Reeling Backward: Fried Green Tomatoes (1991)

Fannie Flagg's best-selling novel about the empowering nature of female friendship made for comfort-food film vibes, though you have to sniff real hard to get a whiff of its lesbian subtext.

I saw “Friend Green Tomatoes” when it came out and liked it, as did a healthy population of mostly female ticket-buyers who made it a decent hit in 1991. Recently I came across Fannie Flagg’s best-selling novel upon which it was based at the library and devoured it with relish — even trying out some of the down-South recipes in the back of the book, supposedly straight from the kitchen at the fictional Whistle Stop Cafe.

Indeed, it spurred me to check out the movie again and do a little research. It was only then I learned it is a popular film with the LGBT community owing to its depiction of a warm, supportive lesbian relationship.

I don’t mean to come across as especially dense, but… did I miss something? Where are the lesbians in this movie?

Surely they’re not referring to Kathy Bates and Jessica Tandy, who teamed up as the headliners of this movie as the two most recent winners of the Best Actress Academy Award? I’m not sure audiences were ready to see Miss Daisy get driven by Annie Wilkes and her sledgehammer. What a misery of a thought!

I guess they mean Mary Stuart Masterson and Mary-Louise Parker in the flashback story of the proprietresses of the Whistle Stop Cafe? They who share nothing more intimate in the movie than a single longing glance — and a one-sided one at that — plus a kiss on the cheek?

Indeed, they do. Though having now experienced the movie again shortly after the book, and basking in its comfort-food vibes, I don’t think I’m out of line in saying you have to sniff pretty hard to catch a whiff of the lesbian subtext.

This is the straightest queer cinema you’re apt to find.

In this, the filmmakers follow Flagg’s lead in being super-duper coy about the exact nature of the relationship between Ruth Bennett (Parker) and Idgie Threadgoode (Masterson). Her prose casts them as the deepest of friends who end up throwing in together on the cafe as both had reached dead-end points in their own lives. Idgie winds up becoming a surrogate parent to Ruth’s son, Bud, after she (sorry, no spoiler warnings after 33 years) kicks off from cancer.

The novel and movie are set in the mid-1980s and take the form of old-timey yarns spun by Ninny Threadgood (Tandy), Idgie’s sister-in-law and now an old lady in a nursing home, to Evelyn Couch (Bates), a frumpy woman suffering the severest of middle-age crises. The book also intersperses clippings from The Weems Weekly, a one-woman newsletter chronicling the doings of tiny Whistle Stop, Alabama, and a few regular newspapers from the 19-teens through ‘30s.

The movie’s good, but the book is even better, fleshing out the main characters as well as the supporting ones, especially the Black family centered around Sipsey (Cicely Tyson) and her son, Big George (Stan Shaw). They wind up shunted pretty firmly to the background in the film as “the help.”

OK, I’ll give this to director Jon Avnet — mostly a TV guy before and after this movie — and screenwriter Carol Sobieski, who partnered with Flagg on the script: Idgie is pretty clearly depicted as a hardcore tomboy who lives for drinkin’, fightin’ and poker. She dresses in pants and vests, and strenuously bats away the woo pitched by the local menfolk, chiefly Grady Kilgore (Gary Basaraba), who you’d never pick out from the cadre of rednecks as being the sheriff except for the badge pinned to his sweat-stained shirt.

(And even that tiny totem he removes when acting as Idgie’s chief drinkin’ and pokerin’ partner at the den of ill repute down by the river.)

Ruth, by every traditional cinematic depiction, is a typical God-fearing woman who is attracted to men. As a teenager she is clearly smitten with Idgie’s older brother, Buddy (Chris O’Donnell) before he’s killed by a train, sending her back to her home in Georgie and the then-adolescent Idgie into a many-years depressive funk.

She returns for a summer at the behest of Idgie’s mother (Lois Smith), who needs someone to lure her daughter back into polite society. Idgie immediately warms to Ruth’s attentions, bringing her honeycomb she plucks bare-handed from a raging beehive inside the knot of a tree, which leads to her ever-after appellation as “the bee charmer.”

About that one barely-flirty scene: Idgie convinces Ruth to try some whiskey, and they end up taking a midnight swim in the river in their underclothes. This being the 1920s, that consists of neck-to-calf cami-knickers that are about as erotic as overalls. Idgie stares at Ruth with unabashed adoration, of which the recipient seems completely unaware, planting one chaste peck on the cheek before departing.

