Untamed Heart

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Untamed Heart
movie poster for Untamed Heart
Directed by	Tony Bill
Produced by	Tony Bill Helen Buck Bartlett
Written by	Tom Sierchio
Starring	Marisa Tomei Christian Slater Rosie Perez
Music by	Cliff Eidelman
Cinematography	Jost Vacano
Editing by	Mia Goldman
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date(s)	February 12, 1993
Running time	102 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Untamed Heart is a 1993 film starring Christian Slater and Marisa Tomei. It mixes drama with romance and comedy and tells the story of a young woman, always unlucky in love, trying to find happiness with a very shy young man. The film is directed by Tony Bill and written by Tom Sierchio. The original music score is composed by Cliff Eidelman.

1 Plot summary
2 Characters
3 Production
4 Quote
5 Critical responses
6 Trivia
7 External links

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Caroline (Tomei) is a young woman working as a waitress who is always unlucky in love. Adam (Slater) is a shy busboy who saves Caroline when two men try to rape her on her way home one night. She then gets to know him. They become close, but she finds out his past, and the attackers come after Adam for revenge. As their relationship progresses, Caroline discovers that Adam has a heart defect, though he claims he has a baboon heart.

[edit] Characters

Caroline - Marisa Tomei
Adam - Christian Slater
Cindy - Rosie Perez
Howard - Kyle Secor
Patsy - Willie Garson

[edit] Production

Tony Bill discovered Tom Sierchio’s screenplay for Untamed Heart during one of his talent hunts. He asked an agent at William Morris to send him screenplays from new writers. Originally, Sierchio’s screenplay had been submitted as a writer’s sample. Bill showed the screenplay to producer Helen Bartlett who suggested that they option it. Within two weeks of Sierchio handing his script to his agent, MGM had greenlighted the project.

Initially, Bill had not considered Christian Slater for the role of Adam, “but then it was just the obvious choice."^[1] For the role of Caroline, Bill remembered auditioning Marisa Tomei for his earlier film, Five Corners. She had been too young for that role but after her success with My Cousin Vinny, he knew she was right for this film.

Sierchio’s screenplay was originally set in New Jersey but for logistical reasons they could not shoot there. The filmmakers considered finding a location to double for the state but while Bill, Bartlett and Sierchio were scouting in Minneapolis, they realized that it was the perfect place because of its strong acting community (they cast 35 of the film’s 40 roles from it) and a large commercial producing community which allowed them to utilize a mostly local crew.

The city’s locations were also a strong factor in deciding to shoot there. The centerpiece was Jim’s Diner which actually existed at the time of production. Bill said, “It had a wonderful combination of ingredients from every diner you’ve ever been to; we’ve done very little to change it for the film. In fact, we changed the original name of the diner in the script to reflect that it is Jim’s."^[2]

Principal photography began in March 1992 amidst cold temperatures. However, several scenes in winter were shot in May and fake snow had to be created to maintain the illusion.

Tomei wanted to have a believable regional accent and chose a driver who was from the area and could act as her “dialogue coach.” Once she got the accent down, she continued to speak in it on and off the set.

[edit] Quote

Caroline: He doesn't make sense, I don't make sense, together we make sense.

[edit] Critical responses

Roger Ebert, a film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times felt that the movie was "kind of sweet and kind of goofy, and works because its heart is in the right place."^[3] Hal Hinson of The Washington Post said that the film "is hopelessly syrupy, preposterous and more than a little bit lame, but, still, somehow it got to me."^[4] Vincent Canby of The New York Times, said that the movie "is to the mind what freshly discarded chewing gum is to the sole of a shoe: an irritant that slows movement without any real danger of stopping it."^[5]

[edit] Trivia

Originally the film was entitled, The Baboon Heart in honor of an infant named Baby Fae (born 14 October 1984) who received a cross-species heart transplant from a baboon to fix a congenital heart defect.
The movie was filmed in Minnesota with many recognizable Northeast Minneapolis landmarks featured.