The first single off the singer Tiffany’s self-titled 1987 debut album flopped. It was the second, a remake of Tommy James and the Shondells’ 1967 hit “I Think We’re Alone Now,” outfitted with drum machine beats and some serious bass synth, that would propel the album to the top of the charts in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and Ireland. It sold 4.1 million copies all told, making it a platinum record four times over.
Tiffany’s star burned fast and bright. By 1989, infighting on her management team had stalled the singer’s career, and she all but vanished from the public eye. Her stint in the spotlight lasted just long enough to spark a love that smolders to this day in the hearts of thousands of fans—in some more than others.
“I Think We’re Alone Now” is a song about two people against the world—running just as fast as they ca-an, holdin’ on to one another’s ha-and—forced to keep their love hidden from outsiders (“’cause what would they sa-ay, if they ever knew?”). In many ways, it is appropriate that a documentary film out of Santa Cruz takes its name from the song. It too is a story of misunderstood love. It’s about a boy, Jeff, and a girl, Kelly. They are not in love with each other, though. They’re in love with Tiffany.
Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)
When Tiffany embarked on her “The Beautiful You: Celebrating the Good Life” coast-to-coast shopping mall tour, Sean Donnelly was only 5 years old. Donnelly grew up in Santa Cruz and attended film school at New York University. He was home from college in 2002, asking random strangers on Pacific Avenue to audition for a short film he was making with his best friend Jordy Cohen, also from Santa Cruz, when he met Jeff Turner.
On any day of the week an assortment of vagrants, grifters and undesirables can found along Santa Cruz’s main drag. “Jeff was different than that,” Donnelly says. “He’s not a crazy guy walking around on the street. He’s very outgoing and put-together, his hair is perfectly combed over, and he has a nice shirt with birds on it. He’s very quick and excited about things.”
The pair asked Turner to read a monologue about murdering people for his screen test. Donnelly recalls, “He got really into it. He was like, ‘The looks on their faces!’ —really dramatic.” At the time Donnelly and Cohen did not have serious plans for making a film, but they liked Turner’s enthusiasm. “So we called him up and said, ‘Jeff, you’ve got the part.’”
They shot a short and, in retrospect, rather silly film in which Turner had a bedroom scene with Donnelly’s former girlfriend. From that point on, Donnelly and Cohen were friends with Turner. They would go over to his house, hang out with him and occasionally he would mention his friend Tiffany. They did not think much of it.
The pair was downtown with Turner one day when they ran into an old friend of his. “Do you know who this guy is?” Donnelly remembers the man asking them. “He’s Jeff Turner. He’s famous. Tiffany has a restraining order against him,” he said.
You Give Love A Bad Name
“LOS ANGELES — Teenage pop singer Tiffany asked a court to issue a restraining order against a man who once approached her with a Samurai sword and has been writing her and following her ever since.” The article was stuck in the corner on the inside fold of the September 13, 1989 edition of Watsonville’s Register-Pajaronian newspaper under the headline “Santa Cruz man trails pop singer.”
“You’ve heard in the media of people who are stalkers or obsessed with celebrities, but you don’t actually meet somebody who’s been accused of being a stalker,” says Donnelly. When he found out Turner was one of them, he says, “I realized I had so many questions that I started filming them. I didn’t know what it was going to be. I was just curious, really.”
Over the next five years, Donnelly says, he started taping sessions with Turner regularly. “I just filmed him every bit when I came home. I would check in with him and see how he was doing and see if any Tiffany events were coming up.” The film that would eventually become I Think We’re Alone Now began to take shape.
Donnelly attended the concerts and conventions with Turner, and as he did, began to make other contacts in the fiercely loyal Tiffany fan base, including a moderator on the “True To Tiffany” Yahoo group (1,879 members at press time).
Donnelly asked the woman if she had ever known anyone else who liked Tiffany as much as Turner. “She said, ‘There is one other person…’ She gave us Kelly’s number and we called her up.”
