Where the Heart Is 1990

Stewart McBain Dabney Coleman is a self-made demolitions expert who blows up buildings for a living. During one project, a group of protesters stops the last building on the lot, the Dutch House, from being demolished. When he appears on TV to dismiss the protests, he comes off as foolish, and the moment is broadcast, leaving a mark on his credibility. Returning home, his three college-aged children – Daphne McBain Uma Thurman, Chloe McBain Suzy Amis, and Jimmy David Hewlett – ridicule him for his television appearance and the family’s dynamics begin to fracture.

Feeling his children are spoiled, McBain kicks them out of the house. Giving each of them $750, he drops them off at the Dutch House, a dilapidated building on the edge of collapse. Jean, their mother, Joanna Cassidy, tries to stop him but her pleas go unheard, and the family begins to drift apart as his wealth evaporates.

To survive, the kids take on roommates: Lionel Crispin Glover, a fashion designer; Shitty Christopher Plummer, a homeless magician; Tom Dylan Walsh, a stockbroker; and Sheryl Sheila Kelley, an amateur occultist. Chloe is commissioned to finish a calendar for an insurance company, and the siblings use their new guests as part of the art, with Lionel designing outfits and Chloe staging murals that incorporate the roommates’ bodies into ethereal trompe l’oeil walls—murals that blur the line between sculpture and illustration.

A stock market crash arrives, with Tom chiefly responsible for McBain’s stock plummeting, bringing McBain to ruin. He desperately attempts to stave off a hostile takeover of his demolition company, but he fails. Jean returns to the Dutch House, hysterical, as he loses their home and they become destitute.

McBain disappears into the city, sleeping in the homeless cardboard box shanty town and scavenging in the dump the next day. Ultimately, his children take him in after Sheryl finds him, and he starts to see the world in a new light.

Evicted from the Dutch House after they have all helped Lionel with his dresses and Chloe with her calendar, the homeless shelter turns the McBains and friends away. Jimmy has an epiphany during a thunderstorm, when the Dutch House is structurally unsound, to use his father’s demolition skills in a constructive way. The family recovers their properties and wealth, but they have learned to live more simply and to value resilience and togetherness over material security.