Fool for Love (1985) on Netflix
May waits at a run-down Mojave Desert motel for Martin, her boyfriend. Eddie, an old flame who rides rodeo stunts, arrives from Wyoming and presses her to return to him.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb6.0/103,459 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes79%
Trailer
Plot summary
May is staying at a run-down motel out in the Mojave Desert, where she waits for Martin, the boyfriend who is due that night. Eddie, a rodeo stunt rider and an old flame of hers, arrives unannounced from Wyoming and gets into her room. He argues that their lives are tied together and that she should be with him. May turns him down and says she will not live with him. The motel's proprietor, the Old Man, watches them quarrel.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Fool for Love (1985)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Sam Shepard's sister Sandy Rogers wrote eight songs for the soundtrack, and her song "Fool for Love" was declined by director Robert Altman; it later appeared in the film Reservoir Dogs and on Rogers's 1997 album Green Moon.
- Sam Shepard wanted Ed Harris, who played Eddie in the original stage production, to reprise the role, but director Robert Altman insisted Shepard play it himself. Shepard later called starring "a mistake" and said Harris was better.
- Jessica Lange, Sam Shepard's longtime partner, was originally asked to star as May but backed out shortly before filming because she was pregnant. Kim Basinger was cast instead and said after meeting Shepard she did not even have to read for the part.
- The motel at the center of the film was a set built over six weeks by director Robert Altman and his son, production designer Steve Altman, from photographs of real motels in Albuquerque. It looked so real tourists thought it was operating, and it was dismantled after the shoot.
- Journalist Karen Evans, who visited the set, described the shoot as "grueling" and said Shepard often lost patience with cast and crew, including getting angry with Kim Basinger when she forgot her lines.
- Robert Altman shot the film around Santa Fe so that Shepard, who lived there, could go home each night after filming. The eight-week schedule ran from 9pm to 6am because the story takes place over a single night.
- Shepard had planned to take part in post-production, but Altman took the film to France and did most of the editing himself while shooting a TV adaptation of Marsha Norman's play The Laundromat.
