Jon Hamm, Paul Reubens and Patton Oswalt Star in the Worst Oscar Winner That Never Existed

There’s good reason you’ve never heard of This Is How We Love, the (alleged) Academy Award winner for Best Picture, back in 1994. That’s because this fictional film is the comedy brainchild of writer Mike Sacks, featured in his hilariously epic new photo tie-in book for the worst movie to have ever won a Best Picture Oscar. If you love to hate Terms of Endearment, The English Patient, American Beauty, Driving Miss Daisy and Mr. Holland's Opus — critical darlings that didn’t begin to stand the test of time — This Is How We Love celebrates the worst (and awful best) of those films’ cliches and excesses.

Sacks’ book includes an all-star cast for a “movie” that’s aged so terribly, with Jon Hamm, Paul Reubens, Patton Oswalt, Christopher Meloni, Michael Ian Black, Amy Sedaris, Laraine Newman, Paul Feig, Amber Tamblyn and David Cross appearing in photos that bring this awful film to life.

In this exclusive excerpt, we go inside the final tragic photo shoot of trashy almost-starlet Terri Sparks (played by Sedaris), a woman who, for whatever reason, gave everything she had for a chance to be a part of this disastrous film.  

This is How We Love: The Foto-Novel, out April 8th, is now available for pre-order.

JULY 8, 1991 11:30 A.M. – 4:30 P.M.

JEM SCARBOROUGH, film director: Terri auditioned for me a number of times, and I cast her and she was always dynamic on the screen, but the roles she was best suited for in my opinion were not leading roles. Oddballs, carnies, petty thieves, night wanderers, unsuccessful whores. You get my drift. That was her milieu. And of course my pictures always reveled in that sort. I’ll never forget the first time I met her, she was auditioning for me actually. My second picture: Rail Jive Five. About a clan of hoboes, train-hoppers who were high-end jewel thieves. I was looking to fill the role of “Railroad Bunk Whore,” which sounds pretty seedy, and it was. Terri showed up and just blew us all away. Literally. She was an instinctual actress, and whip smart in her way. I hired her, sure, and I rewrote the part to honor Terri’s intelligence and, let’s say, experience. So this railroad whore character knew her history.

SOLLY HINCH, former actress, Terri’s frequent co-star: I acted in a few pictures with Terri, yeah. There was A Day Without Moonlight, Peacekeeper’s Sexual Miracle, Slum Detective. One thing about Terri, at least the times I worked with her, she hated learning lines. Remember when the movie critic said she couldn’t keep her eyes still and “had the focus of a hummingbird with Down Syndrome”? I ain’t some kinda “woke joke,” but I always wanted to slap him for that. Terri was a goddamn silk purse.

PIPPY LARKIN, President of the Terri Sparks Fan Club: There’s never been many of us, but we’re committed. It’s me, my cousin Ed Pace and this woman from the library who refuses to tell us her name even though we’ve been meeting for close to 10 years.

SCARBOROUGH: Something most people don’t know: Terri did a lot of stunt work. Whenever you see a woman getting her hair pulled in a movie between, say, 1968 and 1979? Chances are it’s Terri. She did a brisk business in women’s prison flicks. Grindhouse wig-whippers. TV Tuff Stuff. Episode of Mad About You, the final one, when Paul Reiser joins Scientology.

LEVI TORKIN, former manager of the Hollywood Stardust Motel: Terri was excited about this shoot. Like a bull elephant in a state of must. Said she was up for a role in an honest-to-god Oscar flick, and these pics would seal the deal. Read about it in an issue of Variety she found lining her exotic-pigeon bird cage.

SUSANNAH DALRYMPLE, former assistant to producer James Calder Walton: (Examines contact sheets) I’ve never seen these. (Puts them down) It’s painful to look. I mean, the fashions of the time — so many ornamental grommets. But also, the circumstances were unfortunate. In the valley. Deep, deep in the valley. Where strangers fuck other strangers in rented warehouses made to look like suburban houses.

