The Back Roads That Went Nowhere: Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones, and the Lost Ending of a Troubled 1981 Film

A Road Movie with Bumps Along the Way

Martin Ritt’s Back Roads (1981) was meant to be a gentle Southern road movie, the story of two broken people trying to find something like redemption. Sally Field plays Amy Post, a small-town sex worker with dreams of California sunshine. Tommy Lee Jones is Elmore Pratt, a down-and-out ex-boxer drifting through life. Together, they hitchhike westward, bonding through shared hardship and a flicker of hope.

But Back Roads is remembered today not for its tender story, but for what happened behind the scenes — an on-set feud between its stars, a last-minute reshoot that changed the film’s tone, and the lingering mystery of an unseen original ending.

“AFI’s records show Field flew from Miami in December 1980 so she and Tommy Lee Jones could film a ‘more upbeat’ ending — but the earlier cut itself remains, for now, unseen.”

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The Feud That Shaped the Film

Production on Back Roads was reportedly rocky from the start. Director Martin Ritt, known for actor-centered dramas like Norma Rae and Sounder, was reuniting with Field after her Oscar-winning performance in Norma Rae. But her chemistry with co-star Tommy Lee Jones was, by all accounts, non-existent.

Multiple reports, including the AFI Catalog, describe a shoot strained by the actors’ mutual dislike. Jones, then early in his film career, brought intensity and method precision. Field, an established star, preferred an emotional, intuitive process. Their clash was enough that Ritt later admitted the friction hurt the final product, saying he never quite got the balance of tone or performance he wanted.

The tension was so palpable that Field and Jones didn’t speak for decades.

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A New, “More Upbeat” Ending

The clearest documentation of behind-the-scenes changes comes from the AFI Catalog of Feature Films, which cites a December 17, 1980 Daily Variety article. That report states that Sally Field flew from Miami — where she was shooting Absence of Malice — back to Brownsville, Texas to film a new, “more upbeat” ending for Back Roads with Tommy Lee Jones.

The theatrical version that critics saw the following spring ends on a hopeful note: Amy and Elmore walking toward a brighter horizon, still bickering but somehow united. It’s a tidy send-off — one that mirrors the “upbeat” description in AFI’s report.

The change raises a simple but intriguing question: what did the original ending look like?

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The Lost Ending

So far, no record has surfaced describing the earlier ending in detail. No critic’s notes, test screening reports, or studio memos have turned up to reveal what was changed. There’s no deleted scene or alternate cut on any VHS, DVD, or Blu-ray release. Even AFI, which documented the reshoot, doesn’t include a synopsis of the prior version.

What seems likely — though unconfirmed — is that the first ending was more ambiguous, maybe even somber. Studios often replaced downbeat conclusions with something more audience-friendly in the early 1980s, when road movies and romantic dramedies were expected to end on optimism.

“The only evidence of the original ending is the space it left behind — a film that feels like it’s smiling through clenched teeth.”

Unless someone digs into the Daily Variety archives or the Warner Bros. / CBS Theatrical Films vault, the original ending remains unseen. Screenwriter Gary DeVore’s early drafts might also contain clues — though his papers, scattered after his mysterious 1997 disappearance, have never been fully catalogued. Read about his conspiracy laden disappearance, linked here.

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Reconciliation on a Different Road

Decades later, the two leads crossed paths again. Sally Field told Ellen DeGeneres in a 2013 interview that Tommy Lee Jones approached her at an event, apologized for how difficult he’d been during Back Roads, and they reconciled. Their reunion came full circle when Steven Spielberg cast them both in Lincoln (2012) — Jones as Thaddeus Stevens, Field as Mary Todd Lincoln — two performances that earned them Oscar nominations and renewed critical respect.

What began as a creative collision on Back Roads ended, appropriately, with two veterans sharing the screen again — older, wiser, and finally at peace.

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Why the Ending Still Matters

For film historians, the “missing” Back Roads ending represents more than trivia — it’s a snapshot of how Hollywood in the early ’80s was reshaping its tone. Studios were chasing lighter resolutions after a decade of cynicism and antiheroes. A little hope sold more tickets than heartbreak.

The mystery also endures because Back Roads was such a personal project for Sally Field. She fought for its realism, for a female lead who was tough but human. That her performance was reshaped at the eleventh hour — and that the film’s tone was altered to make it “upbeat” — tells us as much about the studio system of 1981 as it does about the actors themselves.

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Closing Reflection

Back Roads might never have been a classic, but it’s a fascinating artifact of its time — a movie made between two Hollywood moods, caught between grit and sentimentality. Its production tells a story about creative friction, about how two actors’ chemistry (or lack thereof) can change a film’s soul, and about how endings are often rewritten not for truth, but for comfort.

And somewhere, in a vault or a script drawer, there may still exist an alternate final scene — one that shows Amy and Elmore on a darker stretch of highway, before the studio turned them toward the sun.

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