Jenn and I watched the documentary Kid90 a few days ago. It wasn’t great. It was certainly an interesting look into the lives of young stars in the 90’s, just as awful and damaging as I imagined growing up in the Hollywood mire would be. I liked that aspect, and the (short) parts where former mega stars like Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Brian Austin Green talked about how grim it was to go from being a teen idol heartthrob to a wash-up before even age 20.
That’s not what I want to talk about though. What I want to talk about is how completely fucked I think the maker of the documentary, Solell Moon Frye, is. There were just too many massive red flags about her to ignore.
- Yeah, she was obviously decades ahead of the self-obsessed “document everything in my life and post it publicly” trend but just being ahead of an unhealthy trend doesn’t make it any less unhealthy.
- Any time people cry on camera, I don’t trust them. It always feels so performative. I feel it’s virtually impossible for any sane person to properly process that level of grief while in front of a camera, being conscious of how you look while you’re crying, what angle the camera is getting, etc. Crocodile tears.
- 98% of the documentary revolved around boys, both then and now. Besides herself, there was very little airtime given to women. Reeked of ‘seeking affirmation from the opposite sex,’ both as a teen and now as a middle-aged woman.
- Frye is still weirdly flirty with all her old crushes. Sitting on Brian Austin Green’s bed cross-legged, crying, asking him if what they had was “real”…such weird teenage behaviour from a middle-aged woman. He seemed so fucking uncomfortable in that scene, like he had been happy to talk about their experiences up until that point but once she started crying and saying asinine things, he thought to himself jeez I’d forgotten how weird this chick is — “uh, there, there, it’s all good, Solell.” Same thing with reconnecting with the dude from House of Pain, when she hops up on the planter box so they’re the same height and facing each other and it feels like they might kiss, and he’s obviously a little uncomfortable with how intense and flirty she’s being.
- If not for the other things listed here, the clip of Frye giving birth would have been fine. But considering her obsession with being in front of the camera at even the most intimate and personal times, this was the ‘jumping the shark’ moment for me. It was like, “look how much of myself I’m baring to you here — teen plastic surgery, teen suicide, drug use, losing my virginity as a teen to a 29-yr old Charlie Sheen, and now for the cherry on top, here’s me birthing a child.” Just so absurdly performative, attention-seeking.
The crazy thing is, I know all of these behaviours well because I dated a woman very similar to Frye. Right from our first date, she was oversharing, crying in front of me, making me sit on her couch while she sang karaoke-style for me, showing me home movies of herself as a teenager doing embarrassing things, asking me to give her massages in front of her co-workers just so they could see what a great guy I was and what a great relationship we had (despite never giving her a massage any other time and absolutely hating doing it, especially in public), obsessing over me for the next 10 years despite having only dated for three months, etc. I only noticed faint similarities between my ex-gf and Frye until the childbirth scene, and then I was like “whoah, this is 100% [my ex],” and that’s when I realized that Frye is definitely nuts.
My ex wasn’t a child star so it just goes to show you that anyone can be nuts, but I’m still quite sure that being a child star can ruin even the sanest person.
Anyway, I’m just surprised more people aren’t talking about this aspect of Kid90 because for me, it’s the single biggest takeaway: Solell Moon Frye is a very strange cat.
crimson highway 