To Die For
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To Die For is a 1995 satirical black comedy film<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> directed by Gus Van Sant. It stars Nicole Kidman, Joaquin Phoenix and Matt Dillon. The plot follows Suzanne Stone, an ambitious New Hampshire woman with dreams of becoming a celebrity, who will stop at nothing until she achieves fame on TV. The film's narrative combines a traditional drama with darkly comic direct-to-camera monologues by Kidman's character, and mockumentary interviews, some tragic, with other characters in the film.<ref name=Strauss>Template:Cite news</ref>
To Die For was written by Buck Henry based on Joyce Maynard's novel of the same name, which in turn was inspired by the story of Pamela Smart, a woman who was convicted in 1991 for being an accomplice in a plot to murder her husband. Henry, Maynard, George Segal, and David Cronenberg appear in cameo roles. The film features original music by Danny Elfman.
The film received praise for its satire of the tabloid media, fame, and the true crime genre. The cast was subject to considerable praise, with Kidman earning the best notices in her career at that point. Kidman was nominated for a BAFTA, and won a Golden Globe Award, a Critics' Choice Award, and a Best Actress Award at the 1st Empire Awards for her performance.
Plot
In the fictional town of Little Hope, New Hampshire, Suzanne Stone is a glamorous and ambitious young woman who has always been obsessed with being on television and aspires to become a world-famous broadcast journalist. She begins a passionate romance with Larry Maretto, an Italian American, of whom her parents disapprove, and the two quickly marry. Despite the differences between their families, the two seemingly settle into married life happily, and Larry promises to support her career ambitions. She uses his family's restaurant business to keep herself financially stable and takes a job as an assistant at WWEN, a local cable station, in hopes of climbing the network ladder. Through relentless persistence, she is eventually promoted to doing the station's evening weather report.
Suzanne goes to a local high school to recruit subjects for a documentary she is producing called “Teens Speak Out.” She immediately attracts two delinquents, Jimmy Emmett and Russel Hines, and befriends Lydia Mertz, a shy and insecure girl who admires Suzanne's glamor and worldliness. Larry begins pressuring Suzanne to give up her career in favor of helping out at the restaurant and starting a family. As he becomes more insistent, Suzanne views him as an impediment to her desired future and immediately begins plotting his murder. She seduces Jimmy and convinces him to murder Larry by falsely accusing him of abusing her and promising they will have a future together in California once Larry is dead. She also manipulates Lydia into procuring a gun. One night, while Suzanne delivers the evening weather report, Jimmy and Russell break into the Marettos' condo, and Jimmy shoots and kills Larry.
Though Larry's death is ruled the result of a botched burglary, police stumble across a Teens Speak Out clip of Suzanne at their school, which points to her sexual involvement with Jimmy. The teens are arrested and connected to the crime scene. Lydia makes a deal with police to converse with Suzanne while wearing a wire, and Suzanne unwittingly reveals her hand in the murder. However, despite this damning evidence, she argues that the police resorted to entrapment and is released on bail. All the charges against Suzanne are dropped.
Basking in the media attention and spotlight, however, Suzanne fabricates a story about Larry being a cocaine addict who was murdered by Jimmy and Russell, his purported dealers. Jimmy and Russell are sentenced to life in prison. Russell gets his sentence reduced while Lydia is released on probation. Meanwhile, Larry's father, Joe, realizes Suzanne was behind his son's death and uses his mafia connections to have her murdered. A hitman lures Suzanne away from her home by posing as a movie studio executive, kills her, and conceals her body beneath a frozen lake.
Lydia tells her side of the story in a televised interview and gains national attention, becoming a celebrity. Janice, Larry's sister who always hated Suzanne, practices her figure skating on the frozen lake where Suzanne's corpse lies.
Cast
Production
Development and casting
Joyce Maynard's book To Die For was published in 1992. Maynard loosely based the novel on the facts that emerged during the trial of Pamela Smart, a school media services coordinator who was imprisoned for seducing a 16-year-old student and convincing him to kill her husband.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="IndieWire" /> The trial had gained considerable media attention because it was one of the first in the U.S. to allow TV cameras in the courtroom.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The book came to the attention of producer Laura Ziskin, who passed it along to Amy Pascal, then an executive vice-president of Columbia Pictures, and the studio bought the rights.<ref name="IndieWire" />
Ziskin pitched the film to director Gus Van Sant, who himself had been interested in working with screenwriter Buck Henry. Van Sant enlisted cinematographer Eric Alan Edwards and editor Curtiss Clayton, his previous collaborators on Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.<ref name="IndieWire" />
The studio envisioned Meg Ryan in the role of Suzanne Stone, but Ryan felt that playing a villainous character would be too edgy for her romantic comedy image at the time.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref><ref name="IndieWire" /> Nicole Kidman, who had been wanting to return to more auteur-driven projects after working in big-budget films like Days of Thunder and Far and Away, lobbied Van Sant for the role and convinced him she was right for the character.<ref name="IndieWire" /> "I knew Gus' work from seeing Drugstore Cowboy at an art cinema in Sydney. Those kind of films were basically my cinematic pull", she said.<ref name="IndieWire" /> Others who expressed interest in the role were Patricia Arquette and Ellen DeGeneres.<ref name="IndieWire" /> Ultimately, Ryan turned down the $5 million salary offered and Kidman was cast for $2 million.<ref name=fv>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
For the role of Jimmy Emmett, Johnny Galecki, Edward Furlong, and Giovanni Ribisi were considered.<ref name="IndieWire" /> Matt Damon read for the part and though he had impressed Van Sant in his audition, he was also considered too old to play a teen and had too much of an "all-American" look.<ref name="IndieWire" /> The role went to Joaquin Phoenix, whom Van Sant had known from working with Phoenix's late brother River on My Own Private Idaho.<ref name="IndieWire" /> For the role of Russel Hines, Damon recommended Casey Affleck, the younger brother of his best friend, Ben Affleck.<ref name="IndieWire" /> A number of actresses including Sandra Bullock, Janeane Garofalo, Jennifer Tilly, and DeGeneres read for the role of Janice Maretto before Illeana Douglas was cast.<ref name="IndieWire" />
Filming
The film was primarily shot in the Port Hope area in Toronto.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="IndieWire" /> Principal photography took place from April to June 1994.<ref name="IndieWire" /> High school scenes at "Little Hope High" were filmed at King City Secondary School in King City, Ontario, and some actual students of the school were cast as extras.
