On 40th anniversary of its release, The Big Chill still one of Beaufort’s main attractions
By Margaret Evans
The Island News
The first time I saw The Big Chill, it left me cold.
It was winter of 1984, and I was a college freshman. The movie’s buzzy reputation had preceded it to my small liberal arts school in Tennessee, and, more significantly, so had its wildly popular soundtrack.
All that autumn, strains of ‘Ain’t Too Proud to Beg,’ ‘Whiter Shade of Pale,’ ‘I Second That Emotion,’ et. al., streamed from every dorm room, frat house, and pub on campus. The Big Chill was the background music of our young lives that fall. We couldn’t get enough.
So, when the movie finally came to our university theater just after Christmas break, we packed that tiny, single-screen cinema to overflowing on opening weekend. It was a genuine campus-wide phenomenon.
And for me – though I never admitted it then – it was a letdown. I just didn’t find the movie compelling. In hindsight, I think I was too young to get it, and too much a child of the times. Sure, I loved all that 60s music, but I was very much an 80s kid. I had no real context for understanding those angsty, 30-something characters, former college radicals coming to grips with their yuppiedom – and their mortality.
The only part of the film that captivated me – besides the Motown music – was its setting. The story unfolded in this quaint, back-watery Southern town, trimmed with golden marshes and sunlit bridges. At the heart of it all was a sprawling white mansion, wrapped in deep porches and shadowed by bearded live oaks. This poetic setting captured my imagination, even if the story didn’t.
Fast-forward 40 years. I’ve just watched The Big Chill again. First time since college.
And this time, I got it. In fact, I kind of loved it. Not only am I now jaded enough to relate to its morally conflicted characters, but I’ve been living in Beaufort for 30 years, so the film now offers that warm, fuzzy feeling of home.
But as I learned while researching this article, Beaufort’s relationship with The Big Chill has, at times, been more prickly than fuzzy. There were bumps along the way to the cozy marriage the town and movie now enjoy.
For instance, a headline in the September 16, 1983 issue of The Beaufort Gazette read: “The Big Chill gives Beaufort the Cold Shoulder.”
Apparently, despite shooting almost the entire movie in Beaufort, Columbia Pictures had announced that the film would not be opening here on September 30, when other cities throughout Georgia and the Carolinas were scheduled to receive it.
“Beaufort is not a key town,” Columbia Pictures’ office manager Avalene Magee told The Gazette, adding that she had no idea when the movie would be heading to our theaters.
The film had its big premiere in Atlanta – a week before that Sept. 30, 1983 opening – which seems ironic, since none of the scenes shot there, all flashbacks, actually made it into the final cut. Meanwhile, Beaufort – arguably The Big Chill’s brightest star – had to throw its own premiere the following November, when the film finally made its way here.
According to a column by longtime The Beaufort Gazette Features Editor Debbie Radford, the Historic Beaufort Foundation sponsored that local premiere at the Plaza Theaters. About 200 people came out to see the film and enjoy champagne, cheese, and “sweets.” The Gazette mentions no stars in attendance, but several locals who’d worked as extras were there.
Here’s the late Helen Harvey, discussing her big scene shot at the A&P. It seems she suffered the same fate as a young actor named Kevin Costner, whose part was edited out of The Big Chill:
“They called the night before the shooting and told me to be there at 6 o’clock the next morning. My hair was such a mess. So I got up and washed it at 4:30. There were a whole bunch of us there – Paige Surface and her little girl and others. We did the scene about 12 times, but just about everybody got cut out.”
The Island News’ photographer Bob Sofaly was working for The Gazette back then and remembers that very shoot.
“It was around Thanksgiving, I think, and I was driving down Ribaut Road and saw all this commotion at the old A&P, now the Piggly Wiggly. There were bright lights and people milling around. Even then, I had a nose for news, so I stopped to check it out. I had my camera bag with me, and they told me I could get some pictures before they started shooting.”
Sofaly remembers getting a shot of three men standing together on set. After taking the photo, he asked for their names and occupations, and began scribbling them into his notebook.
“The first guy told me his name, and said he was a sound engineer. The next guy was a makeup artist, I think. The third guy said, ‘I’m William Hurt.’ Not looking up from my notepad, I asked, ‘And what do you do?’ He stiffened his back, lifted his chin, put his hand in his shirt and said, ‘I … am an ac–TOR.’ That’s when I looked up. ‘Of course you are!’ I said. I was so embarrassed.”
Hurt was already a big name, having just starred in Altered States and Body Heat. “I felt like an idiot,” says Sofaly today, laughing. “But he was really nice about it, and really funny.”
Sofaly also remembers photographing Hurt and Kevin Kline as they were filmed jogging along Bay Street. “They had this camera on wheels with a sound boom on it. Looked like a rickshaw. Pretty cool.”
Sofaly was lucky he made it onto any Big Chill set. The filmmakers were not particularly eager for publicity.
