Remember when we used to go on field trips in school and hustle kids from other schools at The Movie Game? Or when we took a blasé History 101 course at the University of Vermont and filled entire notebooks with line after line of names and films? Remember how we played the Kevin Bacon game before the book came out, when we still had to link people to him through films like Planes Trains and Automobiles, Diner, and Flatliners?
A cinema-obsessed childhood often means an unhealthy amount of movie trivia knowledge. I have not benefited in any other way from countless wasted hours watching people pretending to be other people. Of course, one positive result is that if you watch enough movies, you get to see many, many fine looking women. Today’s Friday Top Ten is dedicated to some of the different actresses I had crushes on growing up. I hesitate to call them “movie babes” because that term carries with it an air of uber-geekiness, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to be lumped together with those greasy-haired, glasses-wearing, pocket-protector-wielding, G4 TV-watching NERDS. Instead, we’ll call this…
Top Ten Women In Film Based Solely On Their Lookin’ Supa-Fine!
Denise Richards in Starship Troopers – The easy choice would be to use her role in Wild Things (with Kevin Bacon) as the hottest of her career, but that’s not how I roll (even though I still know that 54 minutes into the movie is the exact start of the threesome scene in the motel). Not only is Starship Troopers a vastly underrated film, but it might have been Denise’s hottest role. She was smoking as a quasi-conservative high schooler turned spaceship captain. That same year, Denise Richards had a small role in Nowhere (a Gregg Araki film), one of my favorite worst movies ever. Little known fact: her starship co-pilot was a young Amy Smart, who was still two years from making a name for herself in Outside Providence, Varsity Blues, and the song “Amy Smart,” written by yours truly.
Diane Franklin in Better Off Dead – She played Monique, the cute French girl in an otherwise pointless John Cusack movie (wait a minute — they’re all pointless!). I finally realize my dream of getting down with a French girl when I was fifteen years old at tennis camp by trading handjobs with one under a footbridge somewhere on the campus of Haverford College. You know who else was in Better Off Dead? That weird looking motherfucker Vincent Schiavelli, who played a ghost in Ghost, while Demi Moore played some woman who was still alive. Demi Moore’s character was also alive in A Few Good Men, with Kevin Bacon.
Lea Thompson in Some Kind Of Wonderful – We were introduced to Lea when she played the former Lorraine Baines in Back To The Future. In that film, she played a loose ’50s chick who tried to seduce her own son. She was all kinds of hot in Some Kind Of Wonderful as Amanda Jones (she even had a song written about her in the movie, which sucked shit but I still remember the melody). A young Mary Suart Masterson ended up winning the leading man as the tomboy (dare I say dyke-ish?) Watts, but Lea Thompson was way hotter. Mary Stuart Masterson was in Digging To China with Kevin Bacon.
Anna Paquin in…I don’t know – I think she was in She’s All That as the hip sister who gives the geeky girl a makeover. My friend named Dan is for some reason obsessed with that film. I’ve seen it more times than I care to admit. I still remember how excited I was to hear Anna was going to be Rogue in the first of the X-Men films, but I wound up missing half the movie because I was getting a blowjob. She was also in The Piano with Harvey Keitel’s penis. He was in Taxi Driver with Robert Deniro, who was in Sleepers with Kevin Bacon.
Jennifer Connelly in Labyrinth – She dressed in jeans and a weird over-sized shirt with a vest, but she was still an adorable young woman. She was one of the first objects of my adolescent affection. Just one look at those eyebrows and you knew that bitch was packing some serious BUSH. She was also in The Rocketeer, if you could believe that! Coincidentally, so was Clint Howard, who was also in Apollo 13 and My Dog Skip with Kevin Bacon.
Reese Witherspoon in Fear – She got fingered by Marky Mark on a roller coaster. Her slutty friend was Alyssa Milano, who was in Speed Zone! with James Rae, who was in Criminal Law with Kevin Bacon.
Dominique Swain in Girl – Her character gave hope to talentless musicians everywhere by sleeping with anybody who looked remotely like they were in the music industry. It seemed like all you had to do was dress a little grungy and appear sensitive and she’d on her back before you could say, “I’m from Seattle.” As an actress, Dominique Swain has walked a linear path of complete and utter sluttiness. She played a slutty daughter in Face/Off, the title character in Lolita, a UES prep school slut in Tart and sundry other whorish young women. At least she’s consistent. Girl also featured a young Selma Blair as the outcast friend with an eating disorder, Tara Reid as the girl Dominique Swain aspired to be, and Portia de Rossi as some stupid slag whose character served no purpose. Dominique’s younger sister Chelse was also in Tart and was in The Virgin Suicides with Kiki Dunst. You know who else was in Tart? Brad Renfro. You know who was in Telling Lies In America with Brad Renfro? Kevin Bacon.
Elisabeth Shue in The Saint – I guess she makes the list because I’ve seen The Saint more times than I can count. What’s not attractive about a genius doctor who has solved the mystery of cold fusion and will sleep with a guy she just met simply because he acts aloof and talks about art? She’d make a great meal ticket/sugar mama if she actually existed. Several years later, Elisabeth Shue was in Hollow Man with Kevin Bacon.
Winona Ryder in Heathers – Oh, Miss Horowitz. How come my female friends in high school never said shit like, “I say we just grow up, be adults and die” like you did? They just looked mousy and Jewish and talked about stupid crap all the time. Before her role in this film, she was a weirdo outsider in Beetle Juice, then she played another weirdo outsider in Edward Scissorhands, and then I saw her mugshot on a t-shirt. I think what sold me on her as a crush was her portrayal of Allison Taylor (Lisa’s rival) on a classic Simpsons episode. Oh, and she was in A Scanner Darkly a couple years ago. What a depressing movie! Earlier in her career, she was in 1969 with Kiefer Sutherland, who was in Flatliners with Kevin Bacon.
Patricia Arquette in True Romance – I once told my friend Melissa that Arquette’s character, Alabama, was my ideal woman: “a reformed hooker who had like 2 or 3 johns before she falls in love with me and wants to fuck and drive around doing nothing but selling stolen coke to pay for the rest of our lives.” She could take a punch, too. She killed James Gandolfini! There is no better cast than that of True Romance. Christian Slater starred Clarence Worley. Two years later he was in Murder In The First with Kevin Bacon.