Ruth winds up marrying Frank Bennett (Nick Searcy), a charmer himself who turns out to be an abusive lout. Summoning Idgie to Georgie by a coded quotation of scripture in her mother’s obituary, Ruth flees to Whistle Stop with Frank’s baby in her belly. They form their own little ersatz family unit, and open the cafe that becomes the heartbeat of the tiny town.

Frank returns to Whistle Stop time and again to threaten — including once with his Ku Klux Klan buddies. This leads to a confrontation with Sheriff Grady, himself a Kluxer though of the more genteel variety, acquiescing to the ladies serving food to the local coloreds (their term) as long as it’s out the back door of the cafe and not sitting at the inside tables. Grady treats Frank’s crew as intercollegiate riffraff violating some unspoken rules about not pulling any pranks in their backyard.

Eventually Frank tries to claim his baby son and winds up dead. Georgia lawman Curtis Smoot (Raynor Scheine) comes sniffing around, can’t find any evidence to arrest anyone, but keeps circling back regularly for the BBQ and stern warnings. After five years, Frank’s truck floats up in the river and Idgie and Big George stand trial for his murder.

This acts as the framing device for Ninny’s recollections to Evelyn. We learn early on that Frank was indeed murdered, but the mystery of the exact hand that perpetrates is left to the end as a plot-driving device.

Bates and Tandy really don’t have a whole lot of screen time compared to the younger gals, though Evelyn acts as the emotional center of the story. She’s a recent empty-nester about age 50 suffering from anxiety manifesting itself as an overeating disorder. Her husband, Ed (Gailard Sartain) — not exactly in fighting trim himself — is not much help, every night making a beeline from the front door to the TV to watch sports, stopping just long enough to grab whatever plate Evelyn’s made for him.

In listening to Ninny’s stories, Evelyn finds increasing comfort and confidence — particularly identifying with the fiercely independent Idgie. She begins using Idgie’s declaration of the name of a fictional Amazonian queen, Towanda, as her rallying cry as she gradually knits the frayed strings of her life together.

Bates gets most of the movie’s best lines, and sells the hell out of them. “I’m too old to be young and too young to be old.” “I wish had the courage to get it over with and get really fat.” “I'll ban all fashion models who weigh under 130 pounds! And I'll give half the military budget to people over 65 and declare wrinkles sexually desirable.”

And, in probably the movie’s biggest laugh line, Evelyn gets her parking spot stolen by two young thangs who taunt that they’re “younger and faster.” She repeatedly slams Ed’s Ford LTD into their Volkswagen Beetle and retorts, “Face it, girls, I'm older and I have more insurance.”

The movie follows the book quite closely — unsurprising since Flagg co-wrote the screenplay — with the usual condensing of plot and contraction of the background characters.

I was glad they didn’t completely eliminate the figure of Smokey Lonesome, a vagabond hobo (their term) played by Tim Scott. He doesn’t play much of a role in the turning of the plot, but his unspoken love for Ruth stands as poignant counterpoint to Idgie’s even more closeted affections.

Two connected differences between book and film come right at the end. Ninny dies in the book, but in the movie she leaves the nursing home and goes back to Whistle Stop to find her home condemned and torn down. Evelyn rescues her from the roadside and invites her to come live with the Couches (over the feeble objections of Ed, now powerless before the might of Towanda).

They pass by the local cemetery and Ninny points out Ruth’s gravestone, where they find a jar of honeycomb and note from “the bee charmer.” Evelyn expresses her joy at the prospect that Idgie is still alive, which Ninny confirms with a wide, knowing grin. This left audiences (including me) with the distinct impression that Ninny and Idgie are the same person, and the old bag had just spent the last couple of hours pulling the wool over Evelyn’s eyes with tales of her own extravagant and probably embellished adventures.

By Ninny’s own brief account of her life, she married Idgie’s brother and raised her own son, who was born with special needs, until he died at age 30. Which would make Idgie/Ninny a reformed lesbian instead of merely an unrequited one.

I still admire “Fried Green Tomatoes” a lot. It’s a beautiful, warm, deliberately cornpone tale about the power women share in a society dominated by men. Entire generations of women have enjoyed the movie wile remaining wholly innocent of its Sapphic themes. I guess it’s a bisexual movie, as it can be enjoyed both ways.