If I recall correctly, I first saw the Maysles Brothers documentary Grey Gardens on VHS in the early 1990s, and like every generation encountering the pop culture artifacts of a previous generation for the very first time, I thought I’d stumbled across some rare find that only a handful of lucky people knew about (in the same way Columbus thought he’d discovered America, several million resident natives notwithstanding).

Having missed the first wave of Grey Gardens mania in 1975, I was surprised when my “secret” documentary suddenly became a Broadway musical in 2006, indicating a much larger fan base for the Maysles’ film (and its subjects) than I’d previously suspected -- so later, when I heard Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore were taking on the roles of Jackie O’s eccentric relatives Big & Little Edie in a (relatively) big budget HBO biopic, I already knew the cats (and raccoons) were pretty much out of the bag.

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