This Movie Exists

MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD & EVIL (1997)

It’s been a cavalcade of firsts around here, but here’s a whole new first for you: THIS MOVIE EXISTS’ very first guest blogger! Yaaaaaaay!

*insert Muppet hands here*

And doing said honors is the illustrious Jeffrey McCrann, of NOW KINDLY UNDO THESE STRAPS fame, and he certainly brought us a treat in his Paula Deen tote bag! I’ve known Mr. McCrann since college, and there’s nobody I know who offers his unique perspective on all things cinema– and that’s why I’m excited he’s decided to blow some of the dust off a little movie that you all may have forgotten existed. Take it away, Jeffrey!

I want to talk about a movie I happened upon late last night.  In this movie, Mister John Cusack is playing John Cusack on the telephone pretending to be a journalist for Town & Country magazine.  This journalist (aptly named John for fear that Mr. Cusack would, no doubt, one day be confused– causing the production to be halted) is sent to Savannah, Georgia to chronicle a wealthy homosexual’s Christmas party.  Fluff. 

Well apparently, the wealthy homosexual in question is Mister Kevin Spacey himself, sporting a moustache, so as to not be confused for Kevin Spacey by the locals!  Before you can say diamond-encrusted Faberge, Mr. Spacey has killed a hustler played by Jude Law (who is not actually a homosexual but who is an actor, which is like a homosexual, only with more narcissistic tendencies). 

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this movie exists and it’s not One Crazy Summer.  This movie is MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL.

If you have not seen this film, prepare to be agog. What was apparently a true story of deception and betrayal is presented as Grand Guignol camp.  This movie is the stuff of Robert Aldrich and Paul Morrissey.  For starters, Kevin Spacey is besties with Miss Dorothy Loudon (RIP), sporting a gown she stole from the set of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, complete with feathers that match her eye makeup!  There are repeated close-ups on dogs.  The camera consciously lingers upon a cast festooned with distracting locals.  I am assuming these folks were kin to the real-life events because they are presented so grotesquely that I often forgot I wasn’t watching Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. 

My apologies to Paula Deen and Ruby, but apparently the people of Savannah are a little bit slow because everyone in town insists that Mr. Spacey is not, in fact, a lecherous Oscar-winning homosexual.  What a riot!  People smoke indoors.  Women talk casually of their husbands’ suicides.  They ask to “make pictures” with dogs.  People travel by horse and carriage.  Everyone is holding.  Many of them still seem to have slaves.  Mr. Spacey even takes Mr. Cusack to the “colored cemetery” where they meet a real live voodoo priestess (yes, the toothless one from Disney’s The Princess and the Frog).  It’s a lot to take in!  

Now, John Cusack grew up in show business so he’s no fool.  When the Spacey Christmas party is interrupted by Jude Law (fresh from his trailer– where legend has it he had watched Brando’s scenes from Streetcar a record 45 times in a row whilst applying his hair gunk), brandishing a broken bottle with rehearsed menace in his eyes.  John can tell something’s going down.  Did I mention that Mr. Spacey is living with his mother?  MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL is nothing if not subtle.

Just when we, the audience, start to engage in this dishy, exclusive look into the world Kevin Spacey between films, the entire proceedings are halted in their tracks.  Enter The Lady Chablis.

John Cusack, still pretending to be a writer (he’s even wearing William Holden’s costume from Sunset Blvd), travels to the poor side of town to meet up with a drag queen/transvestite/life coach/vaudeville star by the name of Lady Chablis.  While clearly in need of a sandwich, she still has most of her original teeth.  John becomes convinced that she is the key to unlocking these Savannah mysteries.  Trannychaser, indeed.  The movie ceases to be a mystery and now is a rather pedestrian remake of Pretty Woman.  John Cusack is in love with the tranny hooker with a heart of gold, dressing her up in Nolan Miller gowns and taking her to cotillions, while Kevin Spacey tries to get between them.

Mr. Spacey winds up in prison where he’s sniffed by burly men with goatees.  Yes, he’s actually sniffed, like a dog – that’s how homosexuals express interest in one another, in case you didn’t know. And don’t worry about Mr. Cusack – to assure us of his predominant heterosexuality, there’s a plain-looking blonde florist/cabaret singer in a sundress who comes and goes– implying that even though Mr. Cusack is tolerant of these artistic types, he’s a red-blooded American man, through and through.  Whew!

Dorothy Loudon comes back, this time wearing pink marabou, to imply that everyone in town is mad because Jude Law was the best whore in town and they weren’t done fucking him.  How rude of Kevin to kill him off!  Now they want him to pay.  It’s one thing to be a homosexual millionare behind closed doors, but it is another thing entirely to make a scene of it!  Ugh – aren’t we over this yet?  This movie presumes that homosexuals are evil liars capable of murdering the innocent without remorse.  This isn’t a Douglas Sirk epic about homosexual oppression in the ‘50s.  It’s a late-90s Kevin Spacey picture.  Are we really not over this yet?  It’s more exhausting than an all day marathon of The Real Housewives of Atlanta. It’s more exhausting than Kevin Spacey.

MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL is one of those movies with a killer first act that manages to lose all steam halfway through.  It’s disheartening that a movie audacious enough to have a character tied to A FLOCK OF BEES would wind up so pedestrian as to give over to the trappings of contrived courtroom nonsense - where a witness’s testimony is discredited on a count of his homosexuality. 

PASS.  From here on out, the movie’s dead on arrival – the only saving grace being The Lady Chablis, taking the stand like a modern day Roxie Hart.  Like Savannah itself, MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL is fun to visit, but you don’t want to stay too long.