Dolly & Tim

Rhinestone

Jackie’s Back

Greetings, country queens, kings, and things from outer space. I come to you this week a little more deflated than usual, and that’s because last week we said goodbye to two icons of music and film who made this wild world a more dazzling place to be: Dolly Parton and Tim Curry. I’m not sure how to sum up my love for these two legends succinctly, and I certainly won’t say anything that hasn’t already been said by their millions—if not billions—of grieving fans, but I had to pay my respects in some way. There are some individuals who just sparkle a little more than others, and Dolly and Tim happened to share their sparkle generously and consistently with the undeserving masses throughout their time(s) on earth. I was born in Tennessee, raised in Texas, and have an affinity for all things pink and pretty and feminine, so of course Dolly Parton means everything to me. She was my way into country music—a genre that I never had much interest in until I heard it come from her. There are too many favorite songs to list, but I will tell you that “9 to 5” sincerely helps me get out of bed in the morning and is still played in my car on the way to work on the days that I really need it. It’s been said a million times by a million different people, but Dolly was so much more than a country singer with a great rack (she had a great ass, too.) She’s an angel who changed the world with her political activism, her efforts to fight illiteracy, her staunch support of people of color and the Black Lives Matter movement, and her genuine kindness that seemed to just rub off on anyone who came into contact with her. I mean, even our atrocious and oft-inappropriate president said something semi-respectful about her passing—if that’s not a symbol of unity then I don’t know what is. She’s the reason we have Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Moderna COVID vaccine, she’s the reason why so many people were able to get back on their feet after the 2016 fires and the 2021 floods in Tennessee. At any point in her illustrious and highly successful career, Dolly could’ve been a billionaire, but instead she spent her money on cancer research, college scholarships, and donations to countless environmental and humanitarian charities. Looking back on all of her contributions to culture and humanity, it seems like Dolly held up the whole world like Atlas—only with an hourglass figure and a heavenly voice. How we’ll go on without her I do not know, but I do know that I was still crying about her when the news came in that Tim Curry had also died. This one, for some reason, despite his ongoing health issues, hit me twice as hard. It felt a bit like an open wound had been stabbed all over again when I read that Tim Curry was no longer with us, because I have loved this man since I was too young to conceptualize what love even is. My first interactions with Tim Curry were with his voice work in The Wild Thornberries, Scooby-Doo and the Witch’s Ghost, and FernGully (the original [better] Avatar.) And it only makes sense that I knew him by his voice first, because much like Dolly, Tim had such a booming, powerful, ultra distinct voice that few can replicate. But where I really, truly, fell deeply, madly, confusingly in love with Tim Curry, was seeing his performance as Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, of course. Before I even saw this film, I pretended that I had, because I wanted to seem as cool and punk and sexy as the film itself seemed. And when I finally did dive into this once-in-a-millennia musical, I was beyond obsessed, I was sick in the head over it. I was Columbia for Halloween one year (I wanted to be Magenta but I relented to my equally-obsessed friend), I decorated my eighth grade history folder with photos of Frank-N-Furter, and I helped my drama class learn all of the moves to the Time Warp. Rocky Horror was a film that got me through some of my toughest, angstiest days, and Tim Curry’s electric, enigmatic, slightly-scary, very-horny confidence was something I tried to harness internally whenever I felt insecure or ashamed. Even in less erotically-charged roles, Tim Curry still provided a welcome shock to the senses, as Rooster in Annie, as Wadsworth in Clue, as Pennywise in IT, as Long John Silver in the Muppets Treasure Island. No one brought the energy he did, and even when he played villains (as he did so well), it was hard not to be charmed by his commanding presence. What I’d like to do tonight, though there is never enough time to watch all of the movies that I wish to, is celebrate the cinematic excellence of these two beautiful, beloved divas, who in their 80 years on earth brought joy and charm and vivaciousness every time they graced the big screen. So let’s explore a Dolly movie and a Tim Curry movie (one of which features them both!)

