Sordid Lives

Recognizing the recent passings of Olivia Newton-John and Leslie Jordan would add a certain poignancy to the film, I came back to this 2000 guilty pleasure from Del Shores. It's the familiar story of a gay WeHo actor who struggles with coming home to face his small town relatives for his grandmother's funeral. Clearly based on a stage play, the movie has long dialogue-heavy scenes with few cuts, but the one-liners still land on target. Standouts remain the always underrated Bonnie Bedelia, a fully liberated Delta Burke, and Jordan who brings true heart to his cross-dressing outcast role. In more of an observational part, Olivia plays sort of a trailer trash version of her "Xanadu" muse with her "Physical" outfit.

I saw this with my 30-something son who asked, still smiling, as we came out of the theater, "How long do you think they took to make that?" "About a week," I answered and I'll bet they had the time of their lives."

Sordid Lives manages to be sweet, glib, compassionate, irreverent, moving and very funny on an obvious shoe string budget. A triumph over crash 'em up Hollywood and stale romance flicks.

See it in a theater if you can, the group amusement is a pleasure to share.

Sordid Lives is the screen adaptation of Del Shores' play, and it's a hoot (and a holler) from beginning to end. When I saw it last night, I had no idea what it would be about except that Olivia Newton-John was in it, along with Beau Bridges and Bonnie Bedelia, which was more than enough to get me in the theatre. I was not disappointed. The film starts out over the top and goes only farther in that direction with every scene. It's got a wacked-out cartoon tone to it, but yet the characters ARE real, you do relate to their foibles and situations. The most fully-realized character in the piece has to be Leslie Jordan's cross-dressing Brother Boy, who makes you laugh every time he appears - you are laughing WITH him, though, not AT him, and by the end you are happy for him as well. In the wrong hands, this movie could have been a travesty of major proportions, but Del Shores (who wrote and directed) is confident enough in the value of the piece to make it work.

My girlfriend and I saw trailers and the great website for Sordid Lives over a year ago and couldn't wait to see it. We kept checking back to see if it had finally made it's way out to us in LA every so often and had begun to figure we'd have to wait for the dvd release. Then driving today we saw it playing at a little house on LaBrea and hit up the next showing.

This film was well worth the wait. It's true that the camera work isn't flashy and it's easy to tell it was adapted from a play. But all the great characters and witty dialogue are so engaging you hardly notice. The whole cast does and excellent job and I honestly haven't laughed during a film this much since Waiting for Guffman. Although I think the film may be more targeted at gay audiences there seems to be something for everyone in this. Rarely have I seen a movie that managed to be this funny while being touching and real at the same time without seeming completely contrived and cheesy.

We found out about "Sordid Lives" earlier this year while visiting Palm Springs, where it had been playing for many weeks (maybe it still is...?)

We loved it! I'm not a film reviewer, and the only reason for this note is to wonder out loud why film has not been released on video. Could it be because it's still packing 'em in (in very select theaters and festivals) or because the distributor doesn't think the video will sell?

And it's not just a "gay" movie, even though there are a lot of gay issues presented. There are all kinds of issues--social, cultural, regional, economic, alcoholic, disability---you name it. The cast is superb. As for its "Politically Incorrectness?" Take this up with Bill Maher....

dw