Yes, I’m procrastinating as usual. I have a paper due Thursday in which I have to review a movie that deals with the topic of eating disorders. Problem is, I’m in the middle of Mayberry, bereft of all good movie rental places. So, I need a movie that has some kind of a plot line involving ED (can be a secondary plot line if necessary, as long as it’s out there), on video, that isn’t too obscure.
So far I have the movie with Liv Tyler, Heavy. But I’m feeling a bit ‘eh’ about it, so I thought I’d get other ideas.
You can always go directly to the source with The Karen Carpenter Story. Or there’s the horribly disturbing Freeway 2, in which Natasha Lyonne’s character is a binger/purger extraordinaire.
It is hardly the central theme, and it is done as an attempt at humor, but Monty Python’s: The Meaning of Life does have a glutton eat until he explodes.
Most video stores have it.
Really minor reference but definitely obtainable. Sandra Bullock’s Miss Congeniality. In a couple of places it talks (in passing) about people starving themselves or purging to get rid of a pizza.
I vaguely remember a beauty pageant film that had a character starving herself to look pretty, but for the life of me I can’t think of it at the time being. In point of fact, the only beauty pageant film I can remember is Miss Firecracker and I don’t recall any eating disorder in it.
There was a good movie I saw once starring Meredith Baxter-Birney who was bulimic. Its called “Kate’s Secret”, made in 1986. Don’t know if its in the video stores or not, though.
The Best Little Girl in the World, bulimia movie with Jennifer Jason Leigh. This was a TV movie, but I have seen TV movies in video rental stores so it can’t hurt to look.
There was also a movie called Eating subtitled “A Very Serious Comedy About Women and Food” This is pretty obscure, it was mostly shown in art houses,but, again, it can’t hurt to look for it.
It just occured to me, Down and Out in Beverly Hills with Richard Dryfuss, Bette Midler and Nick Nolte (among others). The daughter had some sort of eating disorder and Nolte ends up curing her basically by being rude to her and then sleeping with her.
And I know your local video store will carry it. My local video store carries it and my town has less than 1,000 people. Don’t talk to me about Mayberry.
Down and out in Beverly Hills is being done by another student (dammit), so it was a great suggestion but not feasible.
The movie store in the next town had both Fatso and Best Little Girl in the World, but they were checked out (geez, there are only five of us in the class!)
In what had to be the weirdest incident of serendipity, my amazon.com recommendations listed Eating as one of my suggestions. Too bad I noticed it yesterday!
I have The Meaning of Life in my own collection (who doesn’t?), and I might include that scene as a sorta joke thing.
So I went with Girl, Interrupted. Not the best choice, but we had it here at the house (though I’d never gotten around to watching it) and it had enough for me to write on and show clips.
Thanks again, folks. 'Preciate the help. Especially Friggae, who indirectly taught me how to search for things other than actors on IMDb.
I’d recommend Black Swan. I walked out of it thinking half the character’s problems came from the fact that she was starving herself to death. They hit that several times during the film showing how she was physically falling apart from nutritional deprivation, and I’ll bet no one else will think to use that movie for this subject.
Dammit - and I’ve been trying so hard to avoid posting in any of the recent spate of zombie threads. Caught! Too bad they don’t show up in some sort of sickly green font when it’s been over a year since the day of it’s creation.
& don’t forget Ally McBeal! – Draw your own conclusions.