GWYGH, Ep. 006: All Hail Walmart (Janine's Notes)

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In our last episode, we watched Where the Heart Is (2000), starring Natalie Portman and Ashley Judd. While watching the movie, Janine took notes on the plot as it progressed. Basically, these notes are a stream of consciousness as Janine watched this movie, some of it copied from messages that she sent Kate during her torture. 

  • Tennessee to California! I’m from Tennessee :D
  • Natalie Portman looks so different
  • The whole car for 80 bucks!!!
  • “You and your fives” so she’s superstitious about the number five
  • That was a LOT of exposition in a few minutes
  • Natalie Portman’s accent isn’t so bad
  • I don’t know a single country guy who would wear a crop top tho
  • He litters through a hole in the bottom of the car haha
  • Natalie Portman has like dubbed snores over her
  • NOVALEE? NOVALEE? What kind of name is that
  • Her shoes fell through her hole
  • Okay, no the accent has gotten bad
  • Title drop! She asks him to feel her belly and then says “Feel that little bomp bomp bomp? That’s where the heart is”
  • “Ooh! Walmart! I can go to the bathroom!”
  • Keith David Williams! He’s the photographer taking family photos
  • Her change was five dollars and fifty five cents!!! Such bad luck! According to her superstition
  • She walks out and finds out her baby daddy left
  • “Are you alright?” NO I’m not alright, my boyfriend left me!
  • Some woman mistakes Novalee for someone else
  • “Home is where your world begins, home is where they’ll catch you when you fall.”
  • This woman (Sister Husband) has the philosophy of handing out the bible one chapter at a time so people “deal with their confusion as it comes” which is like, very similar to how i’m reacting to this weird movie
  • Sister Husband gives Novalee a basket of random stuff as well as a buckeye tree
  • Keith David Williams asks Novalee if she wants a picture of her baby and she’s like “um it’s still in there” and he has to clarify he means afterwards
  • HIS NAME IS MOSES. Wow.
  • “Give that baby a name that means something”
  • Wow this Wal-Mart actually closes at 9 pm. What a trip
  • I did not think we were gonna see the boyfriend again tbh. But now it switches to him driving down the road - he sees a girl working on her car and he’s such an asshole
  • OH she also looks like a fifteen year old, he has a type obviously
  • Novalee walks out of the bathroom and realizes the Walmart is closed so she wanders around the aisles holding her buckeye tree
  • This walmart is like -- chock full of baby stuff which i had never seen before
  • She starts working out with free weights? Why? Maybe the mothering magazine she was reading said to do that
  • She steals some chips ahoy and chocolate milk
  • Back to the boyfriend, he takes money from the girl he picked up and hides it in his pants and says she should come and take it from him
  • The cops pull them over, apparently that girl stole all that stuff from a 7/11
  • OH shit that girl was fourteen! Haha fuck you boyfriend guy go to jail
  • Back to Novalee, she’s hiding from the night janitorial staff
  • Next day, she’s chilling on a park bench
  • Boyfriend is in jail
  • Novalee is sleeping in a camping display
  • OH it wasn’t a camping display, she’s just good at opening stuff and putting it back the next morning
  • She keeps a tab of all the things she owes Walmart
  • Novalee sees across the street is Sequoyah Public Library! She’s gonna get herself some learning
  • This the worst research interview ever, this librarian is really aggressive “What KIND of book about trees?”
  • Holy shit this librarian is an asshole
  • Novalee leaves and goes to look up Sister Husband, who immediately lets her in
  • Sister Husband asks forgiveness in her prayer for fornication
  • Oh okay so sister lets us know that Forny, that guy from the library, is not actually a librarian - he just “lives in the library.” So he’s an asshole but at least he’s not a librarian
  • Forny sees her walking into the Walmart!
  • Novalee wakes up in the middle of the night, and her water breaks, she’s about to have this baby
  • She falls over and realizes she’s in aisle five, so she crawls down to one aisle over
  • Forny jumps through the window? He heard her screaming I guess? That’s crazy! But okay
  • Novalee wakes up in the hospital and the nurse lets her know she’s a celebrity
  • The nurse calms her down by giving her baby for her to hold
  • “Americus? How’d you come up with a name like Americus?” the baby’s name is AMERICUS NATION. Wow.
  • She was living in the walmart for SIX WEEKS!
  • Novalee opens up some mail with her nurse friend
  • Novalee’s mom shows up (her mom ran away, it’s part of her tragic backstory)
  • “All the pricks, they move to California. They oughta call it Prick-a-fornia.” her awful mom dishes some truth
  • The president of Walmart gave her $500 and offered her a job at any Walmart in the country.
  • Her mom is going to steal that money, isn’t she. Yep. She doesn’t show up the next day.
  • Sister Husband comes to save the day by offering Novalee a place to stay
  • Novalee comes by the library to visit Forny and let her see the baby
  • Aw, Moses (The photographer) gave her a nice camera to use!
  • Forny actually legitimately does live in the library, he’s taking care of someone who lives upstairs (maybe his mom?)
  • Of course the asshole boyfriend is a songwriter
  • The awful people who called her baby an abomination drove up to visit her and sister Husband sent her away which is nice!
  • She parks her car at a garage and he comes out to yell at her, but of course they’re smitten with each other
  • He looks SUPER familiar
  • Novalee is apparently knocked up again . . . “Didn’t he use anything?” “Just me.”
