Plot Summary

Jill was everything from senior class president, drama club president, to editor of the newspaper. Sheik was a woodshop monitor. Two very different students, they still fall in love. John Sayles's film is a vivid portrait of first love during the 1960s.

Like Grease without the song and dance, Baby It's You is a coming-of-age story about two mismatched lovers--Jill (Rosanna Arquette), a popular Jewish student about to go to college, and Sheik (Vincent Spano), an Italian trashman's son nicknamed after a condom brand. Beginning with the characters' love affair in a New Jersey high school in the 1960s, the film doesn't stop at senior prom night; instead, the film follows their complicated relationship as Jill goes to a woman's college and Sheik attempts to make it as a singer in Florida. The film, which director John Sayles considers one of his most autobiographical, was the first picture he made with financing from a major studio. After viewing Sayles's cut of the film, Paramount wanted to reedit the film to focus only on the characters' romance in high school. Sayles threatened to take his name off the project, and after the studio cut of the film did not test better with focus groups, his version of the film prevailed. Featuring Arquette in her first starring role, Baby It's You is an unsentimental look at one cross-class relationship.