Did I find out the source inspiration behind Gone Girl?
What in the name of Gone Girl did I just see?
After so many years of loving Gone Girl, watching, re-watching, & then watching it again a number of times, analyzing it, this is the first time that I’ve found out the story was picked up from the 2002 murder case of Laci Peterson that took place in Modesto, California, USA.
Word for word, scene for scene, frame for frame, Gone Girl was inspired by this true crime story which was widely telecasted across the country at that time. Gillian Flynn took this case & turned it over its head. Same players, same revelations, same outcome. Atleast the outcome Amy originally imagined to be.
David Fincher has a knack for true crime & he aptly adapts them onto big screen. Whether it be with 'Zodiac’, 'Mindhunter' & (now surprisingly) with Gone Girl it is done so seamlessly you are left wondering which parts are fiction & which aren’t.
Reality is more bizzare than fiction. Although there are aspects of this case that are quite different than the book, some more terrifying and shocking, Gillian Flynn did pull up a very strong twist in her narrative by writing a vengeful antagonist with a compelling backstory & an over engulfing personaity in Amy. She also brought in other fictional players to enhance Amy’s crookedness.
The evidence surrounding Scott was circumstantial until the bodies of his wife Laci & their unborn child, Conner washed up to the surface. In Gone Girl, Amy’s initial plan is to drown herself with sleeping pills in her system & rocks in her pockets, thereby sealing the fate of Nick for the gallows. Amy has an over encompassing urge to win. Sure she considered Nick’s death sentence to be a win, even if that meant killing herself, but she soon realises her new plan could also lead to Nick’s incarceration without the need of a body.
Laci wasn’t just any 26 year old female who had disappeared. She was a pregnant 26 year old who went missing. 'And America loves pregnant women’.
Laci being 8 months pregnant blew the whole case out of proportion, much to the chagrin of her short-sighted, cold hearted husband. Now that I know Laci Peterson’s case was the one on which the whole idea of Gone Girl was built on, what makes Gone Girl all the more amazing is the use of reality to weave a compelling fiction. Of course the invention of our amazing Amy. She seems far fetched and unreal in her own accord but throw her into the depths of a small town with a forgettable name in Missouri and suffocate her with the humdrum of a regular life, and out emerges the golden child who’d do anything to stay in the limelight.
Sadly that’s not what dictated the original story. Laci was an innocent being very much in love with her husband, Scott. And Scott murdered her in return. Her body floated down past all the other abused, unwanted, inconvenient women. He paid with his freedom for life for killing his wife and child, a miniscule punishment for a grave offence.
