Thrust It!: The Films That Inspired Maddie’s Secret

Ahead of the release of Maddie’s Secret, Metrograph favorite John Early returns to the theater to present a carte-blanche selection of six films that inspired the actor and comedian’s directorial debut.

“Maddie’s Secret, my upcoming film about a bright-eyed food influencer haunted by an eating disorder, was born out of the somewhat inconvenient desire, like Divine before me, to squeeze into the role of the ingénue. So, naturally, John Waters as goofy Douglas Sirk and Divine as punk Jane Wyman in their masterpiece Polyester were spiritually guiding me through the filmmaking process. Among countless other films and mysterious psychological forces, I also drew inspiration from the melodrama-on-a-dime ethos and creepy moralism of American TV movies (William A. Graham’s Death of a Cheerleader), the gauzy urban fairytale that is Adrian Lyne’s Flashdance, and the paperback Freud quality of Hitchcock’s stunning and hypnotic Marnie. Finally, the yin and yang of who I am: the careening expressiveness of Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls (which my cinematographer Max Lakner described as a “cathedral”), and the quietly devastating Clockwatchers directed by the great Jill Sprecher.” —Series curator and director of Maddie’s Secret, John Early