Important: 50 Literary Cameos in 90s Movies

The Ice Storm (Ang Lee, 1997) may be based on Rick Moody’s novel, but it features Philip Roth’s When She Was Good, which—fun(?) fact—is Roth’s only novel with a female protagonist.

Irma S. Rombauer’s The Joy of Cooking and Henry Gray’s Gray’s Anatomy have equal value in the kitchen of The Addams Family (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1991).

Oh my heart: 11-year-old Vada Sultenfuss reading Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace in My Girl (Howard Zieff, 1991).

If your wife is a serial killer, as Sam Waterston’s is in Serial Mom (John Waters, 1994), I suppose all you really can do is read Robert Ludlum books in bed.

Isabel reads my own favorite picture book, Jon Scieszka’s The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, to little Ben in Stepmom (Chris Columbus, 1998).

. . . but their REAL mom reads them The Story of Ferdinand, by Munro Leaf.

In Girl, Interrupted (James Mangold, 1999), based on Susanna Kaysen’s 1993 memoir of the same name, Georgina takes solace in the works of L. Frank Baum.

In Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 1996), Rent Boy reads Robert LaGuardia’s biography of legendary actor Montgomery Clift.

Jim Carrey reads from The Great Gatsby as Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon (Miloš Forman, 1999). The real Kaufman does something similar here.

Neve Campbell’s Suzie Toller reads Céline’s Death on the Installment Plan in Wild Things (John McNaughton, 1998).