How do you feel about a character like Grady Kilgore, Whistle Stop sheriff, member of the Ku Klux Klan, and friend to Idgie and Ruth at the same time? Both her children had passed her by. Her daughter, Janice, had known more about sex at fifteen than Evelyn did at this very minute. Something had gone wrong. Crazy, wayward, boozy Idgie was another fascinating character – her love for Ruth was absolute. Her path was no easier than Evelyn’s. But she was equally lovable. I would have liked to have sat down and had a pint of best bitter with Idgie, it’d be a riot:

I am running out of words to describe how good Fried Green Tomatoes was. It may be two or three minutes too long, but other than that, there is very little wrong with this film. The film is amazing to look at, with gorgeous scenery and cinematography, and the score was beautiful. Fried Green Tomatoes also has an intelligent and heart-warming story, strong direction and some charming, funny and touching dialogue as well. The ending was suitably uplifting, but I admit I did shed a tear, mostly because I was so impressed by how beautiful the film was. a b Colussi, Mary (May 8, 2021). "14 Queer Characters Who Got "Straightwashed" Into Heteronormativity By Hollywood: 3. Idgie and Ruth — Fried Green Tomatoes". BuzzFeed . Retrieved May 17, 2023. Zganjar, Leslie (November 3, 2002). "The Whistle Stop name is just too popular". Birmingham Business Journal . Retrieved December 28, 2009. Flagg’s book never calls Ruth and Idgie lesbians — and Evelyn doesn’t ask Ninny to label them, either — but it does make it a fact that they are a couple. In that sense, there are some key differences between the book and the movie (adapted by Flagg, Carol Sobieski, and Avnet, who didn’t receive a credit). Ruth never dates Buddy in the book, for instance — she and Idgie meet only after Mama Threadgoode asks Ruth, a family friend, to come help her rescue Idgie, who has gone off to mourn Buddy by the River Club (and sometimes into the arms of Eva Bates, who is played in the movie by Grace Zabriskie, though her character in the film barely registers. “Eva didn’t know about a lot of things, but she knew about love,” writes Flagg, as Eva takes a bereft Idgie into her bed).

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Ninny says she was an orphan raised by the Threadgoodes, and that she eventually married one of their sons. She principally talks about the youngest daughter, Imogene "Idgie" Threadgoode, an unrepentant tomboy who became reclusive after her brother, Buddy, was killed on the railway. The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop is purely for fans of the first novel or the movie. The plotline is much thinner than the original and would not be interesting to someone new to the story. 3.5-Stars rounded up to 4. For those of you who have seen the movie, how do the movie and the book compare? What is missing from the movie and why do you think this is so? Do you think the choices made in terms of how to streamline this complex novel for film were the best ones? Spray the basket of an air fryer with cooking spray then place the coated green tomatoes in the basket and spraying again.

I truly feel that Fannie Flagg wrote this book for her fans, those of us who have read all of her books, as a way of tying everything together. She catches us up on all the popular characters from Fried Green Tomatoes, and I may have shrieked in delight when a character from Flagg’s other best selling series, the Elmwood Springs books, shows up in Whistle Stop! Fried Green Tomatoes was given a limited release in the United States on December 27, 1991, opening in five theaters. [2] It got a wide release four weeks later on January 24, 1992, in 673 theaters. It ran for 19 weeks in total, with its widest release having been 1,331 theaters. [2] Critical reception [ edit ]Rippier Wheeler, Helen (1997). Women & aging. Lynne Rienner Publishers. p. 196. ISBN 1-55587-661-7. Find CinemaScore" (Type "Fried Green Tomatoes" in the search box). CinemaScore . Retrieved February 18, 2019. The story is set in two different time periods. In the present, Evelyn Couch, a depressed Alabama housewife played by Kathy Bates, becomes friends with the vibrant, eightysomething Ninny Threadgoode (Jessica Tandy). They meet during Evelyn’s visits to her husband’s hostile aunt at the assisted living facility where Ninny lives (temporarily, Ninny tells Evelyn). Ninny starts talking to Evelyn about her memories of Whistle Stop, Alabama — a smidge of a town that existed only because the trains stopped there. At first, Evelyn is a reluctant audience, indulging Ninny only out of the Southern politeness that generally imprisons her. But she soon becomes enthralled, and then she becomes inspired — and changes her life. But, as those of us who know, once you’ve ‘been to’ Whistle Stop, once you’ve met those characters, they continue to live inside of you for long after. This isn’t a story you’ll fall in love with for the beautiful prose, but maybe you’ll fall in love with the charm of a way of life that really no longer exists, and if not, I suspect you will fall in love with the people – at least most of them. I loved meeting the new characters, as well as seeing how the lives of the characters I already knew had changed. Idgie, for me, particularly so, as she remains one of my favourite characters, up there with the most memorably wonderful literary character, Ivy Rowe.