FAKE POP STARS 2
we all love a sequel...here's the intro from my Beyond the Valley of the Dolls event for Sarah's screening series Funeral Parade at Prince Charles Cinema, London - Updates at the end
I’m honoured Sarah asked me to intro this film because for better or worse it’s one of my teenage faves and has had a huge impact on my creative work.
Some background: Russ Meyer (the director of this film) started out as a glamour photographer and nudie film maker in the 50s, and became probably the best known softcore auteur. His earlier film, the black and white Faster Pussycat Kill Kill, often makes it into best of lists.
Roger Ebert was the film critic for the Chicago Sun times for approximately 1 billion years - according to his wikipedia he had ‘an intimate, Midwestern writing style and critical views informed by values of populism and humanism.’ Which I think means middle brow.
To give you an idea - here’s a section from one of his reviews, film title redacted: ‘[film] surrounds them with a story that’s marred by sophomoric satire and cheap shots. The director is either denying the strength of his material or trying to defuse it by pretending it’s all part of a campy in-joke…characters use lines with corny double meanings and solemnly recite platitudes.’
Crazily, he’s not actually talking about the film he wrote here, he’s talking about Blue Velvet. He was notably very hard on anything transgressive, campy or queer which is extremely interesting to bare in mind while watching this. He’s still one of the best known film critics and just like Russ Meyer he’s also known for loving… boobs.
So Valley of the Dolls is a 1967 drama film based on the 1966 book of the same name, it’s kind of like if A Little Life was about women - 3 young women one played by Sharon Tate attempt to navigate showbiz and get addicted to dolls - no not that kind - barbituates. It was critically panned upon release but did well at the box office and has since become the originator of a holy trinity of camp classics beloved by gay men alongside Mommie Dearest and Showgirls, films about women suffering horribly.
Because of the box office success a sequel was planned but the original script was scrapped and Russ Meyer, fresh off the success of his nudie film Vixen, was given the task of turning the sequel in to “an R film smashing against an X rating”. Meyer called up his buddy Roger Ebert - they shared a mutual interest - to write the script.
So 2 straight boob enthusiasts attempt to pastiche the kinds of films that become camp classics while not so innocently stumbling into territory they don’t understand, resulting in the transcendent pure camp that can be reinterpreted by a queer audience
It has the four quadrant appeal of films from this era - a bit of schmaltzy romance, comedy, melodramatic tragedy alongside the sleaze of Russ Meyers exploitation movie background - drawing from sexsploitation, blaxploitation and Nazisploitation (double as a trigger warning)
Meyer intended the film to ‘simultaneously be a satire, a serious melodrama, a rock musical, a comedy, a violent exploitation picture, a skin flick, and a moralistic expose (so soon after the Sharon Tate murders) of what the opening crawl called ‘the oft-times nightmarish world of Show Business’”.
It parodies a bunch of stuff i have and haven’t seen but still recognise - kinda like watching stuff thru the proxy of the Simpsons. The genres it parodies barely exist anymore!
So why has it outlasted some of the cultural products it was mocking? Anything spoof shows the workings of the creative process - it’s a meta textual form and when the spoof is of another art form it reveals the artifice. You have to work to watch and understand what it’s parodying and the tones it’s hitting.
I love films where the direction works counter to the script - Roger ebert says Russ Meyer took his direction seriously and solemnly, not allowing the actors to play for comedy, earnestly discussing character motivation. This creates an interesting uncanny tone which allows the film to operate on these two levels of camp - the effective parody requires a serious understanding of melodrama, and the scattergun approach allows for happy accidents. The film was also shot on existing Hollywood sets, due to budget constraints, allowing the film’s strange scenarios to play out in the same settings as big hollywood melodramas of previous years.
John Waters notes this and tips his hat to a flouncing skipping scene in the movie which he recreates in Polyester- which is very kind of him since Roger Ebert always trashed his movies.
He does note, and I agree, that this script is the only worthwhile thing Ebert ever wrote, and it could’ve got a bit tooooo stupid and mean if Russ Meyer’s direction didn’t help the lesbian storyline become genuinely moving despite its rote template nature.
The movie attempts to satirise a cultural moment as it happens, touching on Phil Spector and the Manson murders, the death of hippie culture, as many films at the end of the 60s did. This also struck me this time, how stagnant much of our popular culture can feel now - for all the anti woke backlash, we aren’t even getting stupid1 exploitation films2 about blue haired septum piercing terrorists? Why isn’t Lil Uzi Vert in a movie?
Another way the film tries to get with the times is with depictions of queerness so soon after the productions code ended - with a pastiche production code structure where everyone returns to societal norms.
When it comes to queerness in this movie…I’m not just talking about lesbians anymore. The movie contains some extremely important trans representation, which also solidifies this film’s importance to me and the magic of its pure camp/intentional camp dialectic.
Because it seems like the two straight male authors of this movie weren’t intending to say anything important (good or bad) about transgender, to me they accidentally create an extremely unexpected (and not just because of the reveal trope) trans character. A gay / gay coded character who, due to the late reveal structure, gets to be as full a person as anyone is for the majority of the runtime. Which is pretty impressive in this madcap movie of paper cut out tropes.
SPOILERS AHEAD
Tune in next time for more fake popstar chat!
xo
Updates
Launch event for Michelle Tea’s CLOWNS anthology at Bard Books Thursday 16th alongside Sophie Robinson and Jake Hall - 7-9pm
I’ll be teaching at Estuary Dreams Academy this Autumn, open call for applications for this free experimental film and digital arts programme opens Friday 17th! The last edition produced some amazing work, get in to it
Jaw Filler has been spotted at Artwords Bookshop, Pages of Hackney, Gay’s the word, ICA bookshop, among other luminary retail establishments in London. Grab one while ya can, tell ur friends, tell ur library, tell ur local bookshop, tell ur nan etc
Keep your eyes peeled for exciting announcements (new film project!) coming soon in the next month or so…
I know we had one battle after another attempt this, but there weren’t any lesbian sex scenes in that so NOT GOOD ENOUGH in my opinion.
wait am I describing…..Emilia Perez?
where’s 3