Drop Dead Gorgeous at 20: The cult teen movie… | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

Drop Dead Gor­geous at 20: The cult teen movie 1999 wasn’t ready for

21 Jul 2019

Words by Beth Webb

Group of women and men celebrating, woman wearing "Miracle" sash in centre, surrounded by others applauding.
Group of women and men celebrating, woman wearing "Miracle" sash in centre, surrounded by others applauding.
How the most smartest” com­e­dy over­came a box office bash­ing to find a devot­ed fanbase.

At the grave­side of a recent­ly deceased beau­ty pageant con­tes­tant in Rose­mount, Min­neso­ta, a group of God-fear­ing locals gath­er to qui­et­ly pay their respects. The girl in ques­tion met her mak­er after a freak acci­dent caused both her­self and a giant, Mex­i­can-pro­duced swan to go up in flames dur­ing a town parade.

Maybe this is your way of telling us to buy Amer­i­can,” mus­es the pas­tor to the heav­ens before the cof­fin is low­ered into the ground.

Drop Dead Gor­geous was released in the sum­mer of 1999 to an audi­ence still under the spell of 10 Things I Hate About You and She’s All That – films with heart-melt­ing love sto­ries and Shake­spear­i­an nar­ra­tives with neat­ly tied-up endings.

Michael Patrick Jann’s film was the bad seed, a fan­tas­ti­cal­ly dark com­e­dy about a rigged beau­ty pageant in the upper Mid­west that made no effort to keep to the moral path, pre­fer­ring instead to bury its char­ac­ters under­neath it.

You are a good per­son. Good things hap­pen to good peo­ple,” soothes Alli­son Janney’s deeply tanned Loret­ta to her friend’s daugh­ter Amber (Kirsten Dun­st) dur­ing a pause in their sto­ry. Real­ly?” No, it’s pure bull­shit. You’re lucky as hell, so you might as well enjoy it.”

Instead of your usu­al het­ero­nor­ma­tive teen romance, writer Lona Williams put every­thing into the rela­tion­ship between Amber and mom Annette, played with brit­tle, beer-soaked charm by Ellen Barkin. The sweet and com­pro­mis­ing nature of their bond is the film’s secret weapon, a shred of good­ness in a world built on cor­rup­tion and priv­i­lege. It would also become the inspi­ra­tion for Amy Sherman-Palladino’s Gilmore Girls after the con­cept was pitched to her by Jann.

What real­ly cut Drop Dead Gor­geous above the rest how­ev­er was its unri­valled cast of 90s roy­al­ty. Dun­st had cleared her child actor days and was head­ed straight into teen queen ter­ri­to­ry, her pol­ished girl next door get up mak­ing her a dream lead for films like Bring It On and Get Over It. Brit­tany Mur­phy and Amy Adams (mak­ing her big screen debut) daz­zled as fel­low pageant con­tes­tants: the for­mer a gig­gly real­ist, the lat­ter a horny cheer­leader who mimes sex­u­al favours on a repli­ca mod­el of the Wash­ing­ton Monument.

But it’s Denise Richards who proved most deserv­ing of the spot­light. Much like Regi­na George or Kathryn Mer­teuil, Richards’ thor­ough­bred rival Becky gets boxed into the bad girl cor­ner but ulti­mate­ly takes home the film’s best scenes, notably a pub­lic ren­di­tion of Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’ sung silk­i­ly to a life-sized plush Jesus, com­plete with crucifix.

Drop Dead Gor­geous did not per­form well upon its ini­tial release, tak­ing $10.5 mil­lion from an esti­mat­ed $10 – 15 mil­lion bud­get and receiv­ing most­ly luke­warm reviews. It’s like a cross between Heathers and Wait­ing For Guff­man, had those movies been made by morons,” wrote The A.V. Club’s Kei­th Phipps.

A smiling woman wearing a crown-like headpiece made of sculpted plaster faces while holding a microphone on stage.

This com­mer­cial under­achieve­ment hard­ly dent­ed the tra­jec­to­ries of the cast, but for writer Williams – who infused the film’s spiky satire with her own expe­ri­ence of teenage pageants – it was a crush­ing blow, while direc­tor Jann stepped back from fea­ture film­mak­ing entirely.

Per­haps because of its appar­ent fail­ings, Drop Dead Gor­geous has nev­er been unavail­able to stream in the UK. In the US, Hulu have only just released the film to coin­cide with its 20th anniver­sary, but pri­or to this the only way to watch it was via tor­rent or fork­ing out for a DVD that for a long time remained out of print.

In my teenage years I record­ed the film onto VHS from a late night slot on ter­res­tri­al TV and watched it on a week­ly basis, glee­ful­ly replay­ing the scene where a region­al cohort of beau­ty queens pro­jec­tile vom­its bad shell­fish off of a hotel bal­cony. Stand By Me couldn’t shine this film’s shoes.

Such was my need to share Drop Dead Gor­geous with the world, I pro­grammed it at a rep cin­e­ma in Lon­don in 2016, and was delight­ed by the crowd that showed up with Mount Rose tat­toos and t‑shirts to rejoice in this deli­cious if slight­ly dat­ed swipe at small-town America.

The film’s slow­burn suc­cess is a tri­umphant word-of-mouth tale. A qui­et trail­blaz­er that slipped past those still misty-eyed from Clue­less, it has crept into the hearts of those who like to see their beau­ty queens burned in giant swans – and there it will stay, a gen­er­a­tional anthem that’s final­ly get­ting the respect it deserves.

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