In the film, when the camera pans around Kelly McCormick’s Denver apartment, photos of Tiffany are plastered at eye level on every available surface. Some have notes or doodles stuck on them. There is a poster of Tanya Chalkin’s iconic photograph “The Kiss” depicting two women in bed. Taped under it is a hand-drawn caption: “Me,” with an arrow pointing at one of the women, “Tiffany,” with an arrow pointing at the other woman, and the words “This Will Happen Very Soon.”
McCormick’s love for Tiffany dates back to 1987, when she woke from a 16-day coma. The first thing she heard was the song “I Think We’re Alone Now.” Since that moment she has held fervently to the belief she belongs with the pop singer. In the film she explodes at one point, saying, “My destiny is: I’m supposed to be with Tiffany. I’m not kidding you. I’m not making this up. If I am, put shackles on me, take me to fucking jail, ’cause you know what? I have the right to love and be loved.”
Owner of A Lonely Heart
Jeff Turner and Kelly McCormick are not the typical leading man and woman. He is 57 years old, unemployed and an enthusiastic collector of conspiracy theories. He has Asperger’s syndrome, a highly functioning form of autism that often comes with obsessive tendencies. McCormick identifies herself as an intersex individual, born with both male and female sex characteristics, living as a lesbian woman.
Both display signs indicating something is a little off. Sure, it’s unconventional that McCormick only met Tiffany once at a mall in the ’80s yet still professes a deep, abiding love for the singer, and, yeah, it’s weird that Turner dons a bicycle helmet festooned with crystals and wires in order to communicate telepathically with Tiffany.
In some ways, though, Turner’s and McCormick’s attitudes toward their beloved is perfectly rational. When McCormick is asked what she is going to talk about with Tiffany when they meet, she answers that she’ll ask questions about Tiffany’s son and “make it more about her.”
“Make it more about the other person” is standard-issue dating advice, along with adages like “Take an interest in things your partner enjoys,” “Show them you are listening” and “make gestures.” Turner explains the reason he approached Tiffany with a Samurai sword in 1989 was because in an interview she expressed an interest in Japanese culture, and he’d read that the highest honor in Japan was to be presented with a “katana.” He had a bouquet of chrysanthemums with him too.
The film shows Turner and McCormick making jokes, dancing and goofing off with their best friends—Turner is smart and jovial, McCormick is funny and sarcastic—and it also shows both talking about the social and romantic rejection they endure on a regular basis. It paints a full and intimate portrait of two typically marginalized, deeply lonely people and challenges the audience to say they don’t have the right to love and be loved.
“They’ve created a love that exists, a fictitious love—they both think that Tiffany cares about and loves them,” Donnelly says. Their relationships are complete with problems they rationalize away. “I’m no psychologist, but I think people do that even in their own lives. Even if you’re in a relationship and the other person really doesn’t love you, you make excuses. You say, ‘They love me, they do this because they love me.’
“People need to feel loved, right?” Donnelly asks. “Even when people are treated really badly they think it’s out of love, and you could say that’s good or bad. I think it’s interesting.”
Addicted to Love
What is most interesting, and unexpected, is that Turner’s and McCormick’s respective relationships with Tiffany, while unconventional, are not necessarily one-sided. In Donnelly’s film the pop star never speaks to the camera directly (she was interviewed twice but the filmmakers ultimately chose not to include the footage), but on numerous occasions throughout she is shown interacting with McCormick and Turner—particularly Turner, who is, after all, the person for whom she requested a restraining order. She smiles, poses for pictures, embraces them, allows them to kiss her cheeks.
At a concert the two lovestruck fans attend, Tiffany addresses the audience, saying, “I’m going to do one more song, if that’s OK, and then I’m hoping to meet each and every one of you guys right over here in the front. I’ll be signing autographs.”
