Nathan Rabin's Happy Place's Definitive Guide to American Movies about the Film Industry
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The Watermelon Woman (1996) FM
Groundbreaking films don’t get more modest than Cheryl Dunye’s seminal 1996 directorial debut The Watermelon Woman. The charming independent romantic comedy has the distinction of being the first film directed by an out black lesbian. Dunye’s acclaimed movie world comedy follows closely in the footsteps of similarly slight but important independent landmarks like Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It, Robert Townsend’s Hollywood Shuffle and Rose Troche’s Go Fish, which is referenced within the film itself, in using a tiny budget to tell a deeply personal story about a demographic both under and misrepresented in Hollywood films.
The Watermelon Woman even casts Go Fish’s cowriter and star Guinevere Turner in the central role of Diana, a sexy video store customer from Chicago who falls in love with the film’s protagonist.
In addition to writing and directing, Cheryl Dunye stars as an ambitious young aspiring filmmaker named Cheryl Dunye who works in a video store with her best friend and foil Tamara (Valarie Walker) while directing a video project about a black film actress and singer from the 1930s sometimes credited merely as The Watermelon Woman.
Though the titular icon played roles that could be seen as demeaning and stereotypical our lovable heroine finds beauty, truth and even dignity within her onscreen existence all the same. She wants to know everything about this glamorous, elusive figure and is overjoyed to discover that she was a lesbian as well, and inhabited her world boldly and unapologetically over a half century earlier.
The Watermelon Woman is consequently an empathetic exploration of what it means to love something considered problematic and offensive with your whole body, mind and soul. Onscreen and off, Dunye is intent on carving out a space for black lesbians and lesbians of all colors to be themselves in film and popular culture, without hiding, shame or playing a rigged game. Dunye has created a loving, ultimately deeply moving tribute to black lesbian history without getting lost in nostalgia for an idealized past.
Like her inspirations, Dunye quietly but profoundly changed film just by being herself and telling her story, and the story of her community, simply, honestly and with great humor and insight.
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Lady Killer (1933) FM
The genre-hopping 1934 show-business crime comedy-drama thriller Lady Killer typecasts James Cagney as a slick-talking, hot-tempered tough guy with deep connections to the underworld. But he also intriguingly and successfully plays a James Cagney-style movie star famous for playing shady characters who are fast with their mouths and their hands.
Cagney’s Dan Quigley begins the movie a humble usher at a movie theater who gets fired for gambling and other unprofessional behavior. The quick-thinking hustler stumbles into a dangerous role at the center of a high-stakes , big money burglary ring.
When things go sideways and the anti-hero has to split town and lay low he impulsively decides to go to Los Angeles, where he gets into acting, first as an extra with bit roles, including a regrettable redface turn as a Native American chief and then as a proper movie star.
Movie stardom is an awfully peculiar, counter-intuitive profession for someone to choose if they’re trying to stay off the radar of both law enforcement and their deadly criminal associates. Sure enough the unlikely matinee idol’s past comes back to haunt him when the crooks Dan used to run with show up in Hollywood expecting him to help them rob the rich and famous, AKA his new peer group.
Lady Killer puts a clever new spin on the gritty Warner Brothers James Cagney crime movie by fusing it with movie world satire, romance and melodrama. Nothing in its first act suggests that Lady Killer will shift its focus to the motion picture industry, with the exception of Dan’s very loose connection to the business as a movie theater employee. Lady Killer is delightfully unexpected in the way it combines seemingly disparate genres.
Cagney is a powder keg of dynamite as a principled hood who becomes a popular entertainer. The only thing keeping this from being the perfect role and showcase for Cagney’s explosive talents is an understandable absence of song and dance numbers.