Sure, Soleil Moon Frye will always be remembered as Punky Brewster but “kid 90,” a personal documentary she’s made over four years that releases Friday, is something quite different.
“It’s been such an incredible journey,” Frye, 44, said Wednesday from L.A. “I kept a diary from the time I was 5 and audio and (recorded) tapes since I was 12. I had locked them away in a vault.”
That archive included every phone message, all her diaries and, most crucially, years of footage from her ever-present video camera.
“Punky Brewster” had ended after four seasons in 1988. As an early ’90s teenager, Frye continued to act and, in this pre-internet era, remain connected with a core group of actor friends she filmed partying, hanging out, dining. Among them were David Arquette, Balthazar Getty, Brian Austin Green, Stephen Dorff, Jenny Lewis, Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Leonardo DiCaprio, who looks all of 16.
“I was so fascinated by the world around me, living here and then I moved to New York for college.
“There was so much joy, bliss, innocence — and also so much fun. But by the time I was in my 20s, some of my closest friends were no longer with us.”
They died of overdoses, suicide; her film is dedicated to each of them.
First, she said, “I wondered if it happened the way I remembered it. Then I turned 40, I had four beautiful children and I wondered, Who am I in addition to being a mom?
“I wondered if my life really happened the way I remembered it. That’s when I started opening up the tapes and diaries. It was almost subconscious.
“When I started the process of working on this and going to the tapes — I’d never watched the tapes — the documentary wasn’t about me. I tried to make it about everybody but as it continued it became a personal journey and an incredibly cathartic experience.”
What Frye found really “eye opening” was to revisit seeing friends who’d subsequently died. “They were talking about what they were feeling and having these deeply painful thoughts.
“As a teenager I didn’t realize that. Looking back and (only now) seeing how many were in pain and how we didn’t see each other was incredibly illuminating. And painful.
“That led to a discovery of blinders coming off and how often we don’t look at the world from multiple perspectives. With the tapes I was able to do that and feel the incredible love for these ghosts I still feel around me.”
