Dinner and a Movie: ‘The Big Chill’ Reunites Our Past Selves

Welcome to our Dinner and a Movie series, where we feature nostalgic essays on some of our favorite films from the '80s and '90s, and share recipes inspired from movie moments.

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There is a child in a bathtub. He is probably around 3, debating the merits, mostly, of Three Dog Night’s Joy to the World. His father, Harold Cooper, played by an affable Kevin Kline, snaps along as the child begins to sing. A phone rings in the background.

Framed in the doorway of the bathroom, Sarah Cooper, a doctor (a young Glenn Close), answers, back to the camera. She returns the phone to the cradle, appears closer in the frame, tears dappling her cheeks, as the music crests: It’s Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” The camera cuts to a close-up of part of a leg, sock on, in preparation for a formal event. So begins one of the greatest ensemble films about postcollegiate life, 1983’s The Big Chill.

Clockwise from left: William Hurt, Meg Tilly, Jeff Goldblum and JoBeth Williams in a scene from 'The Big Chill,' one of the greatest ensemble films about postcollegiate life.

Courtesy Everett Collection

The movie is, on its face, a story about Alex Marshall, a friend of the Coopers from their University of Michigan days, who is played, theoretically, by Kevin Costner — a man who never actually appears on-screen. (Flashback scenes with Costner as Alex were filmed but subsequently cut from the picture.) Alex’s sudden death by suicide compels a pack of disparate friends to reunite for the weekend at the Coopers’ South Carolina compound.

‘The Big Chill’ Recipe

To honor this film, make this dish with spring onions and new potatoes to feast on with friends.

Skillet Roast Chicken

There is the actor, Sam Weber (Tom Berenger); the attorney and desperately uncoupled Meg Jones (Mary Kay Place); the unseemly journalist, Michael Gold (Jeff Goldblum); the disturbed Vietnam vet, Nick Carlton (William Hurt); the girlfriend of the recently deceased, Chloe (Meg Tilly); and the unhappy housewife, Karen Bowens (Jo Beth Williams). “He should be here,” Sarah Cooper laments, after one musical, magical meal at the family’s long table. “I feel like we should have had a chair for Alex.”

Alex’s absence allows for the framework of the movie, of course, for the dancing and the singing and the fighting and the chaos. The chair that does not exist for Alex is the genesis of the movie. Coming together after college is a moment to reevaluate. Are we the people we used to be? Do we still like each other? Did we ever? The Bill Chill, one might argue, is a multigenerational movie in this way. It twists the knife of nostalgia, reminds us of our best and worst selves, takes us back in time. It’s a film easily watched with parents and with children, many of whom can relate to its layered circumstances: Here is who we once were or who we thought we would be. Here is who we are now. Here is where we have landed.