A young woman who's attempting to find her place in the world battles with her controlling mother and a womanizing husband finds comfort and confusion with the appearance of her childhood friend. It is a zappy movie that emphasizes self-actualization.Written by
C. Marshall
PolyGram and Working Title Films did not have US distribution divisions at the time. They often relied on other distributors to handle US distribution for their movies. They were both struggling to find a US distributor to sell the film to. They showed the final cut of Drop Dead Fred to various distributors including Orion Pictures, Miramax Films, The Samuel Goldwyn Company, Vestron Pictures, TriStar Pictures, MGM/UA, and 20th Century Fox. All of them called the film "a depressing children's movie on drugs" and turned the movie down. They even brought it to The Geffen Film Company. But they turned it down because they felt the movie was a rip off of Beetlejuice (1988), which Geffen distributed 3 years earlier. Finally they showed the film to New Line Cinema. New Line CEO Robert Shaye and executive Michael DeLuca bashed and hated the movie with Shaye allegedly calling the movie "horseshit". But fellow executive Sara Risher was the only one who liked the movie. She felt that the character of Drop Dead Fred was a comedic reversal of Freddy Krueger in their A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) franchise. New Line at that time was also trying to find another "Freddy Krueger" character, as they were ending the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise with Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991) the same year. For the next few days, Risher kept trying to convince Robert Shaye to buy the rights to the movie. Shaye finally agreed, but decided to only handle the theatrical and TV rights. He insisted on finding a different distributor to handle the video rights. Shaye tried selling them to Media Home Entertainment and HBO Video without any success. He finally sold the video rights to LIVE Entertainment who also bought the home video rights to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) from New Line a year earlier. See more »
Goofs
When Fred and Lizzie are making the mud pie, the amount of mud on Fred's hands changes between shots: in some, his hands are covered down to the wrists, while in others, the mud only goes just past his knuckles. See more »
Quotes
[first lines]
Polly:
And the prince took the beautiful young girl in his arms and said, will you marry me? Yes, she whispered, I will be your princess.
Young Elizabeth:
Did they live happily ever after?
Polly:
Of course, Elizabeth.
[tucking her in]
Young Elizabeth:
How do you know?
Polly:
Because she was a good little girl. If she had been naughty, the prince would have run away.
Young Elizabeth:
What a pile of shit!
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This movie is a CLASSIC film about the relationship children have with their imaginary friends...even if when they're grown up the friends come back. If you think about it, she WASN'T HAPPY! She was lonely! What do little kids do when they aren't happy or lonely? They make up friends that come to their rescue and make them happy again. Some times, even as adults, a person needs to make up their friends to feel loved and good again. Trust me, I know! I'm 17 years old and STILL have imaginary friends. This movie is great! I have been watching it since it first came out and it just gets better and better each time I watch it! Who ever doesn't like this movie either A) has no funny bone...or B) is...and I quote Fred, "A Mega Beast!" who should "P*** off!"
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This movie is a CLASSIC film about the relationship children have with their imaginary friends...even if when they're grown up the friends come back. If you think about it, she WASN'T HAPPY! She was lonely! What do little kids do when they aren't happy or lonely? They make up friends that come to their rescue and make them happy again. Some times, even as adults, a person needs to make up their friends to feel loved and good again. Trust me, I know! I'm 17 years old and STILL have imaginary friends. This movie is great! I have been watching it since it first came out and it just gets better and better each time I watch it! Who ever doesn't like this movie either A) has no funny bone...or B) is...and I quote Fred, "A Mega Beast!" who should "P*** off!"