The docu explores the appalling sexualization of Shields beginning at age 9, the top-tier modeling and acting career that followed, and the urgent conversations she inspires around what society expects of women.
Directed by Lana Wilson (Taylor Swift’s “Miss Americana”), “Pretty Baby” confronts milestones in Shields’ life that, in a post #MeToo world, shocked the audience at Park City’s Eccles Theater.
Pre-pubescent nude photoshoots, male talk show hosts asking if 12-year-old Shields enjoys being a sex symbol, the horrors of an alcoholic mom and manager and Shields’ notable public battles with Tom Cruise.
“I’ve always made it an important part of my journey to be as honest as I could. Not just to the outside, but to myself,” Shields said during a Q&A after the premiere, which received standing ovation.
“I didn’t want to become shut down. The industry I’m in primes you to be shut down. I didn’t want to lose to that.”
A mix of taking heads from her life populate the doc to offer insights. Childhood friend Laura Linney, Lionel Richie, Ali Wentworth, and security czar Gavin de Becker all show up.
Drew Barrymore corroborated the confusion and difficulties that come with child stardom.
Selling Sexual Awakening
A particularly poignant moment occurs during a section on Blue Lagoon, the landmark movie about teenagers in love on a deserted island. Director Randal Kleiser, the docu claims, actively built a narrative in the press that Shields was coming of age sexually in real time with her character.
“They wanted to make it a reality show,” Shields said. “They wanted to sell my sexual awakening.”
Perhaps, the work suggests, this is why Shields broke her white-hot career streak to attend Princeton University.
“Brooke insisted on getting agency over her mind, over her career, over her future. I found it remarkable and very contemporary in so many ways,” Wilson told the audience.
Throughout her adulthood, Shields describes her attraction to a figure she claimed to be as “controlling” as her own mother –- the tennis star Andre Agassi, who she says was wracked with jealousy while she broke out in sitcoms like “Friends” and “Suddenly Susan.” The battles weren’t all private.
After marrying now-husband Chris Henchy, Shields struggled with conception. After many attempts, she delivered daughter Rowan and immediately slipped into extreme depression.
In 2005, she authored the book “Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression.”
At the same time Shields was promoting the book, Tom Cruise was making the rounds for his Spielberg-directed sci-fi film War of the Worlds. Cruise, the most famous member of the therapy and prescription drug averse Church of Scientology, publicly went after Shields for promoting antidepressants. He went as far as calling her “dangerous.” In the docu, Shields reflected on the incident as “ridiculous.”
During one scene of the documentary, the camera zooms in on the headline “What Tom Cruise Doesn’t Know About Estrogen,” from a New York Times op-ed she wrote in response to Cruise. The Eccles applauded in delight, and did so again after actor Judd Nelson quotes his Shields at the time: “Tom Cruise should stick to fighting aliens.”
At the time the assault occurred, the former child star was looking to re-start her acting career after stepping away from the spotlight to attend Princeton University. But her re-entry into Hollywood proved more difficult than expected. That was when her assaulter first reached out. “I had heard there was a movie being made, and I was in consideration,” Shields recalls in the film. “It was the first time since college that any interested was sort of expressed [in me].”
“We had a dinner,” she continues. “I thought it was a work meeting. I had met this person before, and he was always nice to me.” But the mood of the meeting abruptly changed midway through the meal, and she quickly began looking to make an exit. “I said, ‘I have to get a cab,’ and he said, ‘Come back to the hotel — I’ll call you a cab.'”
Following him up to his hotel room, Shields remembers being left alone for a period of time and feeling uncertain what to do. “I don’t want to go over to the phone, because it’s not my phone,” she says. “I don’t want to sit down, because I’m not staying.” While looking out at the view of the beach with a pair of binoculars, her assaulter re-emerged. “The door opens, and the person comes out naked,” she says. “I put the binoculars back and he was right on me.”
