Good afternoon. It is I Gigi the parti poodle and let me tell you it has been a harrowing week. We were out for our usual stroll my novelist and I…and the Maltese.
That’s right! I was there! I was there.
I am telling this story.
Are you going to tell them about the wolf?
Are you going to let me tell this or not?
Yes, yes! Tell them about the wolf!
It was not a wolf. It was a coyote. We were out walking on Sunday and we ran into a coyote. It was dreadful. My novelist thought it was a small deer at first and then realized it was a creature of the canine sort. It looked at us with those cold evil eyes like we were dishes served on a buffet. I hardly think of myself as a crumpet. My novelist scooped us up in her arms one in the right and the other in the left and yelled at this monstrous beast, “What are you?! Get out of here!” The coyote turned and walked away. But my novelist carried us all the way to safety. And now without further ado here is my hero and novelist.
This week I have been working on my website for my book series coming out in August. I had to create one just for this book because there is a site mentioned in my book series several times, so it became imperative to make one so that readers didn’t go to look up the site and yell “Where’s the site?!” I have owned the domain for some time now but never set it up and went live with it. I am going to add a couple of bells and whistles to it as well which I will go into more detail about later.
Beautifully written films about female friends are rare. Thelma & Louise comes to mind. Bridesmaids. 9 to 5. And maybe even Pitch Perfect. But good female buddy films do not come along often. I have read that stories with a male lead make more money or are preferred over stories with a female lead.
This is only one reason why Hustlers is a must see. The trailer is mediocre at best. The story however is fantastic and manages to walk that great tightrope of being both entertaining and thought provoking at the same time. Based on a true story covered in the article The Hustlers at Scores written by Jessica Pressler and published in New York Magazine on December 27th 2015, Hustlers is the story of Roselyn Keo (played brilliantly by Constance Wu) a whip smart former dancer at the famous Scores strip club in New York City who over the course of the film recalls her early days at the high end New York “gentleman’s club” and how she met Samantha Barbash (Jennifer Lopez who is excellent here) one of the clubs top dancers.
Both women are street smart, but their strengths lie in different areas. Samantha is the people person. Roselyn has the business mind. Together they are a powerful team. They perform for Wall Street hotshots and psychopaths alike looking for a fantasy, a vacation away from the wife. And the ladies deliver. In the early to mid-2000’s Scores was often touted on The Howard Stern show and many celebrities liked to get their pictures taken with the dancers. People were throwing a lot of money at these women. It would not be unheard of for the ladies to take home ten grand in a night. It was almost like a modern stripper’s version of the courtesans of Venice (see Dangerous Beauty). The problem was that much like the waiters in Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London cash in hand was often spent quickly. And when the housing bubble burst in late 2007 the money train left the station.
At this point Roselyn had become pregnant with her on again off again boyfriend who stuck around for a while and then a couple of years later left her and their daughter. Desperate for money she made a list of men who had been patrons of Scores her “money list” as it were and started calling around but to no avail. Serendipitously, she ran into Samantha again and found she had a brand-new bag: cooking up roofies and rolling guys through their former club. And with that the two ladies once again joined forces albeit on the other side of the law.
It is so often we see stories about men victimizing women that the ones about women victimizing men seem to pop out more. What makes this bizarre story so compelling is it is true and follows the magazine article well. Even the detectives at the police department who got calls from men saying they had thousands of dollars stolen from them by a pack of women didn’t believe them. I mean, after all, how could they expect women to cook up a scam like that? But they did and to great effect.
While you’re waiting for my next post and the release of my book series you can check out my novel Chicane on Amazon.
This week’s FREE FRIDAY MOVIE CLASS from SCREENWRITINGU is called How to Write a Contained Movie. You can sign up for the class here.
STREAM OF THE WEEK-UNBELIEVABLE-Netflix
In keeping with the theme of female buddy stories I want to highlight one of Netflix best miniseries. Unbelievable is the true story of a very competent serial rapist who appears to have started his multi-state rampage here in the great northwest. It stars Kaitlyn Dever in a phenomenal performance as the young Marie Adler who was accused of making up the brutal rape she endured. Later we meet Detective Karen Duvall (Merritt Weaver who gives an outstanding performance as well) who after coming across a few rape cases in her jurisdiction in Colorado starts to see a peculiar pattern. She enlists the help of hard-hitting Detective Grace Rasmussen (Toni Collette who is equally outstanding and should be racking up awards) who is skeptical at first but teams up with Karen to figure out who this psychopath really is. The series shows how shockingly behind the justice system still is even after Ted Bundy’s reign of terror in the 1970’s. Riveting from start to finish and giving away nothing this is a taunt enthralling true crime thriller.
SMART FILMS FOR SMART KIDS: RACE FOR YOUR LIFE, CHARLIE BROWN
A few weeks ago, I recommended the Peanuts film Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown and Don’t Come Back. This week I am going to recommend one that is even better. Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown is one of the top three Peanuts movies and it is a whole lot of fun. The kids get shipped off to summer camp where they run into a trio of nasty boys and their ill-tempered cat. In order to triumph over the bullies, the gang enlists in a raft race only to find the villains have a few unsavory tricks up their sleeves. A classic kid’s film.
Gigi Catches Air 