The Strange, Scrappy ’90s Wildwood Documentary That Became a Cult Sensation

Wildwood, NJ returns to PhilaMOCA October 4th. / Image courtesy of Ruthless Films

One of the most memorable films about the New Jersey Shore was shot on Super 8 and lit by tramcars and pizza joints on the Wildwood boardwalk in the early 1990s. A little more than 30 years later, the hour-long Wildwood, NJ has earned a cult following and countless revival screenings.

Co-directors Ruth Leitman and Carol Weaks Cassidy’s indie documentary made only a small impact when it was released in 1994. Lifting the veil on this sometimes mythologized Shore town, Wildwood, NJ pointed its lens at the girls and young women who strolled the boardwalk, their heads full of romance, mischief, and disillusionment. Speaking right to the camera with their White Rain accents and scrunchied hair, they share stories of life and love, fights and flings, and other adventures somewhere between the roof deck, the gentlemen’s club, and Dracula’s Castle.

Like a 99-cent hermit crab, this unpolished little Shore doc enjoyed some time in the sun before being put on a shelf and forgotten about. Unlike the tragic hermit crab, the film has refused to die.

The revival started some 15 years later. “It was a little bit of the perfect storm,” says Leitman. “It was the July 4th weekend of 2009. [MTV’s] Jersey Shore had just started.”

Then, rising pop star Lana Del Rey jammed about 25 clips from the movie into “Diet Mountain Dew,” one of her first videos. (Good luck finding it; LDR didn’t clear the copyright.) Then a little show called The Real Housewives of New Jersey hit the air in 2010 and eagled-eyed viewers recognized a teenage Dina Cantin from Leitman’s film. From there, Wildwood started earning attention from Gawker, Philly Mag, film fests and so on.

At this point, UArts alum (RIP) Leitman has lived in several places and directed a half-dozen films, including Lipstick & Dynamite, Piss & Vinegar: The First Ladies of Wrestling (2004), and No One Asked You (2023), about Daily Show founder, comedian, and reproductive rights activist Lizz Winstead.

But Wildwood, NJ is still sticking around. “I’m going to some of these screenings and seeing people there who have seen it five and six times. They know the words,” says Leitman, who says it reminds her of going to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show every weekend at TLA Cinema.

When her doc played PhilaMOCA in June, somebody showed up with a plank of the Wildwood boardwalk for her to sign. The film returns to that Eraserhood venue October 4th for another screening, and Leitman will be on hand for a Q&A. She’s been busy doing screenings in the U.S. and abroad over the last several months, but we managed to catch up by phone a couple times recently.

Why do people keep coming back to this film?
The way the girls use language and talk about their own lives is so specific. Nostalgia is also part of it. We’re so often looking back at the ’90s, because of how dire things are in America right now. And it’s a time where people look back and really celebrate the sort of questionable things they did in their youth in a really wholesome way.

This was a very shoot-from-the-hip production, wasn’t it? A four-person crew, that inexpensive Super 8 film, a wheelchair for a dolly.
That’s indie filmmaking, isn’t it? There wasn’t an online community to look up hacks. You just make your own hacks. And something about the grain of the film really makes it feel authentic, and reminds you that it’s authentic. I think that’s part of why people really respond to it. … One of the funniest things that happened on the boardwalk was somebody would look at Karen, who was our boom operator, and the boom, which had a furry soft zeppelin on the end because it was so windy there. People would stop us, and say, “Hey, where’d you win that?” like it was a stuffed animal.

Could you still shoot a movie like this today? I think we’re much more used to being filmed, but also a lot more guarded.
Totally more guarded. And everything’s curated. [In the ’90s], an indie film crew was so foreign to them. “Is this for the news?” “No, not for the news.” And who are these four women who at the time weren’t a whole lot older than a lot of the people we were filming? We were able to sort of blend in, but also stand out. Like, “Hey, these people are doing something, and they want to hear what I have to say.” I think that was the entry for people really reflecting so deeply on their lives, and what I like to call on-the-fly intimacy.

There were so many interesting characters. There’s several sets of twins. And there’s Bonnie who might have recently killed someone in self-defense …
Yeah, I’d seen her holding court on the boardwalk. Everybody wanted to be around her. I asked her if we could film with her. She said yes — and proceeded to blow me off for pretty much a week. We were able to film with her a few different times. But it was very on-the-fly.

And then there’s go-go dancers Betty and Chrissy smoking outside the club …
They were only a few years older than the other girls, but they are much more … clear-eyed? They’re not talking about like how they want a luxury house and to be waited on. It’s real. It was really funny. Like, that’s life in a nutshell. When do we gain our cynicism?

Right. When do we take off the blinders of childhood?
Betty reached out and she was like, “Oh my God, that was my life then. That’s not really my life now.” She was at a wedding, and somebody came up to her telling her one of the Philly rock stations was quoting her from the film on the morning drive show.

You’ve gone on to make several films, but your first one feels very representative of the time and place it came from — and who you and your subjects were. I guess can’t become naive again.
That is so true. A hundred percent. But I see those Wildwood girls in all of my films. Every single one of my films, I think, is about teen girls.

It’s amazing how many musicians from outside the mainstream have found their way to this film, like Suki Waterhouse, Cat Power, and Swedish pop star Robyn, whose stylist Decida is inspired by the look of the film.
All of these different women who run out to blaze their own trails in their work. They relate to that resilience and that perseverance of wanting to do something and not being able to — you know, being held back, and then emerging and being able to do it.

So cool.
It’s fun because I have no control over it. People find it, somebody writes about it, shares it with people. I kind of like that it belongs to the world.

$14.52, 7 p.m., October 4th: Wildwood, NJ (1994) plus a Q&A with filmmaker Ruth Leitman hosted by Tara Murtha, PhilaMOCA, 531 North 12th Street.