The honeymoon scenes with Larry and Suzanne were filmed in the Tampa Bay area of Florida.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Reception
Critical reception
The film was screened out of competition at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival.<ref name="festival-cannes.com">Template:Cite web</ref> To Die For was very well received by critics, with Nicole Kidman's performance being especially praised. The film holds an 88% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 65 reviews, where the consensus reads "Smart, funny, and thoroughly well-cast, To Die For takes a sharp – and sadly prescient – stab at dissecting America's obsession with celebrity."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 86 out of 100 based on reviews from 23 critics, indicating "universal acclaim."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
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Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote the film was "irresistible black comedy and a wicked delight", criticizing "tabloid ethics" with "Kidman's teasingly beautiful Suzanne as the most alluring of media-mad monsters." She thought the film showed Van Sant's "slyness better than any of his work since Drugstore Cowboy.<ref name=Maslin>Template:Cite news</ref> Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3½ out of 4 stars, writing that it was "merciless with its characters, and Kidman is superb at making Suzanne into someone who is not only stupid, vain and egomaniacal (we've seen that before) but also vulnerably human. She represents, on a large scale, feelings we have all had in smaller and sneakier ways."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle said Kidman gave her character "layers of meaning, intention and impulse. Telling her story in close-up, [seeing] the calculation, the wheels turning, the transparent efforts to charm that succeed in charming all the same ... her beauty and magnetism are electric. Undeniably she belongs on camera, which means it's equally undeniable that Suzanne belongs on camera. That in itself is an irony, a commentary, or both."<ref name=LaSalle>Template:Cite news</ref> Harlan Jacobson of TV Guide wrote the film "uses the tabloid-ready Pamela Smart murder case to mount an impudent, satirical attack on America's obsessive culture of celebrity." He thought Kidman played "ambition like a knife, and a will of pure steel", noting she was "an actress who can satirize herself." Jacobson praised Phoenix for making "a big impression just by standing still and registering hurt", and liked how Henry "constructed a screenplay whose architecture neatly incorporates human gargoyles ... it's grotesque, and you hardly notice that it's built on the dark side of our fears and fantasies about women in the workplace."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
The film's focus on the three teenagers who are ensnared by Suzanne's plot also received praise. The Los Angeles TimesTemplate:' Kenneth Turan wrote that Van Sant adds his "trademark absurdist sensibility to the mix as well as an empathy for inarticulate, inchoate teen-agers that turns out to give this film a good deal of its impact".<ref name="Turan" /> Turan concluded: "The most accurate assault against the media age since 'Network,' 'To Die For's killer lines and wicked sensibility are given added poignancy by the off-center, sensitive performance of Joaquin Phoenix, River's younger brother, the only person more deluded about Suzanne than she is about herself."<ref name="Turan">Template:Cite news</ref> Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote "Folland and Affleck skillfully capture the pang of adolescence among no-hopers."<ref name="Travers">Template:Cite magazine</ref>
Katherine Ramsland of Crime Library discussed the film as an example of a work displaying women with antisocial personalities, with Suzanne in particular described as a "manipulator extraordinaire" who harms people through third parties.<ref>Template:Cite web </ref> The character of Suzanne Stone has been described as suffering from narcissistic personality disorder in the scientific journal BMC Psychiatry.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Writing in 2007, Emanuel Levy stated, "mean-spirited satire, told in mock-tabloid style, this film features the best performance of Nicole Kidman to date (better than The Hours for which she won an Oscar), as an amoral small-town girl obsessed with becoming a TV star."<ref name=Levy>Template:Cite web</ref>
Box office
The film grossed $21 million in the United States and Canada and $41 million worldwide.<ref name="BOM">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name=SI/>
Accolades
American Film Institute recognition:
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains:
- Suzanne Stone – Nominated Villain<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs – Nominated<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Home media
To Die For was released on VHS following its theatrical release and on DVD on November 10, 1998.<ref>Template:Cite AV media</ref> It was released on Blu-ray on November 8, 2011.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> A 4K remaster of the film was released by The Criterion Collection on Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray on March 26, 2024.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
References
External links
- 1995 films
- 1995 black comedy films
- 1990s American films
- 1990s British films
- 1990s English-language films
- 1990s satirical films
- American black comedy films
- American films based on actual events
- American satirical films
- British black comedy films
- British films based on actual events
- British satirical films
- Columbia Pictures films
- Comedy films based on actual events
- Cultural depictions of weather presenters
- English-language black comedy films
- Fiction about mariticide
- Films about psychopaths and sociopaths
- Films about female psychopaths and sociopaths
- Films about adultery in the United States
- Films about murderers
- Films about television people
- Films based on American novels
- Films directed by Gus Van Sant
- Films featuring a Best Musical or Comedy Actress Golden Globe winning performance
- Films produced by Laura Ziskin
- Films scored by Danny Elfman
- Films set in New Hampshire
- Films shot in Florida
- Films shot in Toronto
- Films with screenplays by Buck Henry