WINONA ONLINE News Library

Winona Ryder may be only 17, but she has her mind made up about a lot of things. “Boys are more susceptible to seduction,” she pronounces when asked about the perils of teen stardom. “They’re wimps when it comes to that kind of stuff. They want it all, all of a sudden.”

Ryder, who has made six films since becoming an actress four years ago, says she is “taking things slowly, thinking the same way I thought a couple of years before. But boys don’t believe in gradual anything. A lot of them are clueless, the way they don’t think it could ever vanish once they have it all. They think they’ll stay hot forever.”

The Great Balls of Fire set sits in the Cook Convention Centre in Memphis like a giant, 50s-style doll’s house waiting foe Barbie and Ken to arrive. Everything in it, from the rugs to the curtains to the wallpaper to the upholstery to the tschotchkes (which in this part of the world are probably called gewgaws), is water-melon pink or mint-julep green or covered with pictures of poodles. We’re talking serious retro; this is the stuff 1980s diners and MTV videos are made of. This is the house where Jerry Lee Lewis and Myra, his 13-year-old child bride, live.