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.