Discover

'''A Dirty Shame''' is a 2004 satire by John Waters starring Tracey Ullman, Selma Blair, Johnny Knoxville, Chris Isaak, Mink Stole, Patricia Hearst. The film, rated NC-17, was a return to style of the sexually raunchy films of his early pre-Hollywood years, such as ''Pink Flamingos'' and ''Female Trouble''. It was filmed on-location in Baltimore on Harford Road, which is prominently featured in the movie.

Contents

Plot

Cast

Cameos

Trivia

Critical reception

Box office

External links

Plot

Sylvia Stickles (Tracey Ullman), a suburban housewife in Baltimore is stressed, uptight, and uninterested in sex with her husband, Vaughn (Chris Isaak). Her daughter, Caprice (Selma Blair), is under house arrest following a series of convictions for exhibitionism, and she had previously been a topless go-go dancer at a local biker bar, the Holiday House. Her stage name was Ursula Udders, due to her ridiculously enormous breasts, the result of cosmetic surgery.
On her way to work at the Pinewood Park 'n Pay, a convenience store run by the Stickles family, Sylvia runs out of gas. When she gets out of her car to try to reason with the angry motorists that are now stopped behind her, she is struck in the head by a lawnmower protruding from the back of a passing truck. The resulting concussion triggers a radical change in her personality. Meanwhile, Ray-Ray Perkins (Johnny Knoxville) has arrived on the scene; Ray-Ray is a mechanic and "sexual healer" who recognizes that Sylvia is to be his 12th "apostle". He "services" her: he supplies her with gas using a very phallic-looking gas can, then he performs oral sex on her, informing her she is now a sex addict and there's no turning back.
A changed woman, Sylvia proceeds to work, where she meets up with Vaughn (who had to walk to work following an argument between the two over sex) and her mother, Big Ethel (Suzanne Shepherd), who complains that the neighborhood is being taken over by sexual deviants. Many patrons of the store exhibit signs of sexual addiction and fetishism, including the mailman and a police officer; even one of the employees seems to be sexually aroused by anything unsanitary. Ethel's friend Marge (Mink Stole) stops by, and she too is disgusted by the growing contingent of sexually liberated people in the neighborhood. They decide to organize a "decency rally" for likeminded people in the neighborhood, who become labelled "neuters" because of their ultra-conservative views of sex and decency.
Meanwhile, an extremely horny Sylvia begins to hallucinate that everyone around her is obsessed with sex and she convinces Vaughn to leave the store with her for "funch": fucking after lunch. They park on the side of the road right on their own street, and Sylvia talks Vaughn into performing oral sex on her, or "yodelling in the canyon". Afterwards, they proceed to a nursing home to visit Vaughn's mother, where we find the elderly residents dancing the Hokey Pokey. Sylvia and Vaughn join in the dance, but Sylvia begins to hallucinate that the attendants are egging her on to dance in an increasingly suggestive and sexually charged manner; she ultimately ends up picking up a bottle of water with her crotch. The residents flee in horror, and in the confusion Sylvia leaves too, separating from Vaughn.
Night falls, and Sylvia reoutfits herself with sexy clothing she finds in a dumpster and high heeled shoes she steals from a store. She completes her transformation from frumpy to sexy by sneaking in the backdoor of a woman's house and stealing makeup from her purse as the woman washes her hair in the sink, oblivious to what's happening right behind her. She then proceeds to Ray-Ray's garage. It is there that Ray-Ray introduces her to the other apostles, all people who have suffered head injuries and become sex addicts as a result. Each has a different fetish; for example, the policeman seen earlier at the convenience store is revealed to be an "adult baby", someone who eroticizes dressing up as an infant. Ray-Ray introduces Sylvia to the bears, three men who are "husky, hairy, homosexual, and out of the 2nd closet". The remaining apostles are into, among other things, "sploshing" (smearing their private parts with food), making "human sandwiches", and eroticizing dirt. We then find out that Fat Fuck Frank (Wes Johnson), who is Caprice's biggest fan from the biker bar, is an apostle, and he urges Sylvia to free her daughter, who is an apostle as well. Ray-Ray reveals that as the 12th apostle, Sylvia, whose fetish is cunnilingus, is predestined to discover a new sex act that has never been performed before.
