Nuts (1987) on Netflix
New York call girl Claudia Draper says she killed a client in self-defense. Her mother and stepfather want her ruled mentally incompetent, and public defender Aaron Levinsky takes her case.
- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb6.7/108,065 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes42%
Trailer
Plot summary
Claudia Draper, a high-class call girl in New York, is charged with the killing of a client, Allen Green, which she says she did in self-defense. Her mother, Rose Kirk, and her stepfather, Arthur Kirk, want the court to call her mentally incompetent, and Dr. Herbert A. Morrison backs them with a report describing her as unstable. If that finding stands, Claudia faces an institution rather than a jury, so she sets out to prove she is sane. Public defender Aaron Levinsky, on hand in the courtroom when she attacks the lawyer her parents engaged, is told by Judge Stanley Murdoch to take the case. Overbooked and met at first with hostility, he refuses to work with the other lawyers until he has talked with her himself, and he begins asking about the family that raised her.
Cast
- Warren Manzias Saul Kreiglitz
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Nuts (1987)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Debra Winger was set to star with Mark Rydell directing as early as 1982. Barbra Streisand campaigned for the part, but Rydell would not push the summer start date back while she finished Yentl.
- Universal grew nervous about the subject matter and sold the project to Warner Bros., where it sat in limbo until 1986, when Streisand signed for $5 million plus a percentage of the gross.
- Mark Rydell quit after clashing with playwright Tom Topor over the film's focus. It was the second Streisand project he had abandoned, a decade after walking away from A Star Is Born; Streisand produced instead and Martin Ritt was hired to direct.
- To prepare, Streisand studied schizophrenic patients on a mental ward and interviewed prostitutes at a Los Angeles brothel, then began writing her own draft of the screenplay; she took no screen credit, though the studio later acknowledged the work publicly.
- Richard Dreyfuss turned down the lawyer Aaron Levinsky at first. Dustin Hoffman wanted the part but Warner refused his demands, and Marlon Brando, Paul Newman and Al Pacino were all reported as candidates before Dreyfuss accepted on a second approach.
- Nuts gave Leslie Nielsen his last dramatic film role. He had already turned comic with Airplane! in 1980, and went from this courtroom drama straight into The Naked Gun.
- A preview in October 1987 went so well that Streisand decided the film would sell itself and refused to promote it, giving only a three-part interview to Gene Shalit on The Today Show.
