Lately #13: Sweet Valley High, serial killers and the greatest fan film ever made

Five things to entertain you, and one piece of advice.

On Sundays, we share some favourite demure finds from the week in our Lately newsletter.

I’ve landed back in Dubai after three weeks in Scotland, which means… more valuable plane viewing time. But first - do you think there have been psychological studies done on people who fully recline their seat on a plane? Especially the ones who aren’t resting, but are sprawling out for maximum comfort to watch a 2011 Justin Timberlake film on their iPad? I looked around the plane and there’s a definite mix - are you a serial recliner?

While considering this, I scrolled through the Emirates film list and stumbled on a surprising documentary that I think will appeal to our Substacker friends. Read on for more on that, a ghostwriting backstory, and advice from someone who’s had a particularly productive summer…

Gillian

1. Something we should all be watching…

For a documentary that covers fan culture, friendship over the passage of time, and just how far pocket money can go, you need to watch 2016’s Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made.

In 1981, 11-year-old Chris Strompolos from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, saw Raiders of the Lost Ark in the cinema and it blew his mind. He had found the ultimate hero and perfect adventure story, and he couldn’t let it go. So he asked two friends, Eric Zala and Jayson Lamb, to help him remake it. Sounds like a bit of harmless fun, right? Until you remember some of the scenes in the film (the boulder escape, Marion’s burning bar, the truck chase..) - and I tell you that they decided to recreate the movie shot-for-shot.

Eric (Belloq/director), Chris (Indiana), and Jayson (special effects). Over the years, the 11-year-olds turned into teenagers on camera.

It took them seven summers - their whole childhood - to finish it, and in that time they endured multiple injuries, almost burned down their houses, and blew up their friendships.

The fan film and the real deal. The boys recreated the film’s scenes in storyboards - from memory!

They left their childhood obsession behind, but not forever - years later, a VHS copy of their film found its way into the right hands and it became a cult phenomenon. In this documentary, we meet Eric, Chris and Jayson 25 years later as the original cast reunites to film the one scene they couldn’t complete as kids - the aeroplane scene, complete with life-size prop and real explosions.

It’s interesting enough to watch Raiders! just to see how these kids went about recreating a blockbuster in their backyards. But the storytelling has a real Spielberg flavour, setting the boys’ filmmaking adventure against their coming-of-age stories - divorcing parents, friendship dynamics and the freedoms of 80s youth. It seems apt that, for a bunch of Spielberg-obsessed kids, you’ve never seen anything more ‘Goonies’.

As Eric’s son says in the film, “Why did Steven Spielberg need $20 million to make ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’? My dad only needed his allowance.”

“‘Raiders!’ is a love poem to film geeks everywhere, giving them heroes whose own geekdom is a pinnacle of aspiration.”

rogerebert.com

2. A podcast you’ll want to share…

Prepare yourself, because I’m going full true crime today. This is one for the listeners who like their serial killers served up with a lethal dose of dark humour.

Comedy and murder may seem like an odd combination, but it turns out it can work! British comedians Rachel Fairburn and Kiri Pritchard-McLean have amassed a huge, loyal following for their All Killa, No Filla podcast. They research serial killers throughout history and consider the traits and life experiences that can lead people to murder (“serial killer bingo”), but are also at pains to handle cases sensitively - it’s the criminals who are the victims of the girls’ stand-up.

They started way back on Halloween in 2014 with Jack the Ripper (with some dodgy sound equipment, but I still managed to listen), and have racked up 111 episodes on different cases so far.

They do love a tangent - so there is definitely some filla - but that’s part of the fun. True crime fans, let us know what you think.

3. An interesting backstory read…

Sweet Valley High! Who read the books, who watched it? Despite growing up on different continents, Yara and I were both Wakefield twins fans.

Did you know the books were ghostwritten? The covers said ‘created by Francine Pascal’ and that was good enough for me - I suppose if I’d stopped to think on the sheer volume of pastel spines lining the shelves, I might have considered they were written by more than one person. (Probably not.)

Francine - who died in July at the age of 92 - wrote the first seven books herself, then outlined plots for others. Perhaps the most prolific ghostwriter is an Oxford graduate English literature professor, who, from a chance meeting with Francine when she was 23, ended up writing dozens of Sweet Valley High books.

Amy Boesky shares her experience here - why she wrote the books, why she loved them, and why she eventually stopped.

“I never knew, before I started writing for Sweet Valley, how many synonyms there were for the verb “said.” The twins by and large didn’t “say” things—instead, they chuckled and giggled and whispered and murmured and sighed. They “gasped” over good news or bad. They lived in a fantasy world, these girls, and as long as I was writing about them, to some extent, so did I.”

So… were you Jessica or Elizabeth?

Elizabeth and Jessica in the hair-flippin’-fabulous TV show.

4. Something that may surprise you…

We’re sharing some of our favourite old backstory posts over on Instagram this month, and it’s interesting to see so many we’d forgotten! Like this one…

“Find the girl.” Story has it that’s what Alfred Hitchcock said to Universal Studios when he spotted Natalie (Tippi) Hedren in a 1961 Sego diet drink commercial. He’d found ‘the next Grace Kelly’ and she was offered a seven-year contract before she even met the famous director.

The moment in the ad when she turns her head in response to a young boy’s wolf whistle fascinated Hitchcock enough that he recreated it in the opening of Tippi’s first film, The Birds. We show those moments together here…

storyhasit

A post shared by @storyhasit

5. Something for the bucket list…

I managed to squeeze in a day at the Edinburgh Fringe on my trip back to Scotland - have you been? It began back in 1947 when eight theatre groups weren’t invited to perform at the Edinburgh International Festival, and decided they’d turn up anyway. Even today - now an enormous Festival in its own right that spans three weeks every August - it stands by the ethos of those theatre companies: acts are not vetted, so anyone with a story to tell and a venue willing to host them is welcome.

Is there another festival where you can watch two grown women dance in their pyjamas in the tiny backroom of an historic hostel? Much less seedy than it sounds. I went with four former teen magazine colleagues to the most apt show we could find: Kitty and Shirley’s Teen Dream Magazine Comedy Sleepover.

---

One piece of advice:

From someone who’s had a productive summer creating an animal art trail across London, some much-needed advice for long-term success:

“If you get tired, learn to rest, not to quit.”

Banksy