On Tubi, I watched the 1985 TV movie Stone Pillow, directed by George Schaefer, written by Rose Leiman Goldemberg, and starring Lucille Ball as an unhoused woman named Florabelle, living on the streets of New York City for an unspecified amount of years, pushing her cart around full of her prized possessions. Daphne Zuniga played Carrie, a young social worker who just started her job in a shelter, and wants to know firsthand what life is like for homeless people. She meets Flora by chance, and Flora is stingy and doesn't want pity or any help from anyone. She thinks Carrie is a runaway, and Carrie doesn't correct her, essentially lying by omission.
Flora takes her under her wing, showing her around the streets, instructing her on how to eat fruits and vegetables out of the garbage, avoiding the cops when looking for a public place to sleep at night, and navigating the bureaucracy of shelters. She warns Carrie that her pretty looks will make her a target for predators, and instructs her to cover her hair up with a knit cap to hide her beauty so she wouldn't be taken advantage of.
The film's story goes through a whole 24 hours of Flora and Carrie moving from the streets to Port Authority to Grand Central Station, including finding a hidden underground at Grand Central where a lot of homeless people hide out, and a young man named Max, who is an accountant who volunteers to help people, is suspicious of Carrie, telling her about the troubles the other people have gone through and saying to her "You look like you slept in a bed last night." He also tries to warn Flora that Carrie may not be who she seems, as Flora confides in her a lot and sees her as a young girl to protect, but Flora brushes him off.
It was an interesting movie to watch, as Lucille Ball hadn't done much drama through her career, and this would be one of her last screen roles, aside from her 1986 show Life with Lucy, before she passed away in 1989. She is charismatic to watch, even not feeling totally convincing in the role because of her Hollywood celebrity preceding her, but it's still a good performance. When she tells Carrie about her past and how she became homeless, some of the story felt like it had some holes missing, but I could imagine that she may not be telling Carrie the whole truth and omitting some details to seem more sympathetic.
Daphne Zuniga was a rising star at the time, having been in The Sure Thing (1985) with John Cusack, and Modern Girls (1986) with Virginia Madsen, and would go on to greater fame with Spaceballs (1987) and her run on Melrose Place in the 1990s. She's fine in this, especially as a relative newcomer opposite a veteran star, and it's nice watching them act together onscreen and form a bond over one long day and night.
The film has some notable actors in small roles, like Anna Maria Horsford (Friday, The Wayans Brothers) as a fellow social worker; Stephen Lang (Avatar; Last Exit to Brooklyn) in a bit role; Victor Raider-Wexler (The King of Queens) as a delivery man who sneaks fruit and vegetables to Flora; Raymond Serra (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) as a shop owner, and Mike Starr (Dumber & Dumber) as a man in the alley who warns the women about the threat of rapists.
The movie makes good points when others who can see through Carrie's deceit that her trying to pretend to be homeless is insulting to actually homeless people, and twice they explain to her that they aren't different from her, and a few missed paychecks or a run of bad luck could put her in the same situation, as others she meets had lost their homes due to fires, missed welfare checks, medical issues, and being kicked out of rooming houses and not having an address to collect Social Security checks. As this film was made during the Reagan era, it's likely that many did become unhoused due to economic changes, a butterfly effect still being felt today, So even if the film is wrapped up with a happy ending that feels a little forced, it's still a decent movie about unhoused people with both an up and coming actress and a Hollywood veteran paired together.
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