Meanwhile, Vaughn and Big Ethel are searching the neighborhood for Sylvia. Sylvia returns home to Caprice, and they bond, revealing their sex addiction to each other and reconciling their differences. They then decide to go down to the Holiday House and "fuck the whole bar". They run giddily down the street, Caprice's ankle monitor setting off an alarm. They pass Vaughn and Big Ethel, who follow them to the biker bar. At the Holiday House, Caprice is greeted joyously by the bikers, including Fat Fuck Frank. As Caprice dances topless to her signature song (revealing at last her gigantic breasts), Sylvia coerces one of the bikers to go down on her. Vaughn and Big Ethel arrive on the scene; Big Ethel snares Caprice in a net that had been hanging from the ceiling, causing a riot to break out, during which Sylvia is hit in the head with a bottle, reversing the effects of her earlier head injury.
The next day, at the Stickles' home, Sylvia and Caprice are visited by a doctor, who informs Sylvia that she has suffered the effects of a concussion; he then forcibly administers Prozac to Caprice, who is handcuffed to a chair. Caprice throws a TV remote at Sylvia, hitting her in the head, but to no avail, as Sylvia reminds Caprice that "it has to be an accident". Then, two fornicating squirrels in the attic cause the ceiling above Caprice to crack; a piece of it falls on her head and reverses her concussion (suffered in a childhood "maypole accident"). Caprice looks down at her huge breasts and is horrified. The family attends a 12-step program for sex addiction, which is infiltrated by Ray-Ray and the apostles. Ray-Ray begins to "heal" the sex addicts one by one, bringing back their hypersexuality. The Stickles clan resist, and Caprice slips some Prozac into Ray-Ray's coffee.
As the Stickles attempt to flee, Sylvia runs head first into the wall and reverts to her sex-addicted state. Ray-Ray incites the apostles to enact a home invasion, which they do; one of them, a woman dressed in a sexy police uniform, bursts into an unsuspecting family's house as they are watching TV together, asking "Who wants to fuck me?" (to which the teenage son replies "I do, I do!") Unfortunately, Ray-Ray collapses due to the effects of the Prozac; he is taken back to the garage by the apostles, who feed him sexual stimulants. As they go down a long list of fetishes, trying to figure out what the new, previously undiscovered sex act might be (the list includes "tromboning", "plate jobs", and "blossoms"), Ray-Ray becomes inspired.
Meanwhile, the Stickles family, with the exception of Sylvia, have returned to the Park 'n Pay, where another decency rally is taking place. This, too, becomes infiltrated by sex addicts, including Fat Fuck Frank, who pleads with Caprice to come to her senses. She initially objects, but in the chaos that erupts with the arrival of the sex addicts, she gets hit in the head again, and is soon dancing on the roof of the store in her underwear. Ray-Ray and Sylvia arrive on the scene; one by one, dozens of people join in a sexual free-for-all, with many of the neuters receiving head injuries and becoming sex addicts. Vaughn and Big Ethel are horrified by what is now going on all around them.
Meanwhile, high in the sky above them, David Hasselhoff is a passenger on an airplane. After signing an autograph for a fan, he excuses himself to use the bathroom. After a bowel movement, Hasselhoff flushes the toilet, and the holding tank bursts on the bottom of the plane, releasing dozens of turds into the air. One of them hardens as it descends through the atmosphere, hitting Vaughn on the head, turning him into a sex addict. Big Ethel suffers a fatal heart attack. Vaughn proposes oral sex to Sylvia, but she responds that she has moved beyond that. Ray-Ray realizes that Sylvia now knows what the new sex act will be.
She head-butts Vaughn, creating a sexual euphoria in both of them. He then reciprocates, and soon everyone in the surrounding crowd of sex addicts is head-butting one another into ecstasy. A hearse arrives to pick up Big Ethel, but after she is loaded into it, Ray-Ray revives her. When she sits up, she hits her forehead against the driver's, turning her into a sex addict too (and introducing her to the delights of head-butting). As the sex-addicts continue their head-butting, a sexually electrified Ray-Ray levitates into the air. He shouts the film's rallying slogan, "Let's go sexin'!" and gallons of semen burst from the top of his head.

