Fun (film)
Fun is a 1994 Canadian independent drama film starring Alicia Witt and Renée Humphrey, and directed by Rafal Zielinski.[1] Both Witt and Humphrey won a Special Jury Recognition award at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival.[2] The film centers on the murder of an elderly woman by two mentally unstable girls. The film is based on a play by James Bosley, which was in turn based on an actual murder that was committed in Auburn, California in 1983 by 14-year-old Shirley Wolf and 15-year-old Cindy Collier.[3] The film's title is derived from a diary entry by Wolf, which read: "Today, Cindy and I ran away and killed an old lady. It was lots of fun."[3]
Fun | |
---|---|
Directed by | Rafal Zielinski |
Written by | James Bosley |
Starring | Alicia Witt Renée Humphrey William R. Moses Leslie Hope |
Music by | Rana Joy Glickman |
Cinematography | Jens Sturup |
Edited by | Monika Lightstone |
Distributed by | Greycat Films Neo Modern Entertainment |
Release date | April 14, 1995 |
Running time | 105 minutes |
Country | Canada |
Language | English |
Plot
The film is told in flashbacks detailing the girls' relationship (in color), and their time in juvenile detention center (in black and white). Bonnie (Witt), aged 14, and Hillary (Humphrey), aged 15, meet at a bus stop in Los Angeles, California and begin a friendship. They stroll around their city, chuck rocks onto a highway from an overpass bridge, run rampant in shopping malls, and play video games.
Their day escalates into an eruption of violence and rage when they brutally stab an elderly woman to death. They then run to a gas station and attempt to wash off the blood from their clothes. After their arrest, they claim that the murder was purely just for "fun". The story moves from the juvenile detention center where the girls are kept, to the girls on the day of the killing.
References
- The New York Times
- Sundance.org
- McCall, Cheryl (29 August 1983). "A Grandmother Is Murdered, Two Teenage Girls Are Convicted—There the Questions Begin". People. Retrieved 17 November 2011.