Since her first appearance on the scene, Tiffany has staged a number of comebacks—as a country singer, as a contestant on VH1’s Celebrity Fit Club, and most recently alongside ’80s rival Debbie Gibson in the made-for-TV movie Mega Python vs. Gatoroid. It has been almost a quarter century since she was a full-blown celebrity, but Tiffany’s dream—kind of like Turner’s and McCormick’s—hasn’t died.
People need to feel loved, right?
Looking For A New Love
I Think We’re Alone Now premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival in 2008. At the time it earned writeups in Rolling Stone, Esquire and Entertainment Weekly and a review in the L.A. Times. Variety predicted it would be one of the breakouts of the festival that runs parallel to Sundance and is considered a launching pad for independent films with commercial potential.
It went on to screen at more than 20 other film festivals around the world; it was an official selection at IDFA in Amsterdam, the True/False Festival, the Melbourne International Film Festival, and won “Best Documentary” at Montreal’s Fantasia Festival.
Despite the film’s local angle, the national attention it generated and its acceptance to arguably more prestigious film festivals, I Think We’re Alone Now was snubbed by the Santa Cruz Film Festival—twice, to the dismay of Turner and his best friend, Doug Hawes, who also appears in the film. “Obviously, Jeff and Doug suspect conspiracy,” Donnelly says, but even he is at a bit of a loss.
Donnelly now lives in Brooklyn, where his production company, Awesome and Modest, does animation for documentaries (most recently Waiting for Superman), music videos and commercials. He is also working on an animated series and a narrative film and considering doing another documentary, this time about the burgeoning therapeutic hookworm trade in Mexico.
He is still in touch with Turner and McCormick. McCormick calls and emails regularly. “She likes to talk about sports, the weather, movies, her favorite thing about Tron: Legacy,” says Donnelly. On a recent trip home, Donnelly went to dinner at Margaritaville in Capitola with Turner and Hawes. Before the meal, though, there was some business to attend to. The film was recently released on DVD, and Donnelly asked Turner to explain the bonus features for a promo he’ll post on YouTube.
I went with him to Turner’s apartment in Aptos. It looked much like it did in the film: boxes stacked to the ceiling in his living room draped with clothes next to plastic bags full of laundry and scattered items of non-perishable food—Doritos, evaporated milk, a small plastic container of nacho cheese.
We were in Turner’s home for about an hour discussing his theories about the Druidic Illuminati, the brain’s capacity as a natural transceiver and Natalie Wood’s death. We also talked about other women he’s been interested in since Tiffany got married for the third time. He was briefly interested in Alyssa Milano, but that ended with a restraining order issued in 2008; Lacey Chabert and Jenny Lewis were mentioned as recent interests.
I ask Turner if it’s easy to move on to other people, “Tiffany and I are still friends,” he says. “We still see each other and we’re very close.” He starts to catalog the dates and circumstances under which they met: “… in 1986-87, when she visited Capitola on the ‘School Spirit’ tour with the singing group the Jets…”
Donnelly cuts in. “I think she wants to know what do Tiffany and Alyssa have in common, and Jenny Lewis and these people—there are so many beautiful, famous women—why are you attracted to those ones in particular?”
Turner goes quiet for a moment. “I don’t really have an explanation why I’m attracted to them except that they’re just—they’re very nice, spiritual women, as well as the inner beauty radiates out,” he says. “I mean, anyone can look good from the outside, but the real beauty come from within, and it’s who and what they are within.”
Our interview is wrapping up and Donnelly has to shoot a few still photographs of Turner. I start to move out the frame and he protests, saying, “You know what? You radiate inner beauty—you should be in there!”
Donnelly said with this film he set out to show the person behind the label. It’s a tribute to his success that, hearing Turner say this, I felt only a split second of alarm. Mostly, I just felt overwhelming sympathy for a person who has so much love to give and who, as of yet, hasn’t found someone with which to share it— and maybe a little bit flattered, too.
People need to feel loved, right?
I THINK WE’RE ALONE NOW (2008) is available on DVD at SeeofSound.com, Amazon.com and other retailers. It’s available for rental and instant streaming through Netflix.com.
