In
Sordid Lives, small-town Texans are portrayed
as overweight, taking life too seriously, and with major hang-ups
about sex. The plot revolves around a funeral scheduled for
Peggy Ingraham (played in a casket by Gloria LeRoy), who got
up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night at a sleazy
motel and fatally tripped over the artificial legs of G.W.
Nethercutt (played by Beau Bridges), a male sex partner other
than her husband. Preparations are underway for the service
and the reception afterward, to be catered by Peggy’s sister,
Aunt Sissy Hickey (played by Beth Grant), who resumes a chainsmoking
habit acquired somewhere through five former husbands when
the tension level of the soap opera reaches an asymptote.
LaVonda Du Pree (played by Ann Walker), one of Peggy’s daughters,
tells her sister Latrelle Williamson (played by Bonnie Bedelia)
to stop denying that her son Ty is gay, and their cat talk
is what drives Aunt Sissy to light up after three days of
cold turkey cigarette abstinence. Ty (played by Kirk Geiger),
is an actor living in Los Angeles. At first unsure whether
to attend his grandmother’s funeral, he has two sessions with
his current psychiatrist the day before the funeral. He has
been having therapy for the past three years, even changing
psychiatrists, because of relationship and identity problems
because he is gay. LaVonda’s brother, Wardell Owens (played
by Newell Alexander), runs a bar, but some two decades earlier
beat up his son Earl (played by Leslie Jordan) because of
gay tendencies and then committed him to a mental institution,
where he is a transvestite lip-sync Tammy Wynette lookalike.
Dr. Eve Bolinger (played by Rosemary Alexander) hopes to cure
him of being gay so that she can appear on the Opray Winfrey
show, but her maladroit efforts result only in frustration
and alcoholism. Noleta Nethercutt (played by Delta Burke),
having been cuckolded by the dead woman, teams up with LaVonda
to play Bertha & Louise at Wardell’s bar. At gunpoint, they
order G.W., Wardell Owens, and his brother Odell Owens (played
by Earl H. Bullock) to strip to boxers or briefs; then they
force them to don women’s clothes and makeup, and obtain apologies
from the men for their various sex-related indiscretions.
Wardell, genuinely contrite, then goes to the mental institution
to take his drag queen son home. Ty finally decides to face
the music in what he perceives to be straight-laced small-town
Texas, so he flies to attend the funeral. Upon his arrival
at the church, Ty insists on telling his mother that he is
gay, whereupon they become reconciled. The only character
in the film who does not "get physical" is Bitsy Mae Harling
(played by Olivia Newton-John), the soloist at Wardell’s bar,
who sings the title song and other selections throughout the
film, including "Just As I Am" at the funeral. Crudely hilarious
lines throughout the film kept West Hollywood patrons laughing
over and over again despite extraordinarily trashy Texans,
all in contrast with the sophisticated pretty people of Los
Angeles portrayed in the film. Sordid Lives,
originally a stage play written semiautobiographically and
directed by Del Shores, is a film that will appeal to bitchy
gays who have been rejected by austere and intolerant families,
whom they would secretly like to believe are really living
in a Payton Place. MH
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