Getting on television was the American Dream of the back half of the 20th century. There was just something gratifying about the idea of your image beaming into millions of households, whether you were the little girl on a bicycle in a McDonald’s commercial or landed a recurring role on some second-rate show. A spot on television, the American Parthenon of the airwaves, signaled you were someone important. And as the ‘90s bled into the new millennium, reality television began to replace syndicated shows, blurring the line even more between television and truth.
In 1995, director Gus Van Sant would release To Die For, a satirical black comedy that examined our obsession with being on television. The indie director was in the middle of his short-lived flirtation with Hollywood filmmaking, a relationship that would peak a few years later with Good Will Hunting (1997). Van Sant, who broke out with the acclaimed indies Drugstore Cowboy (1989) and My Own Private Idaho (1991), was just coming off a big-budget flop in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993). To Die For would help him get his groove back with its taut, satirical storytelling and razor-sharp sense of humor.
The film stars Nicole Kidman as Suzanne Stone, a woman in a small New Hampshire town who possesses a single-minded obsession to get on television. Van Sant never makes it clear exactly why Suzanne wants to be on television. Perhaps it’s just our conditioning that we’ve really arrived only when viewed on a screen. In an age before YouTubers, influencers and Hawk Tuah girls, that exhibitionist desire burbled beneath the surface for many people. But why? Van Sant and To Die For aren’t here to answer that question. Rather, they just show us to what depths Suzanne will sink to earn that vaunted place on the tube, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Barbara Walters and Jane Pauley.
How far? How about killing her husband, as we learn in the opening frames of the film? Suzanne, who forces her way into a job as a weatherperson on a local channel, is married to an affable meathead named Larry (Matt Dillon). But once he stops supporting her dream to get on television and asks her to start a family, Suzanne uses her wiles to convince her teenage lover, James (Joaquin Phoenix), to murder Larry. Just like a good television program seduces and manipulates its audience into feeling one way or another, Suzanne convinces James that Larry is violent towards her, using her wiles to drive the young man into a sexual frenzy that leaves Larry dead.
But the murder and its fallout aren’t the main attractions here. Instead, Van Sant probes just how far television has infiltrated our culture. Armed with a jet-black screenplay by Buck Henry (The Graduate), To Die For is an intriguing look at America just before it fell across the line that separates what we see on the screen and what we experience in real life. Remember, this is the era of O.J. Simpson, where everyone from Marcia Clark to Kato Kaelin became household names. Television allowed open season on these folks from commentary of Clark’s revolving hairstyles to Johnnie Cochran’s showstopping press conferences. These were real people cannibalized into celebrity by the television.
Suzanne also represents a purity test of sorts, the white bread ideal of perfection pedaled in the 20th century, where blonde hair and porcelain skin meant the pinnacle of beauty. At one point, Suzanne councils Larry’s sister (played with zeal by Ileana Douglas) to remove beauty spots from her face so she could be better suited for television. She also opines that Mikhail Gorbachev lost power in Russia due to the unsightly port wine stain on his forehead while decrying Connie Chung as being too “ethnic.” Suzanne is Barbie without the notion of inclusion—at least, Barbie prior to wokeness.
Van Sant based his film on the 1992 novel of the same title by Joyce Maynard. Her story was inspired by the real-life crime of Pamela Smart, a woman convicted of plotting her husband’s murder. Though Van Sant made a fictional film based on a fictional version of a real-life crime, there are some glaring similarities between the cases. The whole notion of True Crime television was popular in the ‘90s, from re-enacted stories on Unsolved Mysteries to the exploitative true-life Cops. Pamela Smart may be famous for doing something awful, but the media turned her into a household name. Meanwhile, no one out there knows your name, right? Unless maybe you’ve been on television (or whatever type of broadcast people are looking at today).
Van Sant’s secret weapon here is his supporting cast. Phoenix, in one of his first serious roles, is both comedically pathetic and pathetically comedic as a love-struck dumbass who falls for Suzanne’s seduction. Casey Affleck also appears as Phoenix’s less dumb but equally amoral buddy. Dillon, who worked with Van Sant in Drugstore Cowboy, and Douglas both turn in fine performances, while Henry and David Cronenberg cameo in important roles.
Yet the movie belongs to Kidman. In Maynard’s novel, Suzanne dreams about who would play her in a biopic and lands on Julia Roberts or “that actress that got married to Tom Cruise in real life.” After Meg Ryan backed out of the role, the kismet of Kidman’s casting felt more appropriate. It may just be one of her best performances as the icy, determined Suzanne who is so broken by society and desire that failure isn’t an option. Without Suzanne Stone, there would be no Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian. And now, with social media, we can curate and broadcast our own existence – imagined or otherwise.
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