Used People. (movie)

Unlike the well documented historic personage of Malcom X, fictional, unexceptional middle-class characters living in Queens, New York, circa 1969, provide Used People with its title. Costome designer Marilyn Vance-Straker did not have the archival material at her disposal that Ruth Carter did on Malcolm X; what she did have, among other resources, was her own history.

"It was just like my family back on the East Coast," Vance-Straker, who resides in Hollywood but hails from Brooklyn, says of the film's cast of mostly female characters. Shirley MacLaine stars as Pearl Berman, a recently widowed Jewish woman being ardently pursued by an Italian bar owner (Marcello Mastroianni). Appearing as Pearl's troubled daughters are Kathy Bates and Marcia Gay Harden, while Jessica Tandy is cast as Pearl's opinionated mother, who spends her days comparing ailments and playing cards with a long-time friend (Sylvia Sidney).

"My mother, God rest …