who was a real person while that person's family was around occasionally.
- A line spoken in the film that does not appear in Maclean's novella is displayed at the base of the Michael Jordan statue outside Chicago's United Center.
