To Die For
While putting this list together, I noticed a running theme with New England. There is a dynamic between the region’s Puritan and Blue Blood roots, and its key role in being a destination for immigrants; first from places like Ireland, Italy, and Holland, and later from places like Portugal, the Dominican Republic, and even East Africa (Ask me sometime about the story of the Somali fisherman who found his way onto a Maine lobster boat).
New Hampshire is not immune to this dynamic, and its longstanding culture of being singularly rabid about freedom throws another flavor into the mix.
Of all the states, New Hampshire is among the ones I’m most familiar with. It’s a regular stopover when traveling from New York City to our family home in Maine. The state’s cultural idiosyncracies occupy a special place in my soul. New Hampshire is the state where “nerds” play sports and “dumb jocks” can solve complex Trigonometry equations. It’s a state where you can’t exactly say if conformity is bad or good, it depends on where you are. In New Hampshire, you just are. Your dreams are valid, but so are your delusions, and nobody – and I mean nobody – can stand in your way. It’s also been often said that the hottest men and women in America live in New Hampshire, and they know it.
Coming up with a New Hampshire movie was difficult, but I kept returning to one film I first saw as a teenager that sticks with me every time I visit the Granite State. Gus Van Sant’s 1995 black comedy To Die For.
This movie is Nicole Kidman’s masterpiece and she was robbed of an Oscar nomination for it (She won a Golden Globe, but failed to get an Academy Award nomination). Her seductive and sinister character can’t really be described as a villain or a hero; perhaps an anti-hero. Behind the malignant narcissism and childish delusion, we sort of get her, even if we find ourselves disgusted by her actions.
The movie is based on a true story; that of Pamela Smart, a New Hampshire woman who conspired with an underaged boy she had been having an affair with and two of his friends to murder her husband in 1990. The movie changes names and sensationalizes the story. expanding on it to make the Smart character, Suzanne Stone Maretto (Kidman) into a narcissistic femme fatale who had delusions of grandeur and eventually saw her husband Larry (Matt Dillon) as an impediment to her dreams and managed to goad three gullible teenagers into doing her dirty work. The setting is the fictional, and appropriately named, Little Hope, New Hampshire, which greatly resembles the real city of Derry, New Hampshire, where the Smart murder took place.
The movie is done in a mockumentary format, where each supporting character: Larry’s sister Janice (Illeana Douglas), and parents Joe (Dan Hedaya) and Angie (Maria Tucci), Suzanne’s parents Earl (Kurtwood Smith) and Carole (Holland Taylor) and sister Faye (Susan Traylor) are interviewed in various settings, as are the three teenagers, Jimmy Emmett (Joaquin Phoenix), Russell Hines (Casey Affleck) and Lydia Mertz (Alison Folland). Emmett is interviewed from prison, giving us a clue about where this is going from the start.
In the first act of the movie, the supporting cast – but mostly Janice – gives us some background on how Larry and Suzanne met. Larry worked in his family’s Italian restaurant and bar, where sometimes his band played. Suzanne walked in with a few friends and she and Larry hit it off. Even though Janice desperately tries to lure him away from Suzanne and toward some nice Italian-American girl, the sparks fly and Larry and Suzanne marry. No one seems happy about this.
At first, the marriage seems happy, sickeningly happy, but Suzanne sticks out like a sore thumb among Larry’s friends and family. Her patrician lifestyle does fit in with her husband’s working-class world. Suzanne aspires to be a big-time TV newscaster like her idol Jane Pauley, to the point that it becomes a delusion. She goes to the local TV station, a low-budget operation run by two people, one of whom Ed King (Wayne Knight), is super cynical and tries to temper Suzanne’s expectations. Nevertheless, Suzanne is persistent and eventually, Ed gives in, allowing her to go on assignment. She puts together a documentary called “Teens Speak Out,” interviewing teenagers about their problems and their struggles. She speaks to a class of teenagers at New Hope High School where she catches the eye and admiration of three of them; Jimmy, Russell, and Lydia. They then sign up to be part of her documentary.
Meanwhile, the happy Moretto marriage hits a snag. Larry wants Suzanne to work with him at the restaurant and he downplays her Jane Pauley dreams. She realizes she needs to get rid of him to be free to pursue her ambitions. A divorce would be boring I guess, so she manipulates the three teenagers to join her in a plot to kill Larry.
The “ringleader,” if you can call him that, is Jimmy, who is hopelessly obsessed with Suzanne. Suzanne befriends the hapless teenagers, who open up to her about their problems and their hopes and dreams. She specifically seduces Jimmy, even at one point having him and Lydia over to her house where she sends Lydia to walk her dog while she and Jimmy have sex. There are moments in the courtship of Suzanne and Jimmy where it feels like Suzanne is engaging in the type of sophomoric antics that teenagers would. In one scene she dances in the rain to “Sweet Home Alabama” while Jimmy creepily gawks at her from inside the car.
The three teens agree to get rid of Larry for her. Using a gun Lydia steals from her stepfather, Jimmy shoots Larry and he and Russell make the murder look like a burglary gone wrong.
After Larry’s body is taken away, his family and Suzanne’s family gather at the house when they all appear to suspect something is awry. Immediately after Suzanne’s attitude toward the teenagers turns. She is hostile to them, even demeaning Lydia when she meets with Suzanne to talk about the murder (while wearing a wire. We’re not sure if Suzanne has figured this out or not).
It seems as if Suzanne might get away with it, but police notice something fishy while viewing raw footage from “Teens Speak Out;” a reference to a relationship between Jimmy and Suzanne. Suzanne’s guilt is confirmed by the wiretap and she is arrested for the murder. She is acquitted however on the basis that the wiretap was entrapment, which any lawyer will tell you it wasn’t. Jimmy gets convicted and is sentenced to life in prison, while Russell gets 16 years and Lydia is immune from prosecution for her cooperation.
Unlike Pamela Smart, who was found guilty and sentenced to prison, Suzanne doesn’t survive the story. After her acquittal, Suzanne holds an impromptu news conference where she fabricates a convincing story that Larry was killed in a drug deal gone bad after he became addicted to drugs. The tarring of his late son’s reputation proves too much for Mr. Moretto, who “makes a phone call.”
Suzanne meets her end on an icy river where she is coerced into meeting someone about a story and is led under a bridge. We hear her scream and cut to Larry’s parents sharing a satisfied look at the restaurant after Mr. Moretto takes a call, confirming Suzanne’s death. Mr. Moretto had hired a hitman to kill his daughter-in-law.
The final interview is with Lydia, who notes that after all of that, it is she who will become famous. She ends with a victorious monologue. The credits roll over a very satisfied Janice, ice skating over the frozen river where Suzanne’s body lies preserved underneath as Donovan’s “Season of the Witch” plays. (The scene was among those spoofed in The Simpsons). Janice is literally dancing on her much-despised sister-in-law’s grave.
New Hampshire was the setting of this movie simply because of its connection to the Pamela Smart case, but when thinking about both Smart and To Die For, it makes sense for these events to happen in the Granite State.
Once again, we have a front-row seat to the culture clash common in New England between the Blue Bloods (Suzanne) and the working-class immigrants (Larry) and the drama triggered by their conflicting need to live how they want to live, a New Hampshire tradition. The state is well known for its motto “Live Free Or Die” and both Suzanne and Larry had ambitions to live free in ways that couldn’t work in their marriage. In the end, they both ended up dead.