An article published in The Beaufort Gazette in December of ‘82 was headlined: “Film production kept under wraps.”
The writer, Richard Matteson, described “an aura of secrecy” shrouding the production. He quoted the film’s publicity manager Larry Kaplan, who said, “The Tidalholm set is closed to any news coverage from The Beaufort Gazette to The New York Times.” According to the article, director Lawrence Kasdan didn’t want his actors getting distracted.
“Nearly 60 locals extras have been used for the scenes in the funeral segment of the movie,” Matteson went on to say. “They participate in the film both entering and leaving the church, the funeral ceremony, the burial and the interment. The wake was shot at Tidalholm.”
Of all the actors whose profiles were raised by The Big Chill, it is perhaps Tidalholm that gained the most fame. Its status as the historic Edgar Fripp House (c. 1853) and earlier appearance in The Great Santini notwithstanding, it is popularly known as “The Big Chill House” today and is a regular stop for downtown tourists.
According to Ron Tucker, president of the Beaufort Film Society, “Lawrence Kasdan came to Beaufort and fell in love with Tidalholm. Once he learned that the house had been used in The Great Santini – a film he really admired – he was convinced that this was the house he wanted for his film. ‘The bones of the house were fantastic,’ he said.”
Tucker, who runs the Beaufort International Film Festival, now heading into its 18th year, says The Big Chill was a very big deal for Beaufort as a filmmaking destination.
“When I send out recruiting information, whether it’s letters to filmmakers or to our special guests, I always mention that Beaufort was the location for more than 20 major motion pictures. I mention by name Forrest Gump, The Big Chill and The Prince of Tides, because of the 20 or more films, these three had the majority of the scenes shot in the Lowcountry.”
Dan Rogers of the S.C. Film Commission says The Big Chill was important not just for Beaufort filmmaking, but for all of South Carolina. In a Lowcountry Weekly interview last year, Rogers said, “The Big Chill told the film industry that you could go to a small South Carolina town and make a quality film. A film as popular as The Big Chill became a calling card for South Carolina. It gave producers a comfort level and gave the Film Commission a voice to say, ‘Here’s how they did it, and here’s how we can do it with your story.’”
“The Big Chill was not a big budget film,” says Ron Tucker, “especially compared to Forrest Gump or even The Prince of Tides, but it had a cult following from a 60s generation of people who could identify with the film, and that following continues today.”
The Big Chill has always belonged to that “60s generation” and probably always will. Though I’ve finally come to appreciate it, 40 years after its release, it still feels like a period piece to me, an artifact created for – and about – a generation not my own.
So, I was delighted to dig up a local column written by a card-carrying member of that 60s generation, and I think I’ll let him have the last word.
Writing for The Beaufort Gazette in 1993, 10 years after its release, The Island News’ own Scott Graber mused about The Big Chill and other movies made here, including The Great Santini and The Prince of Tides. (Forrest Gump was in production at the time.)
“Of these movies, I suppose the best of the bunch was The Big Chill,” wrote Graber in July of ‘93. “It had little to do with this area and there were few bigots or big daddys to clutter up a story that tried to make sense of the generation that came of age in the 1960s. There was clever dialogue; there was Motown music; and many of us thought we saw ourselves in one or more of the young actors.
“As we left the darkened theater, listening to ‘Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog,’ we were proud that Tidalholm would be displayed to a million or so other people who would probably say: ‘Where do you think they made that picture, Lurleen?’”
Margaret Evans is the editor of Lowcountry Weekly and co-publisher of The Island News. You can reach her at editor@lcweekly.com.
About THE BIG CHILL
Release date: Sept. 28, 1983
Producer: Michael Shamberg
Director: Lawrence Kasdan
Writers: Lawrence Kasdan, Barbara Benedek
Starring: Tom Berenger, Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum, William Hurt, Kevin Kilne, Mary Kay Place, Meg Tilly, JoBeth Williams.
Plot: A group of baby boomers, who attended the University of Michigan, reunite after 15 years at Tidalholm in Beaufort when their friend Alex dies by suicide.
Budget: $8 million (Source: The Numbers)
Box Office: $56.4 million– It’s the 15th highest grossing film of 1983 ($43,738,171), outearning such films as Terms of Endearment, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, Scarface, Sophie’s Choice, An Officer And A Gentleman and The Right Stuff. (Source: The Numbers)
Academy Awards: The film earned three Oscar nominations – Michael Shamberg for Best Picture, Glenn Close for Best Supporting Actress and Lawrence Kasden and Barbara Benedek for Best Screenplay – Written Directly For The Screen.
The Soundtrack: One of the film’s best known features is a popular soundtrack featuring many classic songs from the 1960s including Marvin Gaye’s I Heard It Through The Grapevine, The Temptations’ Ain’t Too Proud To Beg and My Girl, Aretha Franklin’s (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman and Three Dog Night’s Joy To The World.
Want to Watch? The Big Chill is available for purchase or rental through Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play and Vudu. You can stream it for free, however, at Pluto.
