Vitals

Jeff Daniels as Charlie Driggs, buttoned-up investment banker

From Pennsylvania to Virginia, June 1986

Film: Something Wild
Release Date: November 7, 1986
Director: Jonathan Demme
Costume Designer: Norma Moriceau

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Happy 70th birthday to Jeff Daniels, the versatile actor who may be one of the few talents that could effectively transition from playing a decorated Civil War general one year to Harry Dunne in Dumb and Dumber the next. The actor rose to prominence through the ’80s with back-to-back Golden Globe-nominated performances in The Purple Rose of Cairo and Something Wild.

“Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild is a lot of things—Renoirian screwball, Gen-X The Odd Couple, defense for the reggae mixtape—but it’s a road movie first and foremost, and it introduces its lead, Charlie Driggs, as a man untraveled. Played with dopey precision by Jeff Daniels, Charlie is a golden retriever of a Reaganite, eager to climb the ranks of his job on Wall Street and content with the grass on his side of the fence. Building a career in the big city implies some degree of worldliness, but Manhattan can be deceptively hermetic,” writes Christian Craig at Bright Wall/Dark Room. Continue reading →