MovieChat Forums > Pay It Forward (2000) Discussion > What the Hell Happened to Helen Hunt?

What the Hell Happened to Helen Hunt?


http://lebeauleblog.com/2012/09/08/what-the-hell-happened-to-helen-hunt/10/

In 2000, Hunt returned to movies with a vengeance. She appeared in four movies that year. The first was the truly dreadful melodrama, Pay It Forward.

Pay It Forward stars Haley Joel Osment as a saintly little boy who has the revolutionary idea that the world would be a better place if everyone did random acts of kindness. One of his acts is to try to set his single mom up with the teacher who inspired the “pay it forward scheme”. The teacher was played by Kevin Spacey.

Pay It Forward means to be a high-minded tear-jerker. But it’s the kind of movie that tries too hard to manipulate the audience’s emotions. Spoilers for the next sentence. It ends with Osment dying Christ-like for our sins. Instead of being moved, the audience just feels jerked around by such an obvious attempt to elicit an emotional response.

Reviews were not kind. Entertainment Weekly called the movie “reprehensible.” Pay It Forward bombed at the box office with a fourth place opening behind Meet the Parents which had already been in theaters for three weeks. The movie was clearly intended to be Oscar-bait, but no one was biting.

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Tmc. It WAS "
Oscar " bait" And Won an Oscar. I'm NOT a fan of Helen Hunt but this movie was AWESOME

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Pardon, but which Oscar did it get?

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i LOVED IT too..

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I liked PIF. Most movies are either Oscar bait, rebellious Indie, or commercial cash grab.

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I liked your clarification. I am usually a rebellious indie viewer and tripped into the wrong territory.

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I'm eclectic. I'll watch some of all 3 and criticize just as much.

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I thought you were going to discuss Helen Hunt. Are you ADD?

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LMAO@gottaluv!

Yeah, I was waiting for mention of The Sessions and her fully naked body preceeded by her haggy looking face in Soul Surfer.

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I saw a couple clips from The Sessions and feel that the movie must amount to nothing more than unnecessary, graphic (considering who she is) sensationalism. I'm disappointed in her for deciding to do it.

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Oh no, it was about the man not the therapist played by her.
Its really a good, sweet movie.

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https://bombreport.com/yearly-breakdowns/2000-2/pay-it-forward/

The project went into production as a prestige picture with huge commercial potential, toplined by Kevin Spacey who had just won an Oscar for American Beauty; Haley Joel Osment who had just been nominated for the smash hit The Sixth Sense; Helen Hunt who had won an Oscar For As Good As It Gets; and director Mimi Leder who had just helmed the box office hit Deep Impact. Things went awry during filming when Spacey and Hunt lived up to their reputations as extremely difficult people to work with and began demanding script changes and were improvising ridiculously corny lines — like this cheap sap, courtesy of Spacey, which was cut from the final edit, but made the rounds in the media and ridiculed to no end: “I don’t want to spend another second of wasted air, you beautiful, lovely, difficult, hilarious woman. Please don’t let me stay trapped in here forever. I’m so exhausted from being so afraid.” Please let that footage surface one day.

Screenwriter Leslie Dixon has been very candid about the awful experience on Pay It Forward, saying of the actor’s script demands, “I began making the script worse. There weren’t wrenching changes; it was more the death by a thousand little razor cuts.” You can read more from Dixon here.
https://www.meetup.com/NYC-Screenwriters-Collective/messages/boards/thread/30819762#92741992

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Geez, imagine a woman getting fixed up with Kevi Spacey. That poor woman!

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