Enough Is Just A Little Bit More: Drop Dead Gorgeous (Michael Patrick Jann, 1999)

Welcome back! In order to keep your eyes from glazing over, I will insert one compromising personal fact into these book announcements.

My new horror comic series with Lisandro Estherren – Be Not Afraid, weird angel-strewn folk horror about American Christianity – is coming out in June. Please pre-order it at your comic shop to remind them that I exist.

My non-fiction book DILF: Did I Leave Feminism is due out in October. You can pre-order that everywhere, but the way to support your local bookshop is Bookshop.org.

I can't drive because, when a friend took me out to an empty parking lot for the typical "you're 16, let's learn to drive" celebration, two joggers ran out in front of the car, and I forgot which pedal the brake was, causing me to accelerate and nearly commit vehicular manslaughter. Everyone was fine – they were, fortunately, fast joggers – but I was sure I never wanted to be in that position again.

Several decades after almost killing two joggers, I wrote one and a half stories for DC Pride.

John D. Rockefeller, the first billionaire in history, once famously defined success for a reporter.  The story has been around a long time, and there are different versions of it, but I’ll give you the version I know: “Mr. Rockefeller, how much money is enough?” the reporter asked.

“Just a little bit more," Rockefeller told him.

I thought about that answer a lot while watching Drop Dead Gorgeous, which is — nominally, anyway — a comedy. It’s one of the darker comedies you will ever see. It’s got a lot of dead bodies in it. It’s got a lot of heavy topics: Success, and ambition, and America, all viewed through the lens of one small-town teen beauty pageant where the contestants may be murdering each other to increase their chances of winning. Still, you are supposed to be laughing. 

The movie has achieved mythical status partly because it’s elusive — rights issues cause it to constantly flicker in and out of existence on streaming platforms. (It went up on Tubi a couple of days ago; here’s a link, in case you want to skip the newsletter and catch it now.) Five-star reviews abound on Letterboxd. At least one meme ("understood the assignment") has arisen from its text. The cast — off the top of my head: Allison Janney, Ellen Barkin, Kirstie Alley, Amy Adams, Brittany Murphy, Denise Richards, Kirsten Dunst — is one of those spectacular accidents where everyone’s star rose or fell at the exact right trajectory to bring them together for a moment. The humor is black and caustic and intentionally offensive, in the way ‘90s camp very often was, so that it’s a badge of honor to say your feelings weren’t hurt.

I will be honest with you and say that some of the jokes in here don’t work for me. This was a point in history where the word “retard,” in and of itself, constituted a punchline — as, apparently, did the mere existence of Asian people. I may be a bleeding-heart crybaby from the pre-post-woke era, but perhaps you are, too, and will appreciate the warning. 

Still, pound for pound and joke for joke, Drop Dead Gorgeous has stayed a lot funnier for a lot longer than most of its competition — it’s not trying to be a teen comedy so much as a comedy with teenagers in it, and as such, it’s not required to blunt its sharp edges or provide a moral lesson for the youth. You are supposed to be laughing; you are not supposed to be learning; nonetheless, points are made.