BENNY GONZALEZ, ex-lover: What kills me is Terri was so excited about this particular shoot. This role (in This Is How We Love) was bigger than she was used to. She thought it could be a comeback type deal. Coming back to what, I don’t know. Normally Terri didn’t stress herself about things like “what to wear for an important event” or “whether or not to blow cigarette smoke in the face of an authority figure” or slipping on a pair of “non-imaginary underwear.” But this was different. She spent double-figure minutes picking out an outfit. And she put on real underwear. We didn’t have intimacy consultants back then, I can assure you.

DALRYMPLE: Lots of rumors about her death. Her calf implants didn’t explode during the shoot. Not sure where that came from.

ANGELA JUGTREE, Terri’s childhood friend: Real simple. You want to know how she died? She died doing what she loved best. She was at her peak. She was auditioning for a major motion picture. Get it, not get it. It didn’t matter. How could she have topped reading for a role in a movie produced by a Maryland businessman to play the alcoholic wife of an impotent astronaut fucking the Mexican gardener with a daughter married to a race car driver with half a face burned off? You can’t. Massive heart attack. Forty-eight. Nothing. Just a kid.

KEITH CAHANE, former EMT: She looked real nice in the moment. Attractive even. You ever seen those sex dolls they show on the cable documentaries? The ones with the segments on swingers that always make the lifestyle seem more cringeworthy than appealing? But yeah, those sex dolls, real lifelike. That’s what she reminded me of. Now I feel bad, comparing this dead woman to a sex doll. Look, the guy, the photographer was super nervous, just freaked out, and honestly probably coked up as well, who wasn’t back then? But it was pretty clear he had nothing to do with it, she just put too many substances into her body over the years, too many dollar burgers, and she stopped cold, like a robot getting powered down. You know those sex robots in those futuristic movies? I love those.

HINCH: That’s what the ambulance guy said? A natural death? For no reason? Nah. I think she was murdered. She knew too much, okay? She and Bill Clinton were a thing for a month. Took her out like he took out Vince Foster.

GONZALEZ: She said that? Vince Foster? Terri didn’t even know who the hell Clinton was! I believe she was involved with some deep-state shit. She was fucking an Israeli. So maybe she was a Mossad agent or something? Or an Iran agent? Lord, she did love the sable-skinned!

CAHANE:  For fuck’s sake, she died of a heart attack! Her veins were more clogged than Larry Flynt’s cock.

HINCH: Do I think about Terri? Well, hell yeah, I think about her all the time! God, what a waste! What she could have accomplished! Probably not much.

DALRYMPLE: I’m thinking Terri faked her own death. She’s now living the good life somewhere special. I follow a person on Twitter named LovedMeSomeApples2. I’m thinking that’s Terri. She absolutely adored apples. And she loved the number ‘2’.

TORKIN: I can still see her now. Sashaying down the hall, bathroom key dragging and scraping behind her. We kept the key on a busted axle from an old AMC Gremlin. Long chain attached. Bad system.

LARKIN: If I had to pick a favorite of Terry’s it’d probably be the first I ever saw, Woman Eye Doctor III. But there are a lot of runner-ups! Like the Butter Boy trilogy for instance. People have asked me why I love Terri so much, considering most of the films she starred in were pretty low-budget and contain violent or depressing themes and images. I tell them that while Terri inhabited each of those characters with skill, what really shined was a woman committed to her craft, one that didn’t give up, even when she was forced to spend an entire film in a filthy swamp playing a human catfish (Pussygills) or made to eat a six-foot-tuna-hoagie on camera in just one take (Ravenous Philly Kim & The Flavor Squad). She really inspired me to believe in myself and never, ever give up! I mean she was literally performing until the very end! She was doing what she loved! What a dream come true. Heaven.

Can’t we just gaze upon the last shots of Terri Sparks and marinate in the beautiful wonder of it all? Can’t we all just soak in the miraculousness of all that she accomplished, the millions of tiny little things that made so many countless people across the world so delirious with joy? And can’t we just remember that she died doing what she loved most? Posing nearly nude for no money?

Can you pay me now?