FILM 1680: WILD

TRIVIA: The young Cheryl is portrayed by the actual Cheryl Strayed's daughter Bobbi Strayed Lindstrom.

Jean-Marc Vallée would not let Reese Witherspoon read the instruction manual to the tent, or the stove. All of the frustration showed on screen was genuine.

Reese Witherspoon saw an advanced copy of the book in October 2011, 5 months before its release. The galley-form book was mailed personally by Cheryl Strayed herself, believing that if there is an actress who could portray her, it is Witherspoon and no one else. Witherspoon saw potential in that, immediately acquired the rights as it was a perfect launchpad for her production label. The book became much hyped when it listed as a select book for the Oprah Book Club after its release.

There is a scene where Cheryl is reading Gone Girl (an anachronism). This is because Reese Witherspoon is one of the producers of Gone Girl (2014).

Shot almost completely with natural light.

Cheryl Strayed told the Times she made efforts to locate her half-sister and half-brother over the years with no success. When her half-sister started reading Wild, she "knew just enough about me and my siblings that she put it together. She read the rest of the book and then she wrote to me. She was stunned. I was, too, and yet I always knew our paths would cross. Life is like that. There's always more, always a reveal."

FILM 1331: IT FOLLOWS

TRIVIA: The poem that Kelly's English teacher reads out loud is TS Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". The poem seems to share some commonalities with the film.

The theatre featured at the beginning of the film is the Redford Theatre, a historic Japanese style theatre with a fully functioning Wurlitzer organ, in the Old Redford neighborhood of Detroit, MI. The Evil Dead (1981) premiered there.

The dilapidated house that Hugh hid out in and that Jay and her friends explored is a house style called the American Foursquare. This style was popular from the 1890s through the 1930s. Many floor plans for the foursquare feature "circular" traffic patters where one can proceed through several rooms and return to the starting point without ever reversing the path: kitchen, vestibule, living room, dining room, and kitchen, for instance. In some homes, adjoining bedrooms shared closets and bathrooms. This kind of "fluid" floor plan would make this style of house particularly desirable if an escape from "It" was needed.

Some of the cars shown are from more recent times. Some are shown to be from the 60s to late 70s era. The time frame in which this movie is actually set is unknown as some of the technology does not exist, let alone could exist in the supposed "retro" area.

Book 92: In Youth is Pleasure - Denton Welch

In Youth is Pleasure is a beautiful and unassuming coming of age novel. Welch, who began to write after an accident left him partially paralyzed, is a Proustian writer of uncanny powers of observation. "Denton Welch makes the reader aware of the magic that is right under his eyes.... It is time Denton received the attention he deserves". -- William Burroughs.