The Thing Called Love

Miranda Presley is an aspiring singer/songwriter from New York City who loves country music and decides to take her chances in Nashville, Tennessee, where she hopes to become a star. Arriving after a long bus ride, Miranda makes her way to the Bluebird Café, a local bar with a reputation as a showcase for new talent. Although she arrives too late to audition for that week's roster, the bar's owner Lucy likes the plucky newcomer and gives her a job as a waitress.

By the café's second week of auditions, Miranda has become familiar with some other Nashville transplants who are looking to land a gig or sell a song. This includes sweet and open-hearted Kyle Davidson of Connecticut, moody but talented James Wright from Texas, and spunky Linda Lue Linden of Alabama. Linda Lue talks Miranda into sharing her motel room, which her mother is subsidizing. As the four friends struggle to find their place in the competitive Nashville music scene, both Kyle and James display a romantic interest in Miranda, but she is drawn to James in spite of his moody temperament.

James convinces Miranda to spend time together, partially under the pretense of writing music. They have a date ending with a kiss, but he does not follow through with a telephone call the next day. Days later they coincide in a recording studio, and he practically ignores her.

Convincing Kyle that a song he wrote is good enough to be sung by an established singer, Miranda helps him sneak the tape into a singer's car's tapedeck. Unfortunately, the police notice and apprehend them. The singer follows them, listening to the tape on the way. Enamored, she chooses not to press charges and tells Kyle she would like the song.

Out dancing on a double date with Kyle and Linda Lue and her boyfriend, Miranda line dances. James is called to perform his music, and for his second song, he asks her to help him sing it. Singing together, their chemistry is palpable. Kyle is visibly upset when Miranda tells him she is leaving with James.

They have a whirlwind romance. Miranda moves in with James, and in a few short days they take an impromptu road trip to Graceland. In a convenience store, he obtains a toy ring from a candy dispenser, and he proposes marriage. One of the clerks gets her brother to officiate a brief ceremony, and they return to Nashville married.

At the café that evening, James and Kyle come to blows over Miranda. The subsequent months, the newlyweds soon realize marriage takes work. They rarely see each other because of her odd sleeping hours and his isolating himself in his practice room.

James leaves Miranda behind to make his album for some months in Texas, what he always wanted to do. He realizes he left his heart with her, so he comes back to the Bluebird Café, seeking Miranda, but he learns that she has left for New York City.

Miranda returns and sings a new song which finally earns her a spot performing in the Bluebird, before tentatively reuniting with James. Kyle joins them as Linda Lue leaves for New York to try acting, and the remaining three discuss writing a song together.

The film was to have been directed by Brian Gibson but in September 1992 he left the project to make What's Love Got to Do with It and was replaced by Peter Bogdanovich.[4]

Bogdanovich says Phoenix approached Paramount to appear in the film. "He was brilliant to work with," said the director. "There were maybe two days during the 60-day shoot that I felt he wasn't as together as he was on other days. But one day, it was freezing cold and the other day, he took some kind of cold medicine that didn't agree with him. That was what I was told. But all the rest of the time, he was great... He was concerned with more than his own role. He was concerned with the overall picture, with the other actors and characters... He would have made a very good director.""[5]

The film focuses on the songwriters rather than the performers. "It's a different kind of crowd," said Bogdanovich. "More cerebral, less about the glitz."[6]

The film features cameos from Trisha Yearwood, Pam Tillis and Kevin Welch. River Phoenix wrote two songs including "Lone Star State of Mine"; Dermot Mulroney wrote one, and Sandra Bullock wrote lyrics for the song she performed. Bogdanovich admitted[7] the film had some similarities to Fame and Flashdance movies that became "kind of a genre of its own... We tried to play by the rules of that. {But} we also tried to play against that -- we tried to make it different from that kind of movie. We tried to walk a sometimes difficult tightrope."[6]

The film's soundtrack features twelve songs, all done by various country artists.

• The Thing Called Love at IMDb
• The Thing Called Love at the TCM Movie Database
• The Thing Called Love at AllMovie
• The Thing Called Love at Box Office Mojo