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Movie Review
"The Haunting"
Catherine Zeta-Jones playing a lesbian in a fur-trimmed vest? That's not scary -- that's hilarious.
By Stephanie Zacharek
[07/22/99]

Hacking toward Bethlehem
Abe Ingersoll, a former punk hacker and infamous "Road Rules" cast member, reflects on his ill-fated 15 minutes.
By Jonathan Vankin
[07/21/99]

"Monsters of Grace"
Philip Glass and Robert Wilson attempted to explore the intersection of the performing arts and digital culture. But a funny thing happened on the way to the theater.
By Stacey Kors
[07/21/99]

Music
Bowery boys
A new Ramones anthology catches America's beloved punks sniffing glue and chewing rock 'n' roll bubble gum.
By Ira Robbins
[07/20/99]

Column
Pushing the envelopes
The list of Emmy nominees comes out this week. Will TV's best be on it?
By Joyce Millman
[07/19/99]

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Advance reviews have treated this gleeful burlesque as a hybrid of two Michael Ritchie films, the sublime "Smile" and the rambunctious "The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader Murdering Mom." But Jann told me in an interview the day after his smash success in San Francisco that Ritchie's films had nothing to do with the genesis of his picture. After all, he points out, "Michael Ritchie has done some cool movies, but they're not what you refer to when you talk to Hollywood executives." (The Texas cheerleader film was made for HBO; "Smile" was both a box-office failure and a disappointment to out-of-it critics, who dubbed it snide and artificial when it opened in 1975.)

"Drop Dead Gorgeous," set in the made-up hamlet of Mount Rose, Minn., is actually based on screenwriter Lona Williams' experiences as a competitor in the Junior Miss pageant in her hometown of Rosemount, Minn. (She went all the way to the nationals in Mobile, Ala., where she was first runner-up.) Although "Drop Dead Gorgeous" is broader than "Smile," Jann and Williams (who also executive-produced) arrive at their own authentic mix of crassness and ebullience. They tap into the primal ruthlessness and hysteria of grass-roots American competition while chronicling the travails of a good-hearted heroine: a pristine blond named Amber (Kirsten Dunst).

Michael Sragow Michael Sragow's column appears every Thursday in Arts & Entertainment + Archives

Sixteen years ago, at a beauty pageant for the deaf in Northridge, Calif., I watched a contestant do an ice-skating routine without ice while one helpmate signed the words to the accompanying song and another waved his arms like a human metronome. So it didn't strike me as outlandish for a girl in "Drop Dead Gorgeous" to translate Melissa Manchester's hit "Through the Eyes of Love" (the theme from "Ice Castles") into a pidgin version of American Sign Language.

The filmmakers' golden girl, Amber, worships Diane Sawyer and practices her talent -- tap dancing -- while working part time as a makeup artist at a funeral parlor. Nothing about this is far-fetched. "Becoming a Beauty Queen: the Complete Guide," written by two Minnesota sisters (Barbara Peterson Burwell, Miss USA 1976, and Polly Peterson Bowles, Miss Minnesota-USA 1981), advises contestants to "sneak in extra minutes of talent rehearsal every day." The book's photos include a full-page picture of Diane Sawyer, America's 1963 Junior Miss -- as well as a portrait of the 1985 Junior Miss, a fetching Minnesota lass named, yes, Amber.

In the course of Mount Rose's teen princess pageant, one participant after another (and at least one innocent bystander) gets knocked down, blown up or shot. There's nothing delicate about this movie. But Jann doesn't merely set a raucous tone. He gets his actors to behave consistently (and thus believably) within it, so that you root for Amber to win the contest and attain her dream of becoming the next Diane Sawyer.

The film has a real, if wayward, conviction. As Jann explained, that's partly because he identified with Amber as an American success story: He sees himself as a small-town boy who made good. He says he thought Hollywood had already given audiences enough stories about homicide invading the heartland. So he wanted to throw part of the emphasis on "good things happening to good people."

He grew up in tiny Colonie, in upstate New York, and had what he calls "a great childhood." Unlike many a budding satirist, he never felt violently alienated from the blandness of American suburbia: "What I got was a sense of the absurd. I think there's a crux point in high school where you either get pissed off at your circumstances or you just say to yourself, 'This is ridiculous.' I always knew I would move to New York City as soon as I got the chance -- that when I was 18 I'd go to college there."

He went to Catholic school for eight years and a military academy after that (on scholarship), never dreaming he'd end up as an undergrad at NYU film school. But he always did like movies. His mother was a movie fan "by default" -- there wasn't much else to do in Colonie. Jann has a vivid memory of her taking him to see "What's Up, Doc?" at age 3: "I remember sitting in the backseat of the car and being so short I couldn't look out the window, and seeing the marquee, and thinking it was a Bugs Bunny movie. I mean, I was 3 -- I didn't get the Howard Hawks references. But I remember liking the car chase and the character of Hugh, the obscenely European music specialist."

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