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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 5, 2003)
december 5.2003 » J u s t o u t 33 FILM ..........▼ ............ D ie , M ommie , D ie Prey for better movies D ec. 5 to 1 1, Cinem a 21 forgotten, aging singing sensation (screen writer Charles Busch, in drag) plots a com e back and becomes a murderess while repress ing shocking secrets and attempting to cope with an oppressive movie-producer husband (Philip Baker Hall) a suave gigolo lover (Jason Priestley, doing an excellent William Shatner impression), a meddling, Bible-thumping maid (Frances G>n roy of Six Feet Under), a prissy daughter (the always game Natasha Lyonne) and an Easy Rider-wannabe gay son (Stark Sands). So goes Die, M ommie, Die, a film that seems to promise gaudy hilarity but slips into lazy over-reliance upon a cultural currency that’s rapidly going extinct. T h e film studiously evokes the strange iconography of a certain moment in our cultural history— a time that saw the odd intersection of the then mostly closeted queer community and a rapidly shift ing Hollywcxxl star hierarchy. Camp films recalled by Die, M ommie, Die second-string ’60s “thrillers” like D ead Ritif^r and Strait-Jacket, respectively starring established gay icons Bette Davis and Joan Crawford— held a certain appeal to a gay audience that knew from painful personal experience the tension between glamorous dreams and cniel reality. Fortunately for us, but unfortunately for Die, M om m ie, Die’s central conceit, that moment is something of memory’ (for gay baby Kximers and seniors) or history (for subse quent, post-gay-lib generations). T his puts Die, M omm ie, Die and its audience into a peculiar and finally untenable position. Like Todd Haynes’ Far from H eaven and Peyton Reed’s Down with Love, director Mark Rucker, A Double meaning of “drag” made evident in new queer releases by C hristopher M c Q uain T h e cast is worth seeing. Busch, in particular, earns generous laughter with his minutely detailed expressions and physicality. But the film ’s indecisiveness (or neglect, or myopia) regarding its own identity finally renders it an interesting, interm ittently funny failure. P rey for R ock &. R oll Dec. 12 to 18, Hollywood Theatre o say Frey fo r Rock & Roll bites off more than it can chew- is putting it nicely. A udience members who’ve Knight the film ’s billing as a ultimately story' aK>ut nx;k ’n ’ roll women featuring real women playing real nx:k, told with insight and integrity, may even consider it a sellout. T h e characters themselves— stning-out Tracy (Drea de M atteo) on bass, lead guitarist Faith (Lori Petty), dnimmer Stacy (Shelly G>le) and tough, bisexual, middle-aged, rix:k- goddess singer Jacki (G ina G ershon), together comprising a band called Clam Dandy— are not without interest and potential. Unfortunately, Cheri Lovedog and Robin T — Charles Busch (right) leads a talented cast in the disappointing Die, Mommie, Die Busch and their designers have striven, with an impressive degree of success, for verisimilitude. However, where those two films had clear-cut, confident senses of purpose, Die, M ommie, Die’s mimicry stumbles into aimless faltering; it dix?sn’t go far enough beyond merely accurate, decorative imitation to avoid reminding us that, in between their “gcxxJ” parts, the movies it ref erences were full of patches that were simply flat, B-grade filmmaking. Whitehouse’s script K>gs them down in un inspired, bluntly executed subplots involving hid boyfriends, midlife crises and predatory music-bi: types before recklessly going over not one but two contrived narrative cliffs. By the end, the movie has crashed and burned before our very eyes, and not before coming regrettably close to trivializing some rather serious issues with its patronizing, phony Lifetime Channel isms. Gershon herself sings— it’s neither terrible nor unique. T h e group sounds like a decent bar band, bur the music isn’t special enough for the music-video-length exposure it’s given. More worthy L.A. female-rock soundtrack material— L7, say— would’ve better captured the milieu and gone further toward convincing us that Clam Dandy are unfairly overkxiked and undervalued by the industry. It doesn’t help that director Alex Steyermark constructs flat, merely competent sequences or that he seems not to have encouraged the actors to shape their performances. Cole and de Matteo fare well enough, but Petty is stuck doing a not-great Ellen DeGeneres impression. (The lesbian relationship between her and Cole, like most relationships in the film, doesn’t leave much of an impression.) Gershon, all charisma and sex appeal, is more of a “presence” than an actor. Her perfonnancc and voice-over narration are full of attitude, but it’s dress-up rock-star attitude— it comes across as fix) affected and predictable for the supposedly bullshit-prix>f Jacki. W hich is, revealingly, the same discrepancy that causes the film itself to fail: It refuses to walk its no-BS rix:k n ’ roll talk. j n C hristopher M( "Q i IAIN is a Seattle free-lance writer.
