Fried Green Tomatoes (1991) on Netflix
Housewife Evelyn Couch feels ignored by her husband Ed. In a nursing home she meets Ninny Threadgoode, who tells her about Idgie Threadgoode and life in the Alabama town of Whistle Stop.
- Netflix4.0/5
- IMDb7.7/1093,475 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes77%
Trailer
Plot summary
Evelyn Couch, a housewife in Birmingham, Alabama, feels overlooked by her husband Ed and by the people around her. While she waits for Ed at an Alabama nursing home where his aunt lives, she meets Ninny Threadgoode, an outgoing resident who begins telling her about Whistle Stop, the small town she came from. Ninny's story follows Idgie Threadgoode, the tomboy youngest of the Threadgoode family, and Ruth Jamison, the straitlaced young woman the family asks to befriend the reluctant Idgie. Over a summer the two grow close, and Ruth later moves to Valdosta, Georgia, to marry Frank Bennett. Evelyn keeps returning to hear the rest of the tale.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Fried Green Tomatoes (1991)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Masterson ended up doing her own dangerous stunt work, appearing covered in a swarm of live bees on screen after the planned stunt double for her scene backed out at the last minute.
- Reviewers and activists criticized the film at its debut for "glossing over" the lesbian relationship, yet in 1992 it won an award from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation for best feature film with lesbian content.
- After the movie came out, the once nearly deserted real town of Juliette saw a wave of tourists, prompting locals to open their own real cafe, the Whistle Stop Cafe, at director Jon Avnet's encouragement, recreating the film's set.
- The film's fictional Whistle Stop restaurant was modeled by novelist Flagg on the real-life Irondale Cafe in Irondale, Alabama, a place she visited often and that her own great-aunt used to own.
- The film is credited with turning fried green tomatoes into a recognized Southern delicacy, a status the dish did not previously have.
- Screenwriter Carol Sobieski, hired to adapt the novel, wrote an entire draft of it as a musical before leaving the project when the director was unhappy with that direction.
