The fictional suburb of Bailey Downs is home to 15-year-old Brigitte Fitzgerald (Emily Perkins) and her soon-to-be-sweet-16 sister Ginger (Katharine Isabelle). They are pariahs in the small bedroom community, clinging to each other as best friends, bound by a childhood pact. They are so desperately unhappy and bored they vow to commit suicide together. In preparation they assemble a school art project — a series of gruesome photos of Ginger in various death scenes. On the night of Ginger's first period the duo are cutting through the woods on the edge of town when Ginger is ferociously attacked by a mysterious creature.
Ginger survives, her wounds miraculously healing in no time flat. She may be mildly physically scarred from the attack, but the psychological scars seem much deeper. She becomes prickly and in denial. Brigitte is the first to realize what is happening. The sudden appearance of little silvery hairs on the scars and a tail budding from the base of her spine point in only one direction — Ginger is becoming a werewolf.
“I've got this ache,” says Ginger, referring to her unnatural cravings, “and I thought it was for sex, but it's to tear everything into fucking pieces.” Ginger is no longer an outsider, but a predator using her sexual charms to seduce victims who will unwittingly satisfy her new-found blood lust. Brigitte searches for a cure for her sister's malady, turning to Sam (Kris Lemche), a local drug dealer and amateur botanist. They search for a holistic remedy to cure the infection that has overtaken Ginger.
As Ginger loses her battle with the dark side she begins to behave and think more like a beast. Brigitte, blinded by the love of her sister, becomes an accomplice to Ginger's vicious crimes, and the whole thing comes to a crescendo on Halloween night.
Ginger Snaps adroitly plays against the usual horror movie conventions when it comes to portraying teenagers. The nubile scream queens of I Know What You Did Last Summer and Urban Myth are nowhere to be found. Ginger and Brigitte are late-bloomers, goth girls who are entering adulthood and experiencing all the traumatic transformations that go along with it. The film's best piece of dark teenage humor is the use of menstruation as a metaphor for turning into a werewolf. How many hack comics have joked about the beastly effects of pms? Ginger Snaps takes those jokes one step further in a wickedly funny allegory.
A movie like this hinges on the performances of its leads. Director John Fawcett wisely chose to play it straight, avoiding the camp that mars so many teen horror flicks. Emily Perkins shows real depth as Brigitte, moving her character through an arc from the timid little wallflower you might see in an Edward Gorey cartoon to an independent powder keg à la Buffy the Vampire Slayer. “I was drawn to the fact that she doesn't belong anywhere,” says Perkins, “I think teenagers can relate to that. She's a strange, strange girl.”
Katharine Isabelle is a bottle rocket as the hormonally unbalanced Ginger. The character almost threatens to careen off the rails, but Isabelle keeps her on track in a performance that shows great skill. “Ginger is an exaggeration of my bad side,” says Isabelle. “She's not too much of a stretch for me. Except all the being a werewolf and killing people stuff. That's a bit of a stretch.”
Both actresses glide through the material, bringing realism to an unreal situation. Ginger and Brigitte are nihilistic, fighting the pressures to conform and fit in with a society they have no use for. Add boys to the mix and you've got a potentially explosive situation. These are the kind of teens who give high school guidance counselors ulcers.
It's clear that screenwriter Karen Walton remembers her high school years very well. Her snappy script never talks down to the teens, instead addressing their problems as legitimate issues without a hint of condescension. The sensitive handling of the lead characters gives this film a feeling of authenticity that works very well whether you choose to look upon this more as a horror flick or a clever commentary on the pain of becoming an adult.
Ginger Snaps may take itself seriously, but it washes the premise down with a spoonful of sugar. The metaphors are quietly woven into the fabric of the piece, which bristles with genuine frights and a great deal of humor built around the characters and situations, unlike the postmodern “look at me, I'm so ironic” humor of the Scream series. Mimi Rogers as the girls' mother, Pamela, is the main source of laughs. She's a guileless Mrs. Cleaver type (if Beaver's mom had taken too much acid in the '60s). To celebrate her daughter's first period and her ascent into womanhood, Pamela inappropriately bakes a large strawberry cake for the whole family to enjoy. She's thrilled; the girls, of course, are mortified.
Ginger Snaps is a welcome addition to the werewolf genre.
THE GREAT ROCK ‘N' ROLL SWINDLE (1980)
LESSON SEVEN: Cultivate hatred: It's your greatest asset.
— The Great Rock ‘N' Roll Swindle
The making of the Sex Pistols' film The Great Rock 'N' Roll Swindle was almost as chaotic as one of their concerts. The original director quit, one of the stars died, and the whole thing seemed ready to fall apart. Only the tenacity of a young guerrilla filmmaker saved the movie from the scrap heap. Julien Temple stepped in and made a movie about a band that had already broken up, putting together something he called “a vandalized documentary,” and in the process made a little-seen but classic rock-and-roll movie.
The Sex Pistols were the most reviled people in England; a series of outrageous publicity stunts had turned the foul-mouthed foursome into the tabloids' favorite whipping boys. Public reaction to them was so strong they had to tour under the name spots (Sex Pistols On Tour Secretly) to sidestep various bans and potential protests. It was while they were on their cloak-and-dagger tour that the idea of making a movie first came up — manager Malcolm McLaren wanted to find a cheap, safe way to promote the band in other territories, and with the band banned in so many European cities, a film was the only way for most people to see them.
McLaren had approached a number of well-known English comics to write a script, including Peter Cook, the legendary improv master and former partner to Dudley Moore. Cook considered the project, but never put pen to paper. McLaren ruled out another likely candidate after a night of drinking at a pub. A meeting was set up with Monty Python co-founder Graham Chapman. Many drinks later Chapman performed his favorite party trick: dipping his penis into a pint of beer for the pub dog to lick. While one would think that the display might appeal to McLaren, a man who encouraged the Pistols to vomit in public and was often interviewed wearing a full s&m rubber suit, he was actually so disgusted by the show he crossed Chapman off the list of potential writers.
Running out of options in England, McLaren and the band turned their eyes to a cult, soft-porn filmmaker in the United States. Russ Meyer's subversive take on the entertainment industry in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls appealed to Johnny Rotten, who called Meyer “an absolute nutcase.” Meyer agreed to make the film on the condition that he could bring some of his own people, including his stripper girlfriend Kitten Natividad and screenwriter Roger Ebert.
The hard-boiled Meyer didn't know what to make of McLaren or the band. When McLaren showed up at one meeting wearing bondage pants Meyer insisted on sitting on the aisle. “If we have to evacuate he'll get those goddamned straps tangled up in the seats,” he said.
Ebert and Meyer set to work on a script that was due to start shooting on Halloween in 1977. Writing and rewriting over the course of three months, they cobbled together a piercing indictment of the music business called Who Killed Bambi?. In keeping with the punk rock ethos the film explored themes of debauchery, corruption, anarchy, and the death of innocence.
In the surreal title sequence an aging rock star known as MJ (probably Mick Jagger) is threatened by the popularity of the Sex Pistols and pulls a Robin Hood stunt. “Jagger — we don't call him Jagger — goes out in hunting garb and crossbow and shoots a deer on the queen's reserve,” Meyer told Search and Destroy in 1978. “He straps it on the Rolls and drives careening through the countryside. He picks a suitable thatched-roof cottage to give it to the poor and throws it down on
the porch. A little girl comes out and says, ‘Mommy! They've just killed Bambi!'”
An eclectic group of actors was assembled. Along with the Pistols — Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious, Steve Jones, and Paul Cook — Mick Jagger's ex-girlfriend Marianne Faithfull was cast as Sid's incestuous mom and a motley crew of Pistols' fans were brought in for color.
Shooting on the Meyer's film ended abruptly after only a day and a half, and no one seems to be able to agree why production was shut down. Ebert claims work came to a halt when it became apparent that the crew was not going to be paid for their work. According to McLaren the project was killed by its main financier, 20th Century Fox, who pulled out under the pretext that, “We are in the business of making family entertainment.” Apparently several shareholders, including Grace Kelly, were outraged by the film's subject matter. Either way, the movie seemed as dead as the deer in the opening scene.
With just a few feet of film from the Meyer project, McLaren tried to salvage the film and turned to British director Pete Walker, best known for a string of exploitation movies with titles like Die, Beautiful Marianne and Asylum of the Insane. Cameras never even rolled on his version, as the band weren't interested in learning the reams of lines set out in the script. Later that year the band fell apart when Rotten escaped to Jamaica, Cook and Jones went to Rio to hang out with Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs, and Sid took refuge in Paris.
In Paris a young film student who had been filming the Pistols since their early days was hired to shoot some footage of Sid. Julien Temple came complete with a cinematic sense and an attitude. His plan was to show the seamier side of the music business, so he arranged a set piece with Sid, by this time ravaged by heroin, singing “My Way” in front of a respectable upper-class audience. On a set originally built for French superstar Serge Gainsbourg, Sid wears a dinner jacket and motorcycle boots and mumbles his way through rewritten lyrics that were part Frank Sinatra, part Joey Ramone. In the end Sid pulls out a revolver and shoots members of the audience. It's pure punk rock, and Sid plays it perfectly. “We saw Sid as the first monster child of the hippie generation,” said Temple.
In the absence of the band Temple pieced together a mockumentary broken into 10 sequences — lessons on how to sell a band. Using clips and animation he cynically outlines McLaren's modus operandi of artist management, everything from “How to Manufacture Your Group” to “How to Become the World's Greatest Tourist Attraction.”
The film came out in 1980, two years after the Pistols played their last gig. The band, particularly Johnny Rotten, hated it, as did most reviewers at the time. To me, though, it represents a unique time capsule of one of the most exciting movements in popular music. Punk rock was a short-lived, but wildly influential period that has informed hundreds of bands, and The Great Rock ‘N' Roll Swindle is the unruly blueprint.
RICHARD'S FAVORITE SOUNDTRACKS
1. The Girl Can't Help It, Various Artists (1956 reissued 1992). Standout cuts: “Be Bop A Lula,” Gene Vincent; “You Got It Made,” Bobby Troup
2. What's New Pussycat?, Burt Bacharach (1965 reissued 1998). “What's New Pussycat?,” Tom Jones; “My Little Red Book,” Manfred Mann Group
3. Enter the Dragon, Lalo Schifrin (1973, reissued 2001). “The Big Battle”; “The Human Fly,” Lalo Schifrin
4. In the Heat of the Night, Quincy Jones (1967, reissued 1998). “In the Heat of the Night,” Ray Charles; “Whipping Boy,” Quincy Jones
5. Once Upon a Time in the West, Ennio Morricone (1968, reissued 1990). “Once Upon a Time in the West”; “The First Tavern,” Ennio Morricone
6. Trouble Man, Marvin Gaye (1972, reissued 1998). “Poor Abbey Walsh”; “Break In (Police Shoot Big),” Marvin Gaye
7. The Great Rock ‘N' Roll Swindle, The Sex Pistols (1979, reissued 1992). “My Way,” Sid Vicious; “Friggin' in the Riggin',” Steve Jones
8. One From the Heart, Tom Waits and Crystal Gayle (1981, reissued 1990). “Is There Anyway Out of This Dream?,” Tom Waits; “Picking Up After You,” Crystal Gayle
9. Pulp Fiction, Various Artists (1994). “Misirlou,” Dick Dale & His Del-Tones; “Son of a Preacher Man,” Dusty Springfield
10. The Harder They Come, Jimmy Cliff (1972, reissued 2001). “Many Rivers to Cross,” Jimmy Cliff; “Pressure Drop,” The Maytals
HAPPY, TEXAS (1999)
“That whole gay thing is just like a hobby.”
— Wayne Wayne Wayne Jr. (Steve Zahn) in Happy, Texas
Happy, Texas is a hard movie to define. Think The Fugitive if it had starred Tim Conway and Harvey Corman, or maybe Tootsie set in a small rural town. How about Drop Dead Gorgeous without the crazy mother? This much is for sure: Happy, Texas is a screwball comedy about two convicts on the lam who go to great lengths to avoid detection.
Mark Illsley and Ed Stone were old friends struggling to make it in the film business. After reading the Robert Rodriguez's how-to memoir on the making of El Mariachi called Rebel Without a Crew, the duo were inspired to make a film on a shoestring budget. They set out to write a film that they could shoot in their backyard using just a few friends as actors. As the script took shape both men realized they were writing something a little more ambitious than a patio epic that they could shoot over a long weekend. The script eventually fell into the hands of producer Rick Montgomery, who convinced the fledgling filmmakers to set their sights higher and shoot the story as a feature film. When Academy Award winner William H. Macy signed on to play the gay sheriff of Happy, Texas, the funding and the rest of the cast fell into place.
The story of Wayne Wayne Wayne Jr. (Steve Zahn) and his partner-in-crime Harry Sawyer (Jeremy Northam) begins as they escape from an overturned police van and steal an RV from a gas station to make their getaway. When the sheriff of Happy stops them they think they have been caught. “There's a lot of people looking for you,” says the cop with a smile. Busted.
Or are they? What they don't know is that the vehicle they took belongs to two gay men who travel through the small towns of Texas consulting on beauty pageants. They haven't been arrested, they've just been handed a new identity.
In town they pose as the pageant producers, coaching a group of small girls who dream of one day being Little Miss Fresh Squeezed. No one from Happy has even qualified in 25 years, so the pressure is on. The small-town folks take this pageant very seriously, something screenwriter Ed Stone learned through personal experience. He was a disc jockey at a radio station just a few miles from Happy, Texas. In his daily news reports he often had to read stories about the Happy High School sports teams and Happy pageants, and was always amused by the name.
“Like most every small town in Texas, Happy's citizens were just mad when it came to pageants,” he says. “As a disc jockey from another part of the world I'd sometimes go on the sir and poke a little fun at this obsession with pageants, and you wouldn't believe the angry calls that came in. It was really surprising to find out how seriously the Texas population takes their pageantry.”
Harry, the slicker of the two, coaxes the thickheaded Wayne into teaching the girls ballet and poise while he cases the bank. His plan to crack the safe is foiled, or at least sidelined when he falls for the bank manager Jo (Ally Walker). She thinks he is gay, a ruse he maintains to get closer to her. Meanwhile, love is in the air as Wayne develops a crush on a local schoolteacher Ms. Schaefer (Illeana Douglas), and Sheriff Chappy Dent (William H. Macy) eyes Harry. Despite living a lie and running from the police Wayne and Harry find happiness in the small town, a happiness neither of them has known before.
Happy, Texas is supported by two great comic performances. As the kind-hearted dolt Wayne Wayne Wayne Jr., Steve Zahn is over-the-top hilarious. As he tends to the young pageant hopefuls he discovers that he really likes this work and cares about the kids, even if he's not sure how to behave with them (his idea of bonding with them is to offer them cigarettes or teach them to sing 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall). With his walrus moustache and hangdog expression, Zahn brings a manic e
nergy to the movie but never crosses the line into sentimentality as Robin Williams has so many times in similar roles. Even when Zahn is being endearing — as in the scene where he wonders aloud about the best way to sew a sparkly heart on a costume — he still has an edge. The critics saw it too, and he picked up a special jury prize for Best Comedic Performance at the Sundance Film Festival.
William H. Macy's take on the gay sheriff of this small town isn't nearly as showy as Zahn's character, but is funny and touching at the same time. Macy can do more with a glance than many actors can with several pages of dialogue, and he demonstrates his talent here, rising above the farce aspects of the story and breathing real life into his role. Even though Chappy is a comic character being played for laughs, the audience still feels for him; you can't help but be saddened for Chappy when Harry doesn't return his affections.
“Chappy undergoes a transformation in this film,” says Macy. “At the start he's so protected that he couldn't be available to anyone. But eventually his heart gets big and vulnerable. For me this film is ultimately about love. Love is truly a rare thing. If you can find it, then go for it. Don't miss your chance.”
Romantic lead Jeremy Northam is strong. Until Happy, Texas Northam was best known for period dramas like The Winslow Boy and Emma. Here he drops his English accent in favor of a midwestern American drawl, and leaves the waistcoats in the dressing room. Northam breezes through the movie, coasting on his considerable charm and good looks.
Happy, Texas is a funny little charmer that takes a sitcom-like plot and entertainingly stretches it to feature length. The screenwriters may use homosexuality as a plot device, but they never resort to homophobia as a source of humor.
The 100 Best Movies You've Never Seen Page 11