Soleil Moon Frye became the ultimate 80s child star on Punky Brewster, at the age of seven. She played America’s favorite moppet, wearing mismatched tops and extolling the virtues of Punky Power. The show was finally canceled in 1988 – and that’s when Frye started carrying a video camera around, filming his other star child friends, just in time for their awkward teenage years. Child 90, a new documentary starting to air on Hulu today, turns its home theater footage into a time capsule of show biz kids growing up in ’90s Hollywood. It’s set to coincide with Punky’s new reboot on Peacock, starring Frye as a single mom.
As she says in the movie, “Somewhere inside this teenager knew she was going to have a story to tell, knew she was going to go on an adventure. And she was going to document every fucking second, so she could share it someday. It’s the Goodfellas from child-star sagas, about growing up in a dirty business you can never escape. Best of all, you live the rest of your life like a schnook.
Flux Child 90 on Hulu here
Child 90 is full of her teenage antics with boyfriends like Saved by the BellMark-Paul Gosselaar, Stephen Dorff and David Arquette, who show up to relive the memories with her. There are images of Jenny Lewis and Sara Gilbert laughing on her sofa. (Lewis says, “Cool camera, man!”) We see her hanging out with Leonardo DiCaprio, Dustin Diamond, Robin Thicke, Mario Lopez, Charlie Sheen. She hits Sea World with Beverly Hills 90210Brian Austin Green, who says to his camera, “Say no to drugs!” Today’s Green tells a fun story about meeting some prominent guests on his birthday. “Johnny Depp, C. Thomas Howell and Bubbles, Michael Jackson’s chimpanzee,” he recalls. “There were literally 12 kids in the business, so we all knew everyone. We all knew each other.
The tapes remained in a storage facility for 20 years. But with this doc, she opens the coffers. There’s a highlight in his childhood fame, including Frye smiling in a TV commercial for raisins and chatting with Joan Rivers, Nancy Reagan, George HW Bush, and Andy Gibb. There’s even a clip from everyone’s favorite Punky brewster episode, the one where Buzz Aldrin goes to heal his grief following the explosion of the Challenger in 1986.
For an early ’90s pop culture junkie, Child 90 is definitely a trip down memory lane. Frye wore his camera before social media or the internet boom, so no one worries about being filmed while partying, drinking alcohol, taking drugs. She likes to ask her friends about their philosophy of life, so we get the thoughts by Emmanuel Lewis and Michael Rappaport and Corey Feldman. She poetically recounts her romance with Danny Boy O’Connor – you know, the second most famous rapper from House of Pain, back in the ‘Jump Around’ era. We see a page from her teen diary, for the momentous day Mark Wahlberg calls her. She draws hearts around her name.
But like virtually all of her fellow Reagan-era stars, she hasn’t made the leap to adult stardom. As soon as Punky was called off, his career came to a screeching halt, and that’s really where the story begins – none of these kids are equipped to handle show biz rejection and failure. For Frye, it was complicated by his body image issues; she was still young enough to go to summer camp when the bad kids started calling her “Punky Boobster”. There is an infuriating guest appearance scene on The good years, with Fred Savage – and the adults behind the camera – ogling his chest. She had breast reduction surgery at age 15, one of the first celebrities to go public with the experience.
As she points out in the movie, no one really wants to see children’s stars grow up. She films her teenage daughter talking about what she wants to accomplish next, to the sound of “Mesmerizing” by Liz Phair. But that goes straight into the footage of her roles in cheesy films like Pumpkinhead 2: Blood Wings and the televised remake of Piranha. She finally goes to New York to learn her trade at the Actors Studio, admitting: “I wanted to be taken seriously.”
The story becomes incredibly dark. She details her horrific experience of being sexually assaulted as a teenager, by an older actor she loved and trusted. It also includes footage of her many old friends who ended up committing suicide, whether through drugs or suicide, from SeaQuestJonathan Brandis to porn actress Shannon Willsey. There is a call from his deceased friends at the end, on “Road to Nowhere” by the Talking Heads.
But Frye is more comfortable portraying the awkward child she was. She reads an excerpt from her teenage diary (with James Dean on the cover), along with a poem she wrote when she was 13 called “Lost Angels”. There is a phone call with Joey Lawrence about his visit to the hospital after his operation. She records the funniest footage for the closing credits: a surprising young Leonardo DiCaprio brags about the way Frye has been filming him for the past two years. “This is his little document on my growth. I grew at least 3 inches, 4 inches. And I’m taller too! When she shows some of his images to Perry Farrell, he scowls at his Jane’s Addiction fashion choices. “There’s the rainbow shirt, yeah,” he moaned. “I was afraid you were going to pull up that rainbow jacket. Okay, that’s what it is. “
Frye keeps pointing out that she was a child star who never felt pushed in front of the camera and that she only has affectionate words for her stage mom and mostly absent dad, the actor. Virgil Frye. (His previous documentary Sonny boy was about their relationship at the sad end of her life.) But it’s clear that becoming famous was a disaster from which she is still recovering. His old friends have similar damage – if they’re still alive. Adolescence and fame appear to be a traumatic combination. It hurt these children for life.
