General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

Nuts (1987 film)

Nuts is a 1987 American courtroom drama directed by Martin Ritt, starring Barbra Streisand as Claudia Draper, a high-priced Manhattan prostitute jailed on first-degree manslaughter charges who fights to be declared competent to stand trial rather than be committed to a psychiatric institution. The film is based on Tom Topor's 1979 play of the same name, with a screenplay by Topor, Darryl Ponicsan, and Alvin Sargent, and was produced by Streisand for Warner Bros.¹

Key fact	Detail
Release	20 November 1987, Los Angeles and New York openings; MPAA rating R¹
Source	Play Nuts by Tom Topor, debuted Off-Off Broadway at the WPA Theater in 1979¹
Director and writers	Martin Ritt; screenplay by Tom Topor, Darryl Ponicsan, and Alvin Sargent¹
Lead cast	Barbra Streisand (Claudia Draper), Richard Dreyfuss (Aaron Levinsky), Maureen Stapleton (Rose Kirk), Karl Malden (Arthur Kirk), Eli Wallach (Dr. Herbert A. Morrison)¹
Production	20 October 1986 to mid-February 1987; Warner Bros., Inc., a Barwood Films/Martin Ritt production¹
Box office	$30,950,002 domestic gross, $4,606,083 opening weekend²
Critical response	42% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer (26 reviews); 72% audience Popcornmeter³

Spoilers

Plot

In New York City, Claudia Draper is jailed on first-degree manslaughter charges after killing a client, Allen Green, who attacked her. At her competency hearing she meets Clarence Middleton, the lawyer hired by her mother and stepfather, Rose and Arthur Kirk, and punches him in the face in the courtroom; he resigns, and the judge assigns Aaron Levinsky, an attorney who happens to be present, to represent her.¹

Two psychiatric reports say Claudia is not competent to stand trial, which would leave her locked in the prison's psychiatric wing. Levinsky tells her they must get at least one psychiatrist to say she is competent, otherwise she will remain institutionalized. Claudia wants to take the stand herself; Levinsky advises against it, warning she has no idea what cross-examination can be like.¹

Psychiatrist Herbert Morrison, ward unit chief at New York County Prison Hospital where Claudia is held, testifies that she is not competent. The judge, Stanley Murdoch, moves the sanity hearing into a closed courtroom, where a series of revelations about Claudia's family history emerges.¹^•⁴ Arthur Kirk tells the court he became Claudia's stepfather when she was five years old, after her father walked out on them.¹ The film ends with a postscript stating that Claudia Draper was tried in the State Supreme Court, New York County, defended by Aaron Levinsky, and acquitted.¹

From stage to screen

Topor's play debuted Off-Off Broadway at the WPA Theater in 1979. Universal Pictures purchased the film rights and financed the play's move to Broadway at the urging of Stevie Phillips, a Universal executive who later served as the film's co-producer. Nuts opened on Broadway at the Biltmore Theater on 30 April 1980 to unfavorable reviews and ran for ninety-six performances. When the play opened in Los Angeles at the ninety-nine-seat Beverly Hills Playhouse on 6 August 1981, reviews were good and it transferred to the 348-seat L.A. Stage Company; Phillips said the Los Angeles success helped convince Universal, which had been skeptical after the New York reception.¹ The Broadway production starred Anne Twomey as Claudia, who was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play.⁵

A long development. Topor wrote the screenplay under his rights-sale contract, finishing it in 1981. Mark Rydell signed on to direct and co-produce a film budgeted at $10 million, but nothing came of the project; Topor later said Rydell's emphasis was on incest while his own was on power, and that successive drafts got worse.¹^•⁵ In mid-1985 the project transferred from Universal to Warner Bros., with Rydell still attached; Rydell said Universal had turned the project down because its subject matter, involving prostitution and incest, was "too hot to handle." Debra Winger was originally set to star before Streisand signed for $5 million.¹

In mid-March 1986 Rydell left the project after disagreeing with Warner Bros. on aspects of the film; the trade press cited "schedule, budgetary, and creative differences," and Rydell said he regretted not being able to work with Streisand. It was the second Streisand film he had walked away from, after A Star Is Born (1976). Alan Pakula read the script at Warner Bros.' request, but Martin Ritt signed on as director around April 1986.¹^•⁵

Production and casting

With Ritt aboard, the film became a major studio production with a budget a little over $20 million, Streisand receiving $5 million to star and $50,000 as a producer's fee.⁵ Richard Dreyfuss was set to play Aaron Levinsky, changed his mind to star in Tin Men (1987), then returned to the role; Dustin Hoffman was ready to sign for the male lead but Warner Bros. balked at his $5 million salary, and Paul Newman, Al Pacino, and Marlon Brando were also considered.¹

Filming ran from 20 October 1986 to mid-February 1987, with a week of exteriors planned in New York City before moving to soundstages at Warner Bros. in Burbank, California; because the story is a courtroom drama with many indoor scenes, most of it was shot on stages 15, 16, and 28 in Hollywood.¹^•⁵ Andrzej Bartkowiak was the cinematographer, Sidney Levin the editor, and Joel Schiller the production designer.¹ Streisand composed the music, arranged and conducted by Jeremy Lubbock; the songs include "Here We Are At Last," music by Streisand with lyrics by Richard Baskin, and the traditional raga "Sindhi-Bhairavi" performed by Ravi Shankar.¹^•⁵

Reception

The film opened in Los Angeles and New York on 20 November 1987 and grossed $30,950,002 domestically, with an opening of $4,606,083; Barbra Archives places it at about $31 million, alongside earners like A Room with a View and Raising Arizona that year.²^•⁵

Critics were divided. Roger Ebert, film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013 and winner of the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for criticism, gave the film two stars, writing that Streisand projects the character's crazed wildness well in the opening scenes but that the conventional courtroom structure cannot contain it, and calling the film "essentially just a futile exercise in courtroom cliches, surrounding a good performance that doesn't fit."⁴ Richard Corliss in Time praised Dreyfuss's performance and Ritt's craftsmanship but argued the film too often surrenders to the banalities of its genre, with Claudia's moral superiority too easy to spot.⁶ Sheila Benson in the Los Angeles Times was more positive, highlighting the "great savage exchanges" between Streisand and Dreyfuss and Streisand's set-piece flustering of the state's attorney, and noting Ritt's familiarity with the theme of social injustice.⁷ Desson Howe in The Washington Post called it a serious courtroom drama that puts society on trial, finding the villains easy scapegoats but the unfolding of the story well done.⁸

On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds 42% on the Tomatometer from 26 reviews, with an average rated review of 5.20/10, while audiences rate it 72% on the Popcornmeter from more than 2,500 ratings.³ Jeffrey Lyons, reviewing the home video release in 1988, called Streisand's portrayal one of the most compelling of her career and praised Dreyfuss as "positively electric" as her attorney.⁹

Themes and genre placement

The film's central question is who has the right to declare a person mentally incompetent: guilt or innocence is beside the point at the competency hearing, and Claudia's contention is that she is sane, while her parents and her doctor want her committed.⁷ The AFI Catalog classifies it as a drama with psychological subgenre and major subjects of incest, insanity, and prostitution.¹ The Numbers lists its subgenre as courtroom/legal drama, with plot points including child abuse, dysfunctional family, incest, killing in self-defense, and prostitution.¹⁰ Corliss read the character as another Streisand figure, like Yentl before her, a smart, sexy woman whose place of respect the men in power want to deny.⁶ Streisand herself said her own miserable relationship with her stepfather, in which she was abused emotionally though not sexually, drew her to the project.⁵

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026