Portrait of the artist as a former child star

Part 2 - The early death of Nicholas Bradford

by Ellen Barry

Former Child Star, which will premiere at the USA Film Festival in Dallas, in April, was born out of a fascination with "people who are once removed from each other," says Ryan, who is 29 and lives in Los Angeles. The film is an amalgam of pop-culture references, Tarantino homages, and self-conscious Gen X button-pushing, not least because it was shot for $17,000. This fact did not escape its director, whose previous work included a short film called How to Shoot a Gen-X Movie, and who, while shooting Former Child Star, was simultaneously shooting a documentary about the making of Former Child Star.

Still, when she chose her theme, Ryan was onto something. The film makes liberal use of the child-star cliché: the heroine, a former child star named Kimmy Archer, is driven to crime by percolating bitterness and an endless series of fast-food jobs. It's a craven stereotype, but something about it seems true. It resonates deeply with a whole generation of after-school TV watchers.

She's not the first to make this discovery. When the editors of Might magazine, a satirical bimonthly in San Francisco, printed a hoax obituary of Eight is Enough's Adam Rich last year, they let a pop-culture genie out of the bottle. Days after the issue went on the stands, the news of Rich's death had spread to the farthest corners of the Internet, prompting a wave of keening from former fans, former girlfriends, and former TV dad Dick Van Patten. Adam Rich was rattled. "No offense to Might," Rich told the editors, "but I didn't really think anyone would see it."

That's where Rich was wrong. One of the hallmarks of the decade is a fascination with low-rent cultural references (who could have predicted the Kevin Bacon film festival?), and former child stars represent precisely the grade of celebrity that intrigues us.

Greg Bulmash, who tracks a wide range of former child stars for his WASHED-UPdate web page, says, "We don't quite separate fiction from reality as significantly as we should," and so site visitors talk about -- and care about -- sitcom characters as if they were extended family. "It's part nostalgia, part love and emotional attachment, and part insanity or delusion," he comments. "That's about the best I can do to sum it up."

Part 3 - `Would you like to live your life as Spanky?'

Ellen Barry can be reached at ebarry[a]phx.com.