Helen Hunt Filmography Part 1: An Introduction
It’s 2023, and I’m watching Helen Hunt movies like it’s my day job.
It all started last year when I began watching the 90’s sitcom Mad About You starring Helen Hunt and Paul Reiser as a newly married couple living in New York City. (All seven seasons and the 2019 revival season are available on Amazon Prime Video.)
I know watching 90’s sitcoms is what all the Millennials and Gen Z’s are doing these days, but nostalgia is all we have while the world burns around us. The cool kids may be binge-ing Friends, but I’ll take Mad About You any day. As in literally on any given day I have probably watched an episode of MAY.
I love Mad About You because I was happily married for eight and a half years, and I miss being married. So finding a show about a happily married young couple was like wrapping myself in a warm blanket of memories and shared emotions.
Jeff and I were not actually very similar to Paul and Jamie Buchman. We lived in the suburbs, not the city; Jeff was an engineer, not a creative-type; I had no career and I have never been as charming or attractive as Helen Hunt; and we never got arrested together.
But to quote Tolstoy “All happy families are alike”.
The show captures the way someone can make you laugh till you cry and fill you with rage like no other person on earth can. They make you want to spend every minute together, but infuriate you with the way they eat. And sometimes you want to fuck them so bad you might die, but for God’s sake, can you please have your own bed.
This sort of happiness transcends circumstances and personality.
Now you may think that vicariously reliving my married life through the fictional marriage of a 25 year old TV show is unhealthy. But it gets worse.
When I finished MAY, I immediately, and I do mean immediately, went back to the pilot and started from the beginning.
In 19 days I watched all seven original seasons over again.
In the midst of watching ungodly amounts of television, I decided what I clearly needed to do was start watching a lot of movies as well. All of Helen Hunt’s movies specifically.
I started with Twister, which was on Hulu, but I quickly realized that watching what was easily available via streaming was not for me. No sir. I was going to do this filmography deep dive right. I was going to start at the very beginning and watch ALL. THE. MOVIES.
In the last two months I have watched 33 of Helen Hunt’s 68 films.
In true Millennial fashion, once I realized I had an unhealthy obsession with something, the only thing to do was share it with as many people as possible. And since I’m a geriatric millennial, I chose blogging!
So if you’re interested in Helen Hunt, or obsessive middle-aged women (that’s me, not Helen Hunt) this site is about to become a Helen Hunt stan account for the foreseeable future, so stick around.
In the midst of my “research”, I did come across someone who may be even more obsessed about Helen Hunt than I am.
Hank Green of YouTube, TikTok and middle grade fiction has written a song/music video about his personal infatuation with Helen Hunt. I really appreciate him for this because now this blog series only has to be less creepy than his song.
