Wild at Heart
Wild at Heart is a 1990 American black comedy romantic crime film written and directed by David Lynch and starring Nicolas Cage, Laura Dern, Diane Ladd, Willem Dafoe, Harry Dean Stanton, and Isabella Rossellini. Based on the 1989 novel of the same name by Barry Gifford, it tells the story of Sailor Ripley (Cage) and Lula Pace Fortune (Dern), a young couple from Cape Fear, North Carolina, who go on the run from Lula's domineering mother and the gangsters she hires to kill Sailor.
Plot
Lovers Lula and Sailor are separated after he is jailed for killing a man who attacked him with a knife; the assailant, Bobby Ray Lemon, was hired by Lula's mother, Marietta Fortune. Upon Sailor's release, Lula picks him up outside prison, where she hands him his snakeskin jacket. They go to a hotel where she reserved a room, make love and go to see the speed metal band Powermad. At the club, Sailor gets into a fight with a man who flirts with Lula, and then leads the band in a rendition of the Elvis Presley song "Love Me". Later, back in their hotel room, after making love again, Sailor and Lula finally decide to run away to California, breaking Sailor's parole. Marietta arranges for private detective Johnnie Farragut — her on-off boyfriend — to find them and bring them back. But unbeknownst to Farragut, Marietta also hires gangster Marcello Santos to track them and kill Sailor. Santos's minions capture and kill Farragut, sending Marietta into a guilt-fueled psychosis.
Awards
Cast
- Calvin Lockhart
- Charlie Spradling
- Crispin Glover
- David Patrick Kelly
- Diane Ladd
- Frances Bay
- Frank Collison
- Freddie Jones
- Grace Zabriskie
- Harry Dean Stanton
- Isabella Rossellini
- J. E. Freeman
- Jack Nance
- John Lurie
- Laura Dern
- Marvin Kaplan
- Nicolas Cage
- Pruitt Taylor Vince
- Scott Coffey
- Sherilyn Fenn
- Sheryl Lee
- Tracey Walter
- W. Morgan Sheppard
- Willem Dafoe
More details
| author | Barry Gifford David Lynch |
|---|---|
| award | Palme d'Or |
| contentLocation | North Carolina |
| director | David Lynch |
| editor | Duwayne Dunham |
| genre | comedy crime drama thriller |
| keywords | arrest attack break california elvis presley glinda the good witch happen hotel room jail kill love me love me tender metal band old friend on the road parole perdita durango pick up powermad private detective psychosis run away snakeskin speed metal their way traffic jam walk young woman |
| musicBy | Angelo Badalamenti |
| nomination | Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress |
| producer | Monty Montgomery Sigurjón Sighvatsson Steve Golin |
| productionCompany | PolyGram Filmed Entertainment Propaganda Films |
| publisher | The Samuel Goldwyn Company |
| recordedAt | New Orleans |
| theme | black comedy neo-noir road movie |