Visit with Ninny - she'll share her stories and pictures.
Enter the Cafe to catch up on local conversation.
We'll keep it a secret if we find you being social-like in the River Club.
Evelyn has some special gifts she's eager to share with you in her Craft circle.
The Weem's Weekly reports on facts and flubs!
The General Store carries all of your reading, watching, listening and wearing needs.
Hop a train to more FGT-related sites from the Junction.
© 1997

FACTS

Fact
Submitted By
Ninny vs. Idgie : I have received many e-mails asking me whether or not Idgie and Ninny are the same person so I decided to describe my belief here. I respect the fact that other people have different opinions but I have read the book and seen the movie and from those experiences I can tell you that Ninny and Idgie are two separate people. When I first saw the movie I thought that Ninny was the grown Idgie as many other people did. You were supposed to think that. It was written that way. You see, (from what I understand) there were at least two different scripts written. The first was written by Jon Avnet who directed the film and the revision was done by Fannie Flagg. In Avnet's version Ninny was supposed to be the older Idgie. This element can still be seen in the final version by certain facts (i.e. Ninny doesn't seem to be present in the memories, she knows so much about Idgie and Ruth's relationship, she was the only one around who could have left the honey at Ruth's grave at the end and also because when her house is missing she is looking towards where Idgie and Ruth's house used to be and the grave for Stump's arm is where Ninny's front yard should have been). However, when Fannie Flagg revised the script she made sure to mention that Ninny was the wife of Idgie's brother Cleo. According to the book Idgie has many siblings but the only three we really see in the movie are Buddy, Julian, and Leona. Therefore we must assume that out of all those other people at the wedding and Buddy's funeral there must have been at least some of the rest of the siblings and young Ninny as well. (My FGT discussion group likes to label the young man in the Threadgoode house during the wedding preparation who is having his bow-tie fixed by a woman his age as Cleo and the woman as Ninny. You can see them in the background briefly once.) I do recommend reading Fannie Flagg's book for further clarification.
Erin
Peter Masterson, Mary Stu's father, wrote "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" for Broadway. Fannie Flagg starred in that show in its first run.
gj@csonline.net
Fannie Flagg and Kathy Bates collaborated on that masterpiece "I Was A Teenage Vampire" a few years before "Fried Green Tomatoes."
gj@csonline.net
Mary Stu got her Southern accent training during the stage play of "Lily Dale."
gj@csonline.net
"Juliette was a ghost town before the producers found it. The cafe was actually a General Store when the mill was running and later a Real Estate office. In 1991 it looked just like it did in the movie during the first scenes with Ed & Evelyn. That phone booth was placed there and all the leaves were brought in since it was filmed in June & July."
Jeff Clute (an extra in FGT) (CluteW@sti.imshealth.com)
"The few days I was there I watched them film the food fight between Idgie and Ruth. A huge air conditioning truck with a large hose was placed in the back door of the cafe since it was so hot in there. The food stylist at first didn't use any seasonings or salt and pepper when they cooked and all the extra's complained that the food was horrible, so they finally made it edible."
Jeff Clute
"The railroad tracks where Buddy got killed are no longer in use and the tracks are overgrown. The old wooden bridge that little Idgie and Ruth stood on was torn down and a new wooden bridge was built -- but it looks just the same."
Jeff Clute
"Back in Juliette in 1991 you could walk right across the railroad tracks and see the river and the dam that the 3 of them walked over. If you notice in the movie you never see their faces up close on the dam because the actors never actually walked on the dam. It was stunt doubles because that water was racing very fast."
Jeff Clute
"I remember the day they filmed the truck coming out of the river. It actually rained that day. Did you notice the night that little Idgie was sitting at the river and the lightening in the background? It was storming that night. That same night they also filmed Ruth & Idgie at the river -- drunk."
Jeff Clute
"They film the whole movie out of sequence. The first day of filming was Ruth & Idgie's food fight. They brought Cicley Tyson right to the front door of the Cafe in a limo while the other actors walked from their trailers. The second scene was Frank Bennett sitting in his truck reading the paper and looking at Big George chopping wood. That scene took forever because every time Big George hit the piece of wood his ax would go flying. So the prop men finally split the log into 4 pieces and then glued it together. If you watch the final scene, the wood breaks into 4 nice even pieces."
Jeff Clute
"Another funny story that happened on the set. You know when Idgie handed Smokey Lonesome that bottle of liquor. Well, the prop guys gave Mary-Stuart a huge bottle and it was weighting down her apron so badly that it looked silly. She marched up the street to the prop building and got a smaller bottle full of tea. It still pulled her apron down. I was standing there and being bold and silly and said, "dump half of it out so they know you were drinking it!" Everyone laughed and she dumped a bunch of it out!! Silly little tidbit but true."
Jeff Clute
The train tracks where Buddy meets his maker have been unused since the making of the film and had overgrown with weeds and grass. However, Neill Calabro, the creator of the in-production Juliette documentary, needed to film some scenes there for his re-enactments. So for the moment (2005) the tracks are tidy.
Neill Calabro
Know of any other interesting FGT Facts? Send them to me!