25 Cult Movies You Must See Before You Die
23. Grey Gardens
Albert and David Maysles are best known for being behind the camera for Gimme Shelter, their documentary following The Rolling Stones' infamous Altamont concert which gave way to violence as the Hell's Angels hired as security killed the young audience member x. Slightly less well known is Grey Gardens, an later film from the pair that's no less enthralling.
Inspired by a news clipping from a local rag, Grey Gardens follows a few weeks in the life of “Little” Edie and “Big” Edie, the aunt and first cousin – respectively – of Jackie Kennedy who lived in the squalor of a run-down mansion in New York State. Nothing particularly happens in the film, but the two Edies are amongst the most interesting characters committed to film.
What makes them all the more enthralling is that, unlike other film icons, the two Edies were real people. Two very strange, very eccentric people who spin their own specific family mythology and talk constantly of a high society lifestyle which, on the basis of their outfits and dwellings, they haven't actually travelled in for a good long while.