Important: 50 Literary Cameos in 90s Movies
Or, An Elaborate Excuse to Revisit 10 Things I Hate About You
Max Cherry reads Len Deighton’s Berlin Game in Jackie Brown (Quentin Tarantino, 1997).
A very young Sandra Bullock reads Sartre’s Nausea in Love Potion No. 9 (Dale Launer, 1992).
A very very young Juliette Lewis as Danielle in Cape Fear (Martin Scorsese, 1991), reading Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel.
The most important thing to keep in your glove compartment: a copy of Helter Skelter. What else do you expect from the Slums of Beverley Hills (Tamara Jenkins, 1998)?
Poor Sara Crewe reads (and relates to) the Ramayana in A Little Princess (Alfonso Cuarón, 1995)
Who could forget the girl with the lunchbox full of books in Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (Jim Jarmusch, 1999)? Camille Winbush, as Pearline, proudly displays Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (Ghost Dog: has read), W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk (Ghost Dog: has read, and wants to know where she got it), David Holmes’s Night Nurse (Ghost Dog: “You read that?” (Nope, she just likes the cover)), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (Ghost Dog: “Now that’s a good book.” (She knows, it’s even better than the movie)). For his part, he lends her Rashomon.
A classic sparks some feeling in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992).
In Conspiracy Theory (Richard Donner, 1997), Mel Gibson’s character compulsively buys copies of The Catcher in the Rye, ostensibly to prevent future assassinations.
Dopey dopey Chris Klein in the middle of reading The Celestine Prophecy in Election (Alexander Payne, 1999).
Gremlins like to read too—especially about the origins of humanity. Or at least according to Gremlins 2: The New Batch (Joe Dante, 1990), which features this copy of James D. Watson’s The Double Helix.