Dolly Parton, one of the best singer-songwriters in the history of singing and songwriting, was also the star of a myriad of incredible, indelible movies—two of which I have viewed on this blog (Steel Magnoliasand The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.) But one rare flop in her career was a bizarre but sweet little Pygmalion-esque rom-com that barely made it out of the pre-production phase, this is Bob Clark’s 1984 film Rhinestone. I only learned of this movie’s existence recently, when my crush Stavros Halkias gave it a glowing review on his podcast, and once I did even minimal research and learned that this script was fought after, edited into oblivion, then passed off to the director of juxtaposing xmas classics A Christmas Story and Black Christmas Bob Clark, I knew I had to give this one a watch. Unlike many of her other starring roles, Dolly Parton actually gets to play a country music singer here, one who followed her honky tonk dreams all the way to New York City, where the post-Urban Cowboy country craze was still booming. Her name is Jake Farris, and she’s currently under a piss-poor contract at a seedy but sparkly bar called, you guessed it, Rhinestone. Her gorgeous voice lights up the whole room, but as soon as the boss man, Freddie Ugo (Ron Leibman), arrives, everyone’s faces turn sour. Mr. Ugo arrives in the tackiest car, wearing the tackiest fur coat, eager to show off what he promises his investor is the next big thing in country music. We’re then shown one of the cheesiest, most try-hard performances that a cowboy cosplayer could muster up, and the crowd, nor Mr. Ugo’s investor, is impressed. Frustrated, Jake complains to Mr. Ugo that he’s always putting his time into the next big thing, but does nothing for her besides objectify her and beg her to sleep with him. Then, as if this were a sitcom and not a full-length feature film, Jake bets her boss that she could turn any regular person off the street into a rhinestone cowboy better than he ever could, and to her surprise, he takes her up on the gamble. If she wins, she gets to be released from her shitty contract three years early, and if he wins, he gets to sleep with her. Cuz it was the 80s. Jake and Mr. Ugo take a stroll outside and he points to various homeless people, making them sing, but Jake insists her rhinestone cowboy must be more regular, and the next regular guy who passes in front of her face will be perfect. Cue Nick Martinelli (Sylvester Stallone) a cartoonishly brutish and thick-skulled Italian-American cab driver who nearly wrecks his taxi dropping off some tourists right at Jake’s feet. Jake approaches Nick with her proposition, with Mr. Ugo negotiating details beside her, but Nick just thinks this fur-coated freak is glomming onto their first date. Naturally, Nick is not initially sold on the idea of being groomed for country stardom, but when Mr. Ugo offers to pay for his taxi’s repairs in return, Nick agrees. Even though Nick keeps insisting that he’s no singer, Jake hauls him all the way to her hometown of Leiper’s Fork, Tennessee for some voice lessons, cowboy coaching, and loads of exposure therapy. While the premise of this film is already ridiculous enough, the execution of it is somehow even more absurd, and filled with more innuendo than you can imagine. There’s some dialogue that is truly hilarious, and some that is truly confounding. The jokes about Dolly’s rockin’ bod are endless, but so are the jokes about Stallone being a big, goofy, Italian caricature. His tight clothes seem even tighter and his machismo comes across even sillier when he’s down in Tennessee, but his mentor promises she can turn him into a natural country star—and she also promises his overbearing parents that she’ll feed him pizza once a day. But clunky dialogue and shaky chemistry between leads aside, the most preposterous and hard-to-grasp aspect of Rhinestone is the conceit that Sylvester Stallone can sing even somewhat decently. Even as we observe him “improve” in rehearsals, his voice still sounds like a goose with a deviated septum, a bulldog with depression, a cruel parody of a someone who can actually sing. Dolly pulled off some of her best acting here when she pretends he’s getting the hang of it, and it did seem like Stallone was at least having fun, but even with the best sensei the country music gods could conjure, no one could make that man’s singing voice sound anything other than cacophonous. If there is a moral to this story, I couldn’t find it, but the true story of Dolly calling out Stallone for being unkind to a homeless man is the most effective lesson associated with this movie. As much as I make fun of Rhinestone, it did legitimately make me laugh, and I felt that both leads delighted in making fun of each other and themselves. Unfortunately, this movie was a commercial and critical failure upon its release, with Variety magazine writing: “Effortlessly living up to its title, Rhinestone is as artificial and synthetic a concoction as has ever made its way to the screen.” I personally think that’s a little harsh, because to me Rhinestone was genuinely funny, sincerely strange, and it probably only disappointed audiences back then because they didn’t know just how bad “bad” movies would become in the future. And I don’t have enough time here, but I must urge you to read about the cursed and highly-volatile beginnings of this film, and how its original writer went on his own publicity campaign criticizing the movie—saying that the humor and intelligence of the original script had been replaced with vulgarity, caricature, and farce. Haters are gonna hate, but Dolly’s still gonna charm the pants off of ya, and Sylvester Stallone is still gonna say some funny stuff that’s almost intelligible, so I very much enjoyed Rhinestone—cheap thrills and all.

