Not all hope was lost for Bertha Rinskertang after she failed to hang herself and accidentally fell off a 30 story building into a rusty junkyard. Indeed, the 14 year-old aspiring actress may posthumously get the fame she craved now that the Lifetime Network has announced their intentions to create a movie in honor of her tragic and unexpectedly pathetic death.
According to Bertha's
diary, the decision to kill herself was motivated by many factors, including her
poor marks in school, the dramatic death of Anna Nicole Smith, a bad breakup
with her boyfriend who doubled as a drug dealer and father figure, and the
depressing realization that none of her emotional scars were in any way related
to the Vietnam War.
Bertha's death caused
such a stir in the community that it received national attention, where it
caught the eyes of Lifetime Network movie producer James Roberts. Roberts
offered a stunning $500,000 to Mrs. Rinskertang, Bertha's heartbroken mother who
initially declined, stating that she wasn't “going to put a price on her only
daughter.†Mrs. Rinskertang eventually agreed that $750,000 was about equivalent
to the ever-decreasing value of her daughter's life in these trying economic
times.
The film was shot on
location in an unknown and uninspiring town in middle America. It stars a
multitude of middle-aged actors like Tony Danza and Goldie Hawn, as well as
Steve Buscemi as the school janitor.
Although director Paul
McGregors intended to keep the film as close to the actual story as possible, he
admits that he took a few artistic liberties with the screenplay, such as
changing Bertha Rinskertang's name to Anne Robinson, and her appearance to that
of a doe-eyed spring chicken rather than a dumpy girl with an unfortunate
harelip. McGregors also changed the cause of Bertha's death to leukemia.
“It'll make you laugh,
it'll make you cry. But actually the only time you'll laugh is during the
obligatory witty banter that Anne and her childhood enemy exchange before they
realize that they're in love,†said McGregors. “You'll sob when she dies with
her heteronormative love interest by her side, reading her a randomly selected
passage from some early 20th century poetry book. The 'happy times
that once were' montage is also a tearjerker.
