June 28, 1996

STRIPTEASE was one of the most derided movies of 1996, and the winner of six Razzies including Worst Picture. There is no question in my mind that that particular distinction can be attributed to the Razzie’s usual misogynistic and puritanical hatred of sexuality. The winners of the previous three years were INDECENT PROPOSAL, COLOR OF NIGHT and SHOWGIRLS. Hollywood could have listened to them, but instead here was Demi Moore briefly nude and showing off her body in tame but sexually provocative dances – this could not stand. She had to be punished. That’s what those fuckers were like back then, and much of society went along with it. (In fact, it also won top honors at the competing “Stinkers Bad Movie Awards.”)

I think when you look at Moore’s performance with today’s eyes it’s impressive: she clearly put alot of work into getting into ridiculous shape and learning to dance, similar to the dedication she would show a year later for a very different but also physically challenging role in G.I. JANE. (which the Razzies would also give her Worst Actress for, the absolute clowns). And she makes the character grounded and sincere. I like her in it. Unfortunately, the worst guy you know sometimes makes a good point, and I have to concede that STRIPTEASE is not a good movie.

Moore plays Erin Grant, who started working as an exotic dancer at the Eager Beaver in Miami after she was fired from her job as a secretary at the FBI. She’s trying to save up the money to appeal her child custody case because her ex Darrell (Robert Patrick, DOUBLE DRAGON) has their 7-year-old Angela (Rumer Willis in her second movie) and uses her as bait for his scam of stealing and reselling wheelchairs. But then some unrelated trouble falls into Erin’s lap. (I would make some kind of lapdance reference here, but I’m too proud. So forget it.)

Erin doesn’t realize that the patron who saves her from a drunken bumrusher one night is Congressman David Lane Dilbeck (Burt Reynolds after CITIZEN RUTH, a few movies before BOOGIE NIGHTS), or that a fan named Jerry (William Hill, THE JUROR) got it on video and will try to blackmail him to help her, then get murdered by his dangerous sugar lobbyist allies. Miami PD Lieutenant Al Garcia (Armand Assante, BLIND JUSTICE) gets involved because he’s the one who finds the body floating in Lake Okeechobee while on vacation.

Assante is an odd fit for the sort-of-male-lead, which I kind of like. I like that he likes her and tries to help her with her custody case by removing Darrell’s FBI informant status, but doesn’t make a move on her or seem to want to. I also kind of like the club’s head of security Shad (Ving Rhames, while MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE was still playing theaters), though he causes more trouble when he and his lawyer Alan Mordecai (Stuart Pankin, I LOVE TROUBLE) also try blackmailing the congressman. He’s got that non-evil-Ving-Rhames-character lovableness, plus a pet monkey.

There are more complications when the judge (Louis Seeger Crume, also in FLIPPER) dies, delaying the case, so she decides to do exactly what Doug Llewelyn warned us against, and take the law into her own hands. She has to juggle the case, the dangerous ex, and the even more dangerous Congressman, who she at least can manipulate since he’s obsessed with her and pays her for a private dance. The movie gets across that she’ll do anything for her daughter without us having to see her degraded that much (I’ve read that they removed a sexual assault in reshoots due to negative test screenings).

Somehow the score is by Howard Shore, who had done six David Cronenberg movies, two Scorseses, two Jonathan Demmes, two Barbet Schroeders, a Sydney Lumet, a Tim Burton, a David Fincher, and more. The strip scenes use several songs sung by Annie Lennox, plus “If I Was Your Girlfriend” by Prince. Choreographer Marguerite Derricks was a dance double in DEATH SPA who had just choreographed SHOWGIRLS, and would follow this with AUSTIN POWERS: INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY. At times this leans toward the FLASHDANCE idea of the strippers designing elaborate performances as a form of artistic expression, but it’s not as impressive in that department, or in most departments.

STRIPTEASE was adapted from the 1993 Carl Hiaasen novel Strip Tease. I haven’t read it, but Donald Westlake wrote a very positive review of it when it came out. From the Wikipedia summary it sounds like the movie stays remarkably close, though the original climax is in a sugarcane field instead of a refinery, which I bet would’ve looked great. But maybe they couldn’t make it work.

As I summarize the movie in this review I feel like I’m describing a novelistic type of crime story I enjoy – a plot full of colorful but not unbelievable characters, representing a sort of underbelly of America’s own underbelly in Florida. I like the idea of Erin having this unlikely previous job that makes her a little different, without the movie looking down on the other strippers (even one named Urban Sprawl played by giant-boobed Pandora Peaks). When she worries about how her current job will make her look in court she’s clearly not ashamed of it, she just knows the perception. I like the sort of goofy randomness of the characters’ quirks and the things that happen to them swirling around until everything collides at the climax. And I like the underdog quality of this single mom stripper overcoming the legal system and a horny Congressman backed by an entire corrupt industry.

But tonally I just don’t think it works. It’s comedy-coded – everything very broad, without being funny. Some of the failed Elmore Leonard adaptations are like that too. They have many of the little details that make the books so good, but they put them in a world that doesn’t feel real. I needed it to either be funnier or feel more real, and if it felt more realI think it would be funnier. Unfortunately I found this one to be kind of a slog to get through, even though it’s edited by motherfuckin Anne V. Coates (LAWRENCE OF ARABIA)! She’d have more to work with on OUT OF SIGHT a few years later.

It was a pretty brave role for Reynolds. He was seen as washed up and had to fight for the part after Gene Hackman turned it down. He called Castle Rock Entertainment head Rob Reiner and they let him audition, which required taking off his toupee. He was spared and even praised in some of the reviews, maybe because people still thought of him as his swaggery ’70s and ’80s persona and it was novel to see him playing a bumbling sleaze. But I don’t think he’s great in it and I’m distracted by his weirdly bad Southern accent.

Writer/director Andrew Bergman was the guy who wrote the original script that became BLAZING SADDLES, and then broke into directing with SO FINE (1981). He also wrote FLETCH, so maybe he was trying to repeat some of that quirky crime novel adaptation magic here. I’ve previously written about the two movies he directed before this: HONEYMOON IN VEGAS (1992) and IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU (1994). The only thing he’s directed since STRIPTEASE is ISN’T SHE GREAT (2000).

Although I remembered STRIPTEASE being savaged, I forgot that it did pretty good. It opened at #4, but it stuck around long enough to make $113 million. Yeah, I remember that now, from my working-in-a-theater days. It came in #48 for the year’s domestic box office. Comedies it made more than include BLACK SHEEP, EDDIE, SGT. BILKO, SPY HARD, and KINGPIN. Crime movies it made more than include FARGO, TRAINSPOTTING, LONE STAR, SEVEN and CASINO. Maybe America likes boobs more than the Razzies think we should.

tie-ins:

I don’t believe there were any tie-ins for this movie other than a new “NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM CASTLE ROCK ENTERTAINMENT” cover on the book, but here’s a shirt for the catering crew somebody has listed on ebay.