Mystic Pizza

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Mystic Pizza is a 1988 film directed by Donald Petrie and starring Annabeth Gish, Julia Roberts, and Lili Taylor as the three main characters: Kat, Daisy, and Jojo Araujo. The film is about the romance lives of the three, who all work as waitresses at Mystic Pizza in Mystic, Connecticut.

The movie also touches on an Old World work ethic. Kat and Daisy are sisters and rivals; the former works all the time and aspires to attend Yale University, while the latter just wants to have fun. Kat is the apple of her Portuguese mother's eye, while Daisy is not, as she is promiscuous, and is not as goal-oriented as her younger sister.

There is also a dynamic between the Anglo-American employer of Kat, who is Portuguese-American, and the resulting relationship between the two. The class distinctions and variant European heritages are explored to some extent in various scenes of the film. Vincent D'Onofrio and Adam Storke co-stars; Matt Damon has a small part in his screen debut.

Mystic Pizza (the restaurant) opened in 1973. Screenwriter Amy Holden was vacationing nearby and fell in love with the pizzeria while eating there and decided to make it the setting for a movie she was working on.