Not that they mattered much at the time—coverage was quiet. Only splashes in official Sundance roundups, where the glowing reviews were buried beneath lengthy thought pieces on the avant-garde shows and evident paid features from bigger studios.
When, three weeks after Sundance,Dreadbasehit theaters to moderate success and then snowballed to word-of-mouth popularity, the press dug through the recordings they hadn’t bothered to print at the time. Suddenly, we were everywhere.
An instant cult classic with two hot new rising stars at its center.
Adeline was a role that critiqued the Madonna-whore complex. She was the smartest of all the characters, the reason anyone made it out of the film alive.
But so many people missed the point—turned her into the very caricature she was critiquing and made her their icon. Every man’s perfect, impossible-to-achieve woman.
And, obviously,thatscene.
The one that comes up if you search that film or say my name or enter any costume shop in the last decade.
Adeline,me, in the same jumpsuit we were all wearing, unzipped a little farther. (I was a woman. It was the ’90s.) And that one scene, where Howard betrays her, tries to sacrifice her to the thing chasing them, and ties her to a gas pipe, a single wrist above her head, before she manages to wrestle his gun from him and shoots him through the heart.
The blood that will draw the monster right to her. The point where she will surely be devoured, refusing to be a quiet sacrifice but going out in a spray of her lover’s blood, the taste of his subterfuge and her sweet revenge the final thing to savor.
Or, rather, Adeline, chained for your ravenous delectation, vicious and violent. A girl to be consumed who’s feisty enough to at least make it fun.
They sold moreDreadbasejumpsuits than Princess Leia bikinis that year.
Because, yes, I was covered in blood, which made that jumpsuit just a bit too tight and made my nipples press through the fabric. Just like they did that velvet dress in the ice-cold Sundance press junket. That’s the shot, the one they made posters of: Adeline, gun raised, splattered with blood, unable to escape.
Blockbuster ordered life-size cutouts to accompany the eventual tape release, and people looted them before the week was out.
I went to Central Art and Drama School. I wanted to win an Oscar one day. I’d taken a complex role in an arthouse film because the character spoke to me.
And my tits made me famous.
A FATAL FEUD
Ivan Drozdov:Years later and I’m still shocked at howDreadbasetook off. Evidently it was just the right film at the right time.
Oisín Connellan:Noisín was everyone’s latest obsession.
Nadine Heywood:Noisín? No, nobody called us that.
Amos DuPont:I saw the magazine coverage before I sawDreadbase.Not really my thing. I didn’t realize it was the same Nadine I’d lived with until Lewis Stamper mentioned it. Quite the transformation. I didn’t know she had it in her.
Nadine curls into Oisín as he opens his coat, using the fabric to shield her from the chasing paparazzi, but it’s clear they’re both laughing, that for now at least this attention is a delight they’ll half-heartedly protest.
Zoe Holland:Nadine was all anyone at CADS could talk about. There were regular screenings in the auditorium. She wasn’t even that good in it, and she was clearly blowing the director. I mean, the character’s name is Adeline. That’s practically, like, an anagram or something.
Lewis Stamper:Harper was livid. She was weird that whole year—ungrounded but committed to acting like she hadn’t been before. You couldn’t even mention Nadine or the film without her behaving like you’d insulted her.
Oisín Connellan:Nadine and I spent a year in LA together. I was even picking out rings. And then Harper appeared on the scene, and it was likeDreadbaseincarnate—Nadine possessed by this monster. All she cared about was digging up dirt on Harper, wearing a hotter outfit than her … God, even now just saying her name has me exhausted.
Nadine Heywood: I was so excited by all the opportunity. I think I did four or five films that year. Harper appeared right when I was chasing all that success. All I’d ever wanted, and there she was to take it from me. That’s what I remember of that year. Not Oisín. Her. So sure, that’s what happened to us: Harper.
February 1994
WHAT HAPPENED, SIMPLY, IS THAT IT’S EASY TO BE THE nice guy when your girlfriend isn’t more successful than you. There’s the sort of man who ties his masculinity to some sort of provider role. There’s the sort who sees his girlfriend’s dreams as whims and his own as serious things to be sought after, ones that take precedence over hers. And there’s the sort who is their girlfriend’s biggest supporter, their besotted champion—or at least they perform that role very well to the outside world—until the moment she starts earning the things he feels he deserves.
Enter: Oisín Connellan.
It started slowly. In the rush ofDreadbase’s release, we hadn’t had time to slow down and consider what it would mean for us.
Its first-week box office was better than we’d hoped, though nowhere near indicative of the phenomenon it would become.
