Best Friends (1982) on Netflix
PG19821h 56mComedyDramaRomance
Hollywood screenwriting partners Richard Babson and Paula McCullen have been best friends and lovers for years. They marry quietly, then take a train east to visit the parents neither has met.
- Netflix2.9/5
- IMDb5.5/103,591 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes62%
Trailer
Plot summary
Richard Babson and Paula McCullen have written screenplays together in Hollywood for years, and they are best friends, roommates and lovers. Richard wants to marry, while Paula sees no need, but she agrees after they finish a script for their producer Larry Weisman, and the two wed at a Los Angeles marriage bureau without telling anyone. They spend their honeymoon traveling east by train to break the news to their parents. The first stop is Buffalo, New York, to see Paula's mother and father, Eleanor and Tim McCullen, who are old-fashioned and put the newlyweds in separate beds. Then they plan to visit Richard's parents, Ann and Tom, in Virginia. Larry is pressing them for pages of their latest screenplay.
Cast
- Mikey Martinas Robbie Ballou
- Helen Page Campas Maid
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Best Friends (1982)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Barry Levinson and Valerie Curtin wrote the screenplay based on their own real-life relationship; the pair had previously made And Justice for All (1979) with director Norman Jewison and showed him the script.
- Norman Jewison thought the script had problems, but Goldie Hawn's enthusiasm after reading it persuaded him to make the film; he told her that if she would do it, he would do it.
- The theme song, "How Do You Keep the Music Playing?", composed by Michel Legrand with lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman and performed by Patti Austin and James Ingram, was nominated for a Best Original Song Academy Award and became a standard recorded by Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand and Celine Dion.
- Norman Jewison and Goldie Hawn chose Burt Reynolds as her costar together, with Jewison wanting the star chemistry he had had with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway on The Thomas Crown Affair.
