Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean

Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean

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A cup of coffee and a side of dreams.

The Disciples of James Dean meet up on the anniversary of his death and mull over their lives in the present and in flashback, revealing the truth behind their complicated lives.

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Alternative Titles

Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean

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Popular reviews

TW: transmisogyny, ableism, sexism, transition/surgery

This is what passes as sympathetic.

The narrative surrounding Joanne is complicated: it's entirely the wrong narrative but it's incredibly warm. The film's greatest sins actually are a reflection of its era, for once. While films made now but set in the past have a duty to comment on the values of the past (I am not arguing about this), films made in the past that make a flawed commentary on the deeper past perhaps have some leeway. I won't remain quiet on its misunderstandings, but I will acknowledge the earnestness with which those misunderstandings were made. To put it succinctly, the equation of Joanne's status as a trans woman being dependent on surgery is…
joanne really lived the trans girl dream (showed up out of the blue to confuse her friends and vaguely menace her family, was played by karen black, etc). as far as explicitly trans characters go there are very few i can think of who are more fully realized and complexly portrayed than her, which makes discussion of her elsewhere on this site rankle more than a little. a modern perspective might consider certain aspects dated or even offensive, but it would be ignorant to suggest that there were never trans women like her, who thought like her or experienced the world like she did. it's a touching and sensitive and forceful performance, as are all of the three leads. i knew this was going to be an all-time favorite for me pretty early on and it just got better.
I remember the kindness of friends. Allyship is often weighed in whether or not you're pulling weight for a specific group of people, but in the personal experiences of having come out as a trans woman and by making it to some semblance of safety or peace the moments I remember best are simple moments of kindness. Pure, goodhearted help from people who wanted to see me survive. Taking me out to a Target to pick up the first pieces of clothing I'd ever buy and casually remarking afterward "Get used to this, because buying clothes is so much fun. You'll grow to love it" and I did. I loved it even in that moment. Getting my ears pierced was…
Altman continues to prove with every film of his I see why he was one of the greatest American filmmakers of all time. Acceptance and dignity are, for me, the two foremost themes explored within Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean's chamber play structure. Each of our characters has something the other must learn to accept: Sissy's crass, overly honest to the point of fault exclamations, Mona's delusion and emotional outbursts, Joanne's womanhood and Juanita's faith. Stella and Edna, too, must deal with their implied infertility and motherly responsibilities, respectively. Every character is gathered here for one reason, and though they may claim it is to remember James Dean, that reasoning is merely a symbolic one.…
Loved this. As it's based on a play, it's so conversational. It was just executed so well. All the characters were great. Everyone delivered top notch performances. Cher was particularly phenomenal. She's always so at ease when she acts. I've always loved her but seeing this blew me away further at how good she really is. I also loved all the James Dean talk.
Once again, the king of conversational magic proves that sometimes the greatest stories can be found between the smaller cracks of a bigger picture.

Funnily enough, it was during rehearsals of Altman's Broadway debut that he discovered Ed Graczyk's play was full of cinematic gold, which ultimately inspired him to bring this film adaptation to life. Using the rundown interior of a Texan Woolworths, Altman transferred his marvellously designed set from the stage to the studio, along with several of the original cast members jumping on board for the project. The result was (and still is) a technically innovative and emotionally complex collision of manners and twisted memories, showcasing Altman's signature talent behind the camera while indulging in his own…
"Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean" is Robert Altman's most intimate film. It is at turns harrowingly emotional, and uncomfortably confined.

Post-"Popeye," Altman veered from big budget studio productions to the exact opposite; small scale play adaptions. The director plucked "Jimmy Dean" from relative obscurity and middling reviews in an Ohio theatre - bringing it to the screen, and a simultaneous Broadway production.

"Jimmy Dean" - on film as onstage - unfolds entirely in one set. It depicts a Woolworth's counter reunion of a group of women who make up the last remnants of the James Dean fan club in a small town just outside of Marfa, Texas.

Right down to an echoing sound mix that…
As a trans person who transitioned at a not-super early age (as in, I had an adequate amount of social relationships before transitioning), it's more or less inevitable that people have memories of me as somebody who I am not now. Although people know me now as a man, that doesn't make the person in those memories of me pre-transition a man. That's especially the case in terms of memories that are specifically gendered - my time as a Girl Scout, for example. That doesn't necessarily mean I was a girl, but regardless of what I /actually/ was, I exist in the minds of people as a young girl. In that regard, I feel a lot of connection to the…
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

This may sound silly, but I thought the Jimmy Dean stuff was going to be more of a metaphorical shadow - James Dean (and his image) plays a much more direct and bigger role in the story here than I sort of expected, a story that's a struggle between getting out and being free, and waiting around to die, to quote TVZ. One of Altman's filmed plays, the action is confined to the titular 5 & Dime shot, and the dialogue sometimes feels theatrical, but the final shot, of the singing sisters reflected in the window, fading away and leaving the dustcovered relics of an earlier age that didn't matter to the audience (unless it mattered) in their wake.

There's a lot to be read on Karen Black's Joanne, and I'm not the person to write it, but I will note that Black does a remarkable amount of acting with her eyes.
After the notoriously ambitious flop Popeye, Robert Altman went to the other extreme, directing a play and then adapting it as a low budget, one setting film. One thing Altman refused to compromise, however, was the number of words in the title. Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean showcased Altman's ability to stuff seven actors into a Woolworth's, and eleven words onto a poster.

The ensemble of actors are excellent, especially the mesmerizing Sandy Dennis. While the film centers on a James Dean fan club, her character Mona takes her fandom the farthest. She deludes herself about her delusions. One moment she's speaking in a trance, the next she's lashing out, as her memories and construction…
"I chose to rise above the attitudes of this small town, while you chose to lay spread over a gravestone and take them inside you!"

Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean is not so much a story as it is a character study where its assembly of core characters makes up the story. The unusual, yet intriguing title aside, Robert Altman's ensemble piece reveals the interactions and dynamics of a Texas fan club for James Dean, shifting between two different narrative layers, one in 1955 amidst the fan club's original tenure, one in 1975 amidst their get-together of the 20th-year anniversary of James Dean's death.

The story's restrictions (i.e., reducing the scope to the same setting…
One of the best Altmans I've seen, and thankfully finally getting a Blu-Ray release next year from Olive Films. The stagey premise threatens pretty early to collapse the work as a whole, especially with the gimmick mirror, but once the film finds the rhythm between the past and the present, and you stuff all these actors (Sandy Dennis, Cher, Kathy Bates, and perhaps a career best from Karen Black) in the room and use Altman's roaming camera as a guide, this is pretty much gangbusters. It's certainly not an easy needle to thread, not only trying to ape Tennessee Williams style melodrama but also incorporate what must have been a pretty early example of LBGTQ narrative. Everything in this film…