Shy People (1987) on Netflix
Diana Sullivan, a Manhattan writer, brings her teenage daughter Grace to the Louisiana bayous to write about her distant relatives. There her cousin Ruth rules a household of grown sons.
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- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb6.6/101,738 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes64%
Trailer
Plot summary
A commission from Cosmopolitan sends Diana Sullivan, a Manhattan writer and photojournalist, to a distant branch of her family in the Louisiana bayous. She has no idea that her teenage daughter Grace, who comes along against her wishes, is in the grip of a cocaine addiction. The relative they find is Diana's cousin Ruth, married at twelve to an abusive man whose whereabouts nobody can pin down. Ruth keeps a tight hold on her grown sons, Pauly, Tommy and Mark, and on a household the two visitors do not fit into. Diana is fascinated by what she finds, Ruth is wary of her, and Grace, bored, has little patience for the visit.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Shy People (1987)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- A planned wider release of Shy People collapsed after miscommunication inside The Cannon Group: while Cannon head Menahem Golan negotiated with Cineplex Odeon head Garth Drabinsky, Cannon Releasing booked the film into 300 theaters without knowing, and Drabinsky pulled out.
- Andrei Konchalovsky, who wanted to examine the clash of a "civilized" culture with a more "rural" one, conceived the story of Shy People while he was filming his 1979 Russian epic Siberiade.
- Shy People was one of the last film roles for actor Merritt Butrick, who died from AIDS in 1989.
- The film's actual sound track uses different versions of the songs "Shy People" and "The Harbor", with different sets of lyrics, sung by Michael Bishop.