  • Novalee is trying to learn photography and Forny is helping her find the books she needs
  • She goes to the bathroom and finds out she’s not pregnant
  • Forney tries to hit on Novalee and ask if she has a boyfriend but she says she’s done with guys
  • She follows Forney upstairs to see what he’s doing
  • He’s taking care of his sister - she’s the librarian, she’s apparently a drunk
  • She buys the same camera at a yard sale that the photographer Moses has which is cool
  • Novalee tells him she wants to be a photographer
  • The boyfriend got out of jail
  • Forney and Novalee go to pick up a Christmas tree!
  • Forney says to her, “Americus is five months old today” Novalee freaks out because of her superstition
  • SOMEONE STOLE THE BABY!!!
  • I’m guessing it’s the people from Midnight, Mississippi (the ones who called the baby an abomination)
  • Hell yeah called it
  • Novalee talks to Forney and wonders if she deserves what happened to her baby because she wasn’t married when she had the baby, and Forney is very sweetly about to tell her that she deserves everything she wants but gets cut off by a passing police car
  • The baby is in a manger outside a church
  • Forney gets arrested for pushing a police officer out of the way for Novalee
  • The boyfriend is named Willy Jack Pickens
  • He goes to perform for Joan Cusack’s character Ruth Meyers, who must be some sort of agent
  • She renames him Billy Shadow, gives him a roll of quarters to put in his jeans to make a bulge
  • Three years jumps by as he’s trying to build his music career
  • He’s on the radio now and Sister and Americus are singing along with his voice
  • Novalee is a wedding photographer now! That’s nice
  • There’s a tornado so they have to go out to the cellar, but Sister went out to give someone some soup and hasn’t come back yet
  • Novalee steps out of the cellar and sees a huge tornado, so she has to go back into the cellar, but she can’t shut the door so she ends up just holding onto the stairs as the tornado tries to pull her away
  • Americus almost gets pulled away into the tornado
  • Sister died :( You find out by Novalee writing in the family bible the deaths
  • Novalee takes a nice photo of Americus on the rubble of the house
  • They had to open a new Walmart a town over because of the tornado damage
  • Nurse friend tells Novalee that Forney is obviously in love with her and doesn’t want her to move away
  • She doesn’t think Forney loves her because he’s been to college
  • A friend from Sister’s Alcoholic Anonymous meetings gives Novalee the information that Sister left her everything! So Novalee doesn’t have to move
  • They build a new house on Sister’s land
  • Ugh, we go back to the boyfriend
  • Novalee and the boyfriend are at the same hotel! But they don’t notice each other
  • Novalee won a photography prize!
  • This movie would have been like a half hour shorter if they had just avoided this stupid boyfriend plotline
  • Novalee comes back home and takes a cute pic of Forney and Americus
  • She’s realizing she likes him
  • Novalee gets a call from Brownie (one of her nurse friend’s kids) and a something has happened, so she drives over to the house
  • Oh no :( Lexie (nurse friend) got beaten up by her new boyfriend, so she and Novalee move in together
  • OH SHIT Lexie’s boyfriend is a child rapist! What the fuck. He was molesting Lexie’s kid when Lexie came first
  • “How did he find me Novalee? How did a man like that find my kids? He had to be lookin’! He was lookin’ for women like me, who are alone with children, and women who are stupid.” Holy shit this is like. Really dark
  • Forney’s sister died, and Novalee finds Forney in a hotel room later because he couldn’t bear to be at the funeral. He says he has to go away for a while because he needs to take his sister to the funeral plot back in Maine
  • Poor, sensitive Forney :( I love him
  • Novalee comforts him, and then they kiss, oh and then have sex. But it was very sweet
  • Afterwards, Forney says he loves her and Novalee’s face is like WHAT
  • Lexie is going to a psychologist now which is good, but she’s already just planning on dating again
  • Novalee is taking photos for the local teams too! That’s nice
  • Except Roy, the lawyer from AA meetings, says that Forney should probably get out of here and have a normal life, which makes Novalee feel bad
  • NOOOOO FORNEY AND NOVALEE ARE BREAKING UP
  • Forney asks if Novalee loves him and she says no, that she doesn’t love him that way
  • WHAT IS GOING ON HERE
  • I’m guessing she’s pushing him away because she wants him to go to Maine and have a normal life
  • Lexie and Ernie the exterminator get married! Which is nice because he seems to be a genuinely good guy
  • Lexie is knocked up again - which is like, what? Use . . . a condom? PLEASE, someone in this movie, use a condom
  • Back to the boyfriend, since his fall from grace he’s addicted to pills and whiskey
  • He wanders onto the train tracks and gets run over (just his legs probably)
  • Now it’s Americus’s fifth birthday!
  • Novalee finds a newspaper story about her boyfriend’s wheelchair being stolen
  • So they meet back up at the hospital, and for some reason, they decide to reconnect I guess, which makes me angry, because NOVALEE DESERVES FORNEY
  • Okay apparently they didn’t like, get back together, they’re just connected again
  • Novalee shows up on Forney’s campus and admits that she lied, and says she lied because he deserved better -- and he says “Novalee, there’s nothing better than you” which is nice!!
  • Then they get married. IN the Walmart, of course . . .