Eight Movies That Sent Us Down A Wikipedia Wormhole

After seeing Hollywood’s split version of events in Lovelace (2013), I became obsessed with the complex fabric of Linda Susan Boreman Marchiano’s very public and deeply misunderstood persona, Linda Lovelace. I immediately took to the internet to read every available review and feminist critique for and against the film, the woman, her legacy and the lies. I rushed out to buy her 1980 autobiography, Ordeal (I couldn’t even wait three weeks for it to hit bookstores, and ordered it express from the US; the postage was almost three times more expensive than book itself.) I’m still researching; there’s a lot more to Linda than the way Hollywood tells it.

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Dirty Dancing (1987)

Suggested by: Alasdair Duncan

A recent re-watch of Dirty Dancing brought a number of things to light: one) ‘Hula Hana’ is the most important musical sequence of all time, and two) the famous quote is “Nobody puts Baby in a corner”, and I’ve been incorrectly saying “the corner” all these years like a chump.

Realising I hadn’t seen much of Baby herself recently, I took to the internet to figure out what happened to actress Jennifer Grey. It turns out that, in the early ‘90s, Grey decided it was time for a nose job to ‘smooth out’ her distinctive honker. The procedure worked a little too well, altering her appearance so greatly that she became unrecognisable. “I went in the operating room as a celebrity and came out anonymous,” she later said. I also hit up IMDB and learned that Grey still does the odd bit of TV work — she was even in a Lifetime Movie version of The Bling Ring, aka the one that you didn’t see — but she’s no longer the big star she was in her Ferris Bueller and Dirty Dancing days. Pity.

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A Star Is Born (1976) 

Suggested by: Glenn Dunks

As an unapologetic Barbra Streisand fan, I’m not sure why it took me so long to watch her much-maligned but kinda entertaining remake of Judy Garland’s A Star Is Born (1954). The making of this movie should be a film itself! Did you know it was the first film to ever use “Dolby surround sound”? Or that Streisand originally wanted to cast Elvis as her lover? Or that director Frank Pierson penned a scathing indictment of Streisand’s diva antics before the film’s release (it went on to be the second-highest grossing film of 1976). Or anything from the epic fan-site ‘The Barbra Archive’, including that Streisand’s costumes came from her own closet? It’s exhausting!

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(500) Days Of Summer (2009)

Suggested by: Andy Huang

Although I can honestly say that my now dodgy quasi-pixie crop was the result of PTSD (Post Test Stress Disorder, which is a normal part of THSE, i.e. The High School Experience), I did go out and start listening to The Smiths, hanging around record stores, and yearning for a vintage ‘fixie’ bike after watching (500) Days Of Summer. I also begged my mother to let me dye my hair pink, which, in hindsight, she thankfully said ‘no’ to. (Good call, Mum. Thanks!)

Alright, I’m an absolute sucker for offbeat romantic indie flicks, okay? That said, I can understand why there are a lot of people in this world who totally hated the movie and, after some manic Googling and lots of review-reading, I’ve come to conclusion that most of it’s related to the Zooey Deschanel/”Summer Effect”, otherwise known as the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) phenomenon. Nathan Rabin, the then AV Club film critic and now of The Dissolve, is credited with coining the term to describe Kirsten Dunst’s bubbly flight attendant character in Elizabethtown. Since ‘07, this idea of the quirky girl with excellent taste in music, the walking wet dream of hopeless, brooding writer man-childs, has pretty much been written about and discussed to death, by Slate, Jezebel, AV Club (again), a passionate personal essay by New Statesman‘s Laurie Penny, and even inspiring this bizarre parody.

Come 2013, though, and the Manic Pixie Dream Girl has apparently died, according to NYMag. Well, I guess that’s that then. [Cue the violins]

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Sybil (1976)

Suggested by: Phoebe Loomes

A few months ago, I watched Sybil, a great film starring Sally Field. It’s about a woman who suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder, previously known as Multiple Personality Disorder. SO INTERESTING!

This led me to Wikipedia to read all about the real Sybil. This in turn led me to stories about the psychiatrists who claimed Sybil was a faker and her doctor a manipulator. Then I watched all three seasons of The United States Of Tara to learn more about Dissociative Identity Disorder. Then I downloaded all the available podcasts from major universities around the world (45 podcasts in total – here’s one from a Brisbane-based psychiatrist, and here’s a more personal account), and read countless case studies of people suffering with DID. And this is a great documentary.

I know a lot about it now.

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Zodiac (2007)

Suggested by: Elizabeth Flux

Zodiac is not a film that you should start watching at 11pm on a Thursday night. One hundred and ten minutes into what turned out to be one hundred and sixty two minutes of tense/Jake Gyllenhaal/unresolved murder-filled time, I decided to pause and pick the whole thing up again the following day. But before turning in to sleep, I needed to know how true-to-life this depiction of the ‘Zodiac killer‘ was.

Instead, I learned all about the Gein family tree, semi-memorised the names of Ted Bundy’s victims, and was halfway through the lore surrounding Elizabeth Báthory before it was light enough to allow me to sleep in somewhat peace. My beginners guide to code-breaking is still on its way.

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Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2013)

Suggested by: Matt Roden

I’m a big old dorky president nerd. I study American history, I do a mean impression of John Adams (by way of Paul Giamatti), I even own spoons commemorating the greatest achievements of Teddy Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson. So when The Butler was announced, I was very excited to watch a film where five or six American presidents would parade around on stage. And then I saw the casting, and I laughed and laughed all the way to Wiki to double check what I’d heard.

John Cusack as Richard Nixon? Liev Schrieber as L.B.J? Robin Williams as Eisenhower? If these don’t sound ridiculous enough to you, because you don’t know the ins and outs of the real life incarnations of these office holders, I’ll just put it in context by hypothetically casting Bryan Brown as Bob Hawke, Hugh Jackman as Tony Abbott and Russell Crowe as Paul Keating. That should give you some idea of how hilariously out of left field these choices are. I quickly ran to IMDB to check out who else had had a turn at stalking around the Oval Office.

Did you know that both The West Wing‘s President Bartlett (Martin Sheen) and his Vice President John Hoynes (Tim Matheson) played J.F.K? So has ’90s golden-streaker Greg Kinnear, Patrick ‘McDreamy’ Dempsey and, most recently, Rob ‘Literally’ Lowe. Every old coot has had a shot at Nixon, from hammy Anthony Hopkins to grizzled Rip Torn, Masters Of Sex‘s Beau Bridges, and the library detective himself, Phillip Baker Hall. Rip Torn, when not taking a spin in celebrated comedies like The Larry Sanders Show and 30 Rock, also had a crack at Lyndon Johnson, as have Michael ‘Dumbledore’ Gambon and Randy ‘I went crazy and became a fugitive of the law’ Quaid.

Clinton didn’t make it into this film, but Randy’s brother Dennis has played him recently. My favourite Clinton was probably the late great Phil Hartman’s, which brings me to the biggest question that came out of this little research trip. Why didn’t Lee Daniels just hire the old SNL crew to act out all these roles?

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