Richard Day | Girls Will Be Girls / 2003

asteroids

by Douglas Messerli

 

Richard Day (screenwriter and director) Girls Will Be Girls / 2003

 

In the first decade of the 21st century, gay films were not yet embarrassed by being truly funny or complexly dramatic, a sensibility that in the third decade I am increasingly feeling we have lost.

    Parodying a wide range of campy Hollywood films such All About Eve, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Mommie Dearest, and Valley of the Dolls, director Richard Day uses drag performances not to mock and imitate themselves, but to imitate the heterosexual versions of the genre. Despite the wonderful performances of Jack Plotnick as Evie Harris, a washed-up alcoholic C-list actress of various films, Christmas specials, and the disaster epic Asteroid; the near ridiculous love affair between Dr. Perfect (Chad Linsey) and Evie’s mannish, plainish, spinsterish roommate Coco Peru (Clinton Leupp); and the seemingly dingbat but actually all-too-knowing enthusiast characterized by their new roommate Varla Simonds (Jeffery Robinson), these men basically play their female counterparts without winks, nods, and lavish costumes, pretty much convincing us they are simply unhappy over-the-top everyday women like, you know, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Susan Hayward, and Patty Duke—without really trying imitate the drag versions to which we have grown accustomed.

     For at least the first third of this film, we enter a world of quick quips that spin by so fast that sometimes the laughter washes away the next line. Girls Will Be Girls leans instead toward Richard Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatre as, particularly the bitchy Evie puts down nearly everyone she encounters, past and present. How anyone can stay in the same room with her for more than 5 minutes is a wonder.

 

      Coco: What do you think about the idea of having a dog in the house?

      Evie: I’m sorry, have I been staring?

      Coco: I’m think of getting one. I mean, let’s face it, at this point I’m probably

                never going to have kids.

      Evie: Oh, Coco it’s not too late. [She waits for a sympathetic moment] I’m kidding.

      [a few minutes later]

      Evie: This new roommate will cheer you right up.

      Coco: I just hope she’s not too loud, or happy. Happy people always makes such

                A racket.

      Evie: Coco, she came by and she was a peach.

      Coco: Were you drunk?

      Evie: It was 12 noon. Course I was drunk.

      Coco: I’m surprised anyone would want to rent that awful bicentennial room.

      Evie: [laughing] I rented Varla your room.

     And that verbal ping-pong match is just for starters. Varla, we soon discover, is not only incredibly “happy,” but claims she wants to be a movie star and singing sensation.

 

      Varla: I know how tough it can be. That’s why I have a plan. I’m gonna spend

                 every afternoon at Swab’s Drugstore. You know, where Tina Turner was

                 discovered.

      Coco: Except it’s a Virgin Megastore now.

      Varla: Are people still discovered there?

      Coco: Yes, but mainly in the men’s room by undercover cops.

   Turns out, of course, that Varla isn’t quite as innocent as she seems. Within moments of meeting a man who describes himself as a movie producer, she’s busy on the street performing sexual tricks and selling drugs at the same moment. Yet she’s shocked when she discovers he’s not really at all what he claims to have been. But then, neither is she. Actually, the daughter of the woman Evie has beaten out and probably killed in order to get the role in her Asteroid movie, Varla traveled to Hollywood from Arkansas just to get her revenge.

     In the meantime, Evie picks up a man so desperate for porn that he’s willing even to watch Evie’s ex-husband’s man-on-man videos.

     Coco, still in love with the doctor who performed her first abortion—she got pregnant again soon after just so that she might meet up with him again—is raped by a doctor who drugs her with morphine, “The pizza of drugs,” who she soon discovers if Dr. Perfect, now an old, overweight, man with whom she falls in love with all over again.

    There are dozens of good moments such as the ones I’ve hinted at, but gradually, things grind down into not such funny one-liners, mean attempts on the two central character’s lives, and a truly series of unhumorous confessions of Evie’s cruel behavior to others throughout her life. In this soap opera it’s all about having to say you are sorry.

     Yet nearly everyone finally finds her man, particularly Varla, who falls in love with Evie’s microscopically endowed but truly handsome son (Ron Mathews).

      This film was funny enough that resulted in a 2007 web spin-off staring Plotnick, Leupp, and Roberson on YouTube.

 

Los Angeles, June 30, 2024 | Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog.