Bad Movies About Show Business

This blog post might have concerned itself with something brilliant--Joseph Mankiewicz's All About Eve or Robert Altman's The Player. All these little pixels could have been put into the service of extolling their brilliance, but alas, their master is a masochist, and must devote himself to that peculiar species of bad movie called the shitty show-biz expose.

We'll leave Showgirls out of this, for no other reason than that I've never actually seen the whole thing and don't want to put it on my Netflix list. Instead, we'll begin with the movie that features jerky dancing, jerky middle-aged teen-agers, and jerky oily, sleazy drug dealers. Yes, it's The Girl In Gold Boots:



As you can see, sweet bippies are out in full force in this picture, which delivers the news that some of L.A.'s sleazier go-go dancer nightclubs were under mob control. (I'll pause for your gasp.) In the movie, Michelle works at EAT, a trendy little bistro that her abusive, drunken father owns. So desperate is Michelle to escape from EAT that she hooks up with Buz, the world's oldest living dead-end kid. Together, Michelle and Buz make their way to L.A. At some point in their travels, they pick up a fey young hitchhiker named Critter, from whom flowery language pours like a flowery language spigot.

Michelle hopes one day to become a dancer, and that gives Buz the idea of setting her up in one of the mob's most fashionable joints. His sister, the titular Girl in Gold Boots, (using "titular" in this context has its hazards) dances there whenever she manages to get off the pipe. Will Michelle become the headline attraction? Will the house band play one of Critter's songs? Will Buz get a piece of the Lufthansa heist and live to spend his money? Yes. Yes, and no, not in this movie anyway.

The movie does force audiences to confront some difficult issues, such as what it says about a society that the mob can pack a nightclub with dancing this lame. Michelle is a terrible dancer. Buz's sister is a terrible dancer, though it's easy to believe that she's sullied her pretty mind with heroin. Critter is a terrible singer/songwriter. And Buz is a talentless hack of a criminal. They get two hours to pool their incompetencies to form a cascading cataclysm of ineptitude. The result is painfully dull, though it is fun to watch Buz's reaction shots when Critter punches him in the face near the end.

But there are movies that take place at EAT, and there are movies that eat the soul. And such a movie is The Lonely Lady, a film funded by Pia Zadora's billionaire husband so that America could see Ms. Zadora sexually humiliated and traumatized for its amusement. If she didn't divorce him after this, she should have:



I remember watching this flick when I was twelve. My parents were asleep and I was looking for a glimpse of premium cable skin. Little did I know the price of that glimpse was watching Ray Liotta (who I'll bet never screens this movie for friends at his house) try to rape Pia Zadora's character with a superphallifraglicistic garden hose spigot. Conservative Christians spend a good portion of their lives pushing for abstinence education in schools. I don't think we need it. Screen The Lonely Lady in a health class, and none of those kids will reach in between their own or anyone else's legs for fifteen years.

Todd Solondz's Happiness was a major turnoff, but I got the impression that it was supposed to be. I'm guessing that the producers of The Lonely Lady somehow believed that their movie was going to be a turn-on, and all this folderol about how tough it is for women to make it in Hollywood without making it in Hollywood was just a smokescreen. Well, I guess my erotic tastes differ from Zadora's husband, because, even at the horny age of 12, The Lonely Lady made me sick.

I think I will go watch All About Eve now. I need to feel better.