There were really infinite possibilities when choosing my Tim Curry film, but when I learned that him and Dolly starred in a movie together, well I had no choice but to dive in head first: this is Robert Townsend’s 1999 film Jackie’s Back! The only thing I love more than a mockumentary, is a music mockumentary, and Robert Townsend is the perfect director to deliver one, with his deep understanding and careful mastery of satire. Tim Curry stars as Edward Whatsett St. John, a documentarian who has been tasked with covering the triumphant return of former child star and legendary pop diva Jackie Washington (Jenifer Lewis), who is preparing to put on a great, big concert to kick off the revival of her career. Edward asks Jackie to take us back to the humble beginnings of her success, when she won her small town’s talent show (she was part of a girl group but stood out so much that only she won, with a song that goes, “Yield yield yield, before you hit me with your love!”) Her sister, Nurse Ethyl Washington Rue Owens (Whoopi Goldberg, who filmed her scenes still in costume for and on the set of Girl, Interrupted) says the song Jackie sang and the dress Jackie wore was hers, but Jackie just steamrolled her and took all the fame for herself. Jackie was discovered that night by famed manager Peaches Yancy, and before she knew it, Jackie had record deals, chart-topping songs, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. As Jackie takes us down memory lane, her daughter and assistant, Antendre, backs her up and supports her, even when Edward brings up not-so-appealing topics like Jackie’s debt, her 4 ex-husbands, and her endless burned bridges with other divas. Intermittently we are shown interviews with some of these divas and stars, some of whom appreciate her, like Don Cornelius, Liza Minelli, Rosie O’Donnell, Ricki Lake, Melissa Etheridge, Taylor Dayne, Kathy Griffin, Camryn Manheim, and Chris Rock, but plenty of whom despise her or do not want to be associated with her, like Bette Midler, Diahann Carroll, Charles Barkley, Jackie Collins, Sean Hayes, Howie Mandel, Penny Marshall, Grace Slick, Eva Marie Saint, Donna Pescow, Patti Austin, Robert Townsend himself, and, of course, Dolly Parton—who claims that Jackie’s brand of hair care nearly killed her dog. The film also stars, if you can believe it, T.V. Blake, Tangie Ambrose, Loretta Devine, Tom Arnold, Alan Blumenfeld, Johnny Brown, Julie Hagerty, David Hyde Pierce, Kathy Najimy, Isabel Sanford, JoBeth Williams, Mary Wilson, Richard Lawson, Eddie Cibrian, and Bruce Vilanch. Jackie was seemingly present for every significant musical era of mid-to-late 20th century, and dipped a toe into every genre—from 60s doo wop to 70s disco to her “love goddess” era, which sounds a bit like Donna Summer’s “Love To Love You Baby”, only with more orgasms. She also starred in a Pam-Grier-esque Blaxploitation film called “Whipped Creme”, but its sequels never got made because, according to Jackie, “in Hollywood they only let one black woman slide in per decade.” From being photographed for Playpen magazine and photographed with Richard Nixon to stealing Liza Minelli’s Oscar, Jackie is no stranger to controversy, but all she wants to do now is have a fresh start—if her debts and her enemies would just stay out of her way. I pretty much loved this movie before I even saw it, given the fact that it’s directed by Robert Townsend and includes an exclamation point in its title, but it was even better than I’d assumed because every single cast member, no matter how brief their cameo, was fully committed to making this seem like a real documentary about a real music diva. Jenifer Lewis is effortlessly hilarious, every word out of Tim Curry’s legendary mouth was iconic, and their on-screen dynamic was something I didn’t know I needed. I wish both of tonight’s films had featured both Dolly and Tim, but both films did make references to sopping up a biscuit, so… there’s that! I’m still crying over these two lost titans, but I am forever inspired by their talents and grateful for their contributions to this cruel, cruel world. From the banks of the Little Pigeon River to the faraway planet of Transsexual, Transylvania, we love you, Dolly and Tim, and we miss you already. ❤️