I’ve been reading all this research about how people in obsessive unrequited love tend to follow a cultural “script” that positions unrequited love as a mere precursor to mutual love. If you persevere, you’ll get your beloved. Of course this is a myth and leads us to all kinds of unpleasantry, from bitter disappointment to stalking behavior. The video plays right into this script. We need to let our daughters know that the song, with its intense longing and lack of resolution, is much more real. Lots of times, you’re not going to get the guy, and you’re going to have to sing out your pain.

I don’t mean to judge Faris — I think it can be positive for shiny Hollywood stars to talk about these very human moments. But the delighted, knowing guffaws in response speak volumes. It’s safe and fun to see what Faris did as amusing, titillating, identifiable (we’ve been there too!), and harmless. What gets lost is that she was confessing to a moment of great darkness in her life, when she listened to Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” over and over again (you’ve got to be pretty down if you’ve got PF on repeat) and couldn’t stop herself from tracking down the guy who’d once given her a promise ring. He probably was in a pretty low place himself. Contrary to our fantasies, research shows few men take any pleasure in being stalked, no matter how “hot” their pursuer.

The documentary illuminates one of the major themes of unrequited love and romantic pursuit: What is the truth? McKinney, a vivacious and gregarious Southerner, is startlingly faithful to her story: that Anderson loved her back but was the victim of brainwashing by the Mormon Church. She never married and has spent her life writing her tale, which she’s titled “A Very Special Love Story.” Anderson refused to be interviewed, but his absence from her life speaks volumes: He either couldn’t, or wouldn’t, be the prince in her fairy tale — and at worst he was her victim.

Errol Morris is a filmmaker intrigued by obsessive personalities who hold fast to the flawed narratives of their own heroism. I’m thinking of McNamara in The Fog of War. McKinney is much more charming, though. As a journalism professor, I was also struck by how Morris juxtaposed McKinney’s stalking of Anderson with the British tabloid’s stalking of her. At first she basked in press attention (as she does in the documentary itself). But when The Daily Mirror digs up salacious bondage photos of her, she feels violated and betrayed, charging that the paper merely stuck photographs of her head on another woman’s nude body. The body, she protests, has breasts “like fried eggs,” nothing like her own.

As it turns out, McKinney isn’t happy with the documentary either. She’s appeared at a number of prerelease screenings, heckling and protesting the film.