Bold claim: Jamie Lee Curtis once pressured the My Girl poster to include a trigger warning because the film’s ending centers on the death of its main character. And this is the part most people miss about marketing ethics in classic cinema.
Curtis, now 67, shared on The View that she grew so concerned by the poster’s cheerful publicity—featuring Macaulay Culkin as the film’s biggest star and a smiling girl on the cover—that she personally contacted Columbia’s head of marketing. In her words to Whoopi Goldberg, she argued that the poster conveyed a misleadingly light tone for a movie that tackles life-and-death themes. She said: “You have to put a warning. You have to say there are issues of life and death explored in this film, because this little boy is going to die on film and you’re going to see him dead in a coffin and you’re going to freak out every child in America.”
In My Girl, Curtis plays a mortician who works at the funeral home run by the protagonist’s family. She befriends an unpopular, bespectacled boy played by Culkin, who was ten years old at the time and already a household name after Home Alone’s success the year prior.
The plot pivots on Culkin’s character, who suffers from several allergies, ultimately being fatally stung by a swarm of bees shortly after he and the lead girl share their first kiss. Culkin later revealed on the On Film … with Kevin McCarthy podcast that the bee scene used hundreds of live bees. He described the process: post-application of a scent on his fingertips to attract the bees, being instructed to wave his hands to bring the bees into view for the camera, and then being told to wash his hands thoroughly and retreat into the woods after filming. The bee handler even advised him, humorously but tellingly, that humans can outrun bees more easily than bees can outrun humans, a remark Culkin recalled as he was ten.
My Girl, rated PG, proved to be a major box-office hit with global grosses around $121 million and even spawned a sequel.
During a discussion, Goldberg acknowledged that the film’s intense moments did leave some viewers unsettled, noting that the experience did indeed frighten some children. Curtis agreed, suggesting that if the film were released today, it would likely carry a warning label to prepare audiences for its heavier themes.
