Blue City (film)

A young man, Billy Turner, returns to his hometown of Blue City, Florida, after five years away. He gets into a bar fight and is thrown in jail. Then, he learns that his father Jim, the town's mayor, was killed while he was gone. The chief of police, Luther Reynolds, tells Billy that the police did not find the killer but that Perry Kerch, Jim's widow Malvina's business partner, was a suspect. Billy decides to start his own investigation. He meets with his old friend, Joey Rayford, who refuses to help him. Billy then meets with Kerch. Kerch says that he did not kill Jim and then has his thugs beat up Billy. Billy talks to Joey again, and Joey agrees to help him take down Kerch. Billy blows up Kerch's car and robs Kerch's thugs of money. Joey's sister, Annie, does not approve of what Billy and Joey are doing, but they refuse to stop. Billy gives Annie a ride home, and they have sex. Afterwards, they start a relationship with each other. Annie, who works at the police station, starts to help Billy with investigating Jim's murder. Billy and Joey go to a club that Kerch owns, beat up the workers, and wreck the club. Kerch and Reynolds both continue trying to get Billy to leave town, without success. Billy, Joey, and Annie get lured to a motel. Kerch's thugs arrive, a gunfight ensues, and Kerch's thugs are killed. Reynolds forces Billy to leave. After he leaves, he learns that Joey was shot and killed. Billy returns and goes to confront Kerch at Kerch's house. Reynolds shows up, as well, and kills Kerch and his thugs. Then, Reynolds shoots Billy and reveals that he killed Jim. Billy fights and kills Reynolds. The police arrive, everything is sorted out, and Billy and Annie leave town on Billy's motorcycle.

In addition, The Textones (Carla Olson, Joe Read, George Callins, Phil Seymour and Tom Morgan Jr.) appear in the film, performing their song "You Can Run".

Summarize Timeline Fact Check

The novel by Ross Macdonald was originally published in 1947.^[3] It was compared to the work of Dashiell Hammett, in particular Red Harvest.^[4] Walter Hill wrote the script with Lukas Heller and was originally intended to star a leading man in his mid-30s but by the mid-1980s, a number of popular young male actors had emerged, so the script was rewritten to accommodate one of them. The lead in the original novel, John Weather, was a man in his early 20s, although a war veteran.

Hill handed over directing duties to first-timer Michelle Manning. She previously worked with Ally Sheedy and Judd Nelson on The Breakfast Club as a producer.^[5] Her The Breakfast Club co-producer was Ned Tanen and when he took over as head of production at Paramount, the studio agreed to finance Blue City with Manning's direction.^[6]

"I don't think I'll become Samantha Peckinpah", said Manning, "but I don't think as a woman that I should have to make a movie with girls in locker rooms putting on make up."^[5] Manning did admit being a woman director meant "You're under a microscope. You suddenly become a media event for no good reason."^[7]

This was the first film Nelson made since St. Elmo's Fire. He had taken a year off to appear in several plays. "It's the first part ever that I didn't have to audition for", he said. "Instead of having to make the rounds and go to casting calls and auditioning with hundreds of other guys, suddenly my agent has more offers coming in than I can possibly handle. I'm in a position where I can actually turn a job down. It's a strange experience."^[8]

Nelson reflected on his role:

Cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers. That's the way Billy Turner sees it--it's good guys and bad guys. He's the misunderstood hero now. What, is he out of his mind? He doesn't even know what`s going on. Billy Turner is supposedly on a quest to find out who killed his father, but as soon as he gets a gun in his hand, it's like: 'Hey--I've got a gun in my hand!' It's a little like real life--sometimes you don't know what you're supposed to be doing, even when you're doing it.^[9]

"I think it's very exciting that a woman would direct a film of the Peckinpah mode rather the sweet, postman- falls-in-love-with-the-divorcee mode", said Nelson. "I think it could have been filmed in black and white with a blue tint. I think that would have been the coolest."^[10]

David Caruso had made a number of films for Paramount – An Officer and a Gentleman, Thief of Hearts – and said they specifically crafted his role for him.^[11]

Principal photography started in February 1985.^[5] The film was made at the height of the popularity of the Brat Pack. Manning said of them:

These actors function on three levels. As professionals, they're totally devoted, totally relentless, totally driven. In the public social scene, like at the Hard Rock Cafe, they have to deal with people coming up to them, asking for autographs, pulling on their clothes. And in the privacy of their homes, they're completely relaxed, and they're just kids. But they all want so much to grow as actors. They all so much want their careers to grow. And it scares them all, the idea that tomorrow this could all end. I mean, it could all just be over. They want so much to be doing the same thing when they're forty, and who's to say? Will the trend then be to make movies with forty-year-olds?^[12]

Preview audiences disliked the movie's ending so it was reshot.^[13]

The motorcycle used is apparently the same 1978/9 750cc Triumph Bonneville T140E used by Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman (1982) in which David Caruso also appeared.^{[citation needed]}