Soleil Moon Frye unarchives hours of camcorder footage for harrowing ‘Kid90’ doc

Soleil Moon Frye talks to Yahoo Entertainment about her new documentary, Kid90.

Video Transcript

SOLEIL MOON FRYE: I carried a camera with me everywhere I went. We weren't concerned about the internet. We did the things that teenagers did, we just happened to be in Hollywood.

LYNDSEY PARKER: I watched the doc last night, and I'm still processing it. And it's crazy to me because now everybody's recording their lives. But you were doing it-- you know, you were doing it before it was kind of second nature for us to all like document our lives when we're out and about.

SOLEIL MOON FRYE: Well, from the time I was five-years-old, I carried a diary. And then at 12-years-old, I was given an audio recorder. And then by the time I reached my teen years, I was holding a video camera. And I really feel like something inside of me, inside of that little girl kept a blueprint-- a chronological blueprint as almost a roadmap for my adult self to come back home in a way, you know.

LYNDSEY PARKER: I'm curious to know-- I imagine you had a lot of moments, a lot of "there but for the grace of God, go I" moments, when you were putting the stock together and looking at the footage given what happened to other people in the doc-- your friends, many of whom, you know, tragically are no longer with us or got much deeper into drugs or hard stuff. There must have been some junctures in your life where that could have been you.

SOLEIL MOON FRYE: I think that there's a multitude of things, you know. I have an incredible family. And so I had an amazing grounding where I always had my childhood, and my youth, and sense of self, you know. At

The same time, David Arquette says it so beautifully that the world can feel very painful. And I look at someone like my dear friend Jonathan Brandis, who I love so much. And I was talking to his parents the other night, and they loved him so much, and they love him so much.

And so sometimes even with all that love around us, there's just that pain. And I think one of the things that was so hard to process was the fact that the teen me, didn't always see what was going on in the pain of the people around me. And I think that is the same that goes on today, which is like-- and I say this, how often do we really look at each other and say, how are you, you know, and really mean it?

And so people are suffering all over the world, and I think feeling incredibly isolated. And so I hope that this documentary allows people to not just look at the world through my eyes. I want them to be able to look at it through their own eyes and their own perspective.

LYNDSEY PARKER: Yeah, it's really heavy at the end. It really drums the point home when-- not spill too much-- but, you know, you have the dedication to people who are no longer with us. And it's just like a fairly long list that keeps going.

SOLEIL MOON FRYE: And these are genuine, real friendships. You know, Harold Hunter, Justin Pierce, Jonathan, these are my family. And I think that's one reason I locked away the tapes for so long. On a subconscious level, I wasn't ready to deal with the pain.

I don't know the ending. I am absolutely discovering it as we go.

There's so many experiences where I just was in such, you know, joy and love watching the footage. Some of the treasures found, you know, were messages. When we were kids, and you had, you know, your voicemails, Jonathan Brandis, he would leave, you know, a 15, 20 minute message because he was like determined to use all the tape on the machine.

And when I listened to them all, the last minute is him confessing his true feelings, you know, Because he knew that I probably would never get to the last minute of the message. And so hearing there's the moment where he's like, I love her. I've always loved-- and that was like, you know, there's this long message.

And then that's what he was sharing at the end. And was like these blinders coming off because I was like, if this is the example of how loved I was, and I didn't see it, then there's so many other people in the world that probably don't see the ways in which they're loved.

LYNDSEY PARKER: And I know watching the doc what the most painful part of the doc for me.

SOLEIL MOON FRYE: Yeah.

LYNDSEY PARKER: That hit me the hardest. But of course, you know, you're the one who lived it. So I want to know what it was for you.

SOLEIL MOON FRYE: There's things that I had blocked out, and things that I hadn't dealt with. You know, I had some memories, and we-- as an example where, you know, none of these people that were in the film, but I had a group of friends that I thought were like my good friends.

And then we'd hang out, and I had kind of these things that I would-- like when I looked back, and I was like, well, I kind of remember like drinking some ginger ale but then not feeling the same after. And then like I remember, you know, maybe there was alter-- like wait. Was I on the front doorstep?

And then I remember waking up in a room that wasn't mine. So there was things, you know, that I had blocked out and not really-- they're fuzzy. And so I'm still processing it because I still don't have full memories of what had happened.

What was mind blowing was then finding a tape where the teenager in me, who still felt like these were my friends, I was going what happened? You know, the journalist in me, I think, was trying to make sense of it. And I was like, what happened? Because I don't remember pieces of it. And I know I didn't drink.

And they were like, well, yes, you did. And I'm like, no, I didn't. The questions that brought up certainly was incredibly, you know, painful. Yeah, and to be very clear, there was multiple experience-- this wasn't like one-- you know, I had-- there was a few experiences that were not so positive.

The biggest thing that came out of it was not-- it was not about the whos and whats, it was about forgiving the little girl who felt shame or felt like I had to bury it all away. I started developing rapidly. People were calling me "Punky Boobster."

The last couple of weeks have been weird having guys pinch my ass.

LYNDSEY PARKER: It's interesting because very early in the documentary, you talk about your breasts. Sorry, I know it's weird to talk--

SOLEIL MOON FRYE: I have no problem talking about breasts.

[LAUGHS]

LYNDSEY PARKER: Awesome. What do you think it is that people-- the media that is-- it's disgusting that they would care about whether, you know, a 16-year-old boobs, what size they are, making, like, jokes about Punky Boobster, as you said in the film. Well, how did you feel about the objectification?

SOLEIL MOON FRYE: I definitely went through it as a teen and that feeling of, you know, grown men looking at me in a different way, and also just the insecurity that I started to feel. And so really for me, I felt like this was really important for my own sense of self. I really felt like I was going to make this transition and that I was so righteous in a way.

LYNDSEY PARKER: So you're referring to being very open about the fact that, at an unusually young age, you had breast reduction surgery.

SOLEIL MOON FRYE: You know, I have to say also having teen girls today-- you know, my 12-year-old is about to turn 13 and having a 15-year-old, you know, for me, sharing the documentary with them was really a way of us having this open dialogue and conversation.

And to have experienced what I went through developing as a teenager, and now to magnify that with social media, and what is going on, and the way in which people belittle each other, and make teenagers going through puberty feel so badly about themselves is really horrifying, you know.

LYNDSEY PARKER: How many times have you watched this film? Because just in the time that we've spoken, I've seen you tear up, you know, more than once. Obviously this stuff hits close to home for you, in good and bad ways. But like mostly good.

SOLEIL MOON FRYE: I have been in the edit bay for the last-- I mean, years, you know, frame by frame. So it's been a process. I mean, this is has been years. Of course, it's been my whole lifetime, but it's been years in the making. And I'm so grateful because, you know, it has been this rediscovery of self, and who I once was, and who I really am.

LYNDSEY PARKER: You're going to get an Oscar for it.

SOLEIL MOON FRYE: Oh, you're the sweetest person ever! Oh, my God.

LYNDSEY PARKER: I think you'll at least get a nomination. I think it's going to be really critically acclaimed. Thank you for making the documentary. It's really good.

SOLEIL MOON FRYE: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it so much.

[MUSIC PLAYING]