Cast

★ Tracey Ullman as Sylvia Stickles

★ Johnny Knoxville as Ray-Ray Perkins

★ Selma Blair as Caprice Stickles

★ Chris Isaak as Vaughn Stickles

★ Suzanne Shepherd as Big Ethel

★ Mink Stole as Marge the Neuter

★ Patricia Hearst as Paige

★ Jackie Hoffman as Dora

★ Wes Johnson as Fat Fuck Frank

★ David A. Dunham as Mama Bear

★ David Moretti as Papa Bear

★ Jeffrey Auerbach as Baby Bear

Cameos

★ David Hasselhoff as Himself

Trivia

★ In order to play a part of a stripper with enlarged breasts, Selma Blair had to be fitted with a pair of prosthetic devices.

★ When the MPAA were asked what would needed to be cut to obtain an R rating, they replied that if everything the MPAA objected to were to be removed, the movie would only be 10 minutes long.

★ Paul Giamatti was originally meant to play Vaughn Stickles, but dropped out to play in ''Sideways'' (2004).

★ The scene where Sylvia changes her clothes in the back of the cab is based on a true story. John Waters once had to change clothes in the back of a cab on his way from an airport straight to a book signing.

★ There is an R-rated version of the film sold and available for rental at Blockbuster. It is 84 minutes long (the NC-17 DVD release is 88 minutes).

★ One scene includes a portion of a TV show, the Ricki Lake show with host Ricki Lake who was a former actor and appeared in four of John Waters's movies: Hairspray, Cry-Baby, Serial Mom, and an uncredited appearance in Cecil B. Demented.

Critical reception

''A Dirty Shame'' received very mixed critical reception. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film is listed as having a 52% critical approval rating, with 53% among the 'cream of the crop.'[1]
One of the more positive reviews came from Kevin Thomas of the ''Los Angeles Times'', who wrote:

"A gross-out pioneer, Waters has always had more on his mind than delirious, sex-crazed silliness. By allowing people to speak freely about their sexual urges and practices with a bluntness that is jaw-droppingly hilarious, Waters has drawn deeply upon comedy's liberating power. The more the sex addicts talk about their hang-ups the more comically harmless they seem, and thus it's all the more absurd for the puritanical to try to punish them for their various pursuits of pleasure.
Waters has always harnessed poor taste to lampoon attempts to limit freedom of expression. This raucously gritty and high-spirited film could scarcely be bluer in terms of the language, but from Waters it comes as a gust of fresh air."[2]

Also enthusiastic was Peter Travers of ''Rolling Stone'':

"''A Dirty Shame'' is Waters unleashed, and wicked, kinky fun for anyone except the twits who rated it NC-17...You may even shed a tear when Sylvia bonds with her daughter by confessing, "I'm a cunnilingus bottom." OK, the jokes are hit-and-miss and the plot is nonexistent, but the Waters spirit stays consistently and sweetly twisted. When the cast takes to the streets singing, "Let's go sexin'," you want to cheer them on."[3]

On the other end of the spectrum was Roger Ebert, who gave the film one star out of a possible four:

"There is in show biz something known as "a bad laugh." That's the laugh you don't want to get, because it indicates not amusement but incredulity, nervousness or disapproval. John Waters' ''A Dirty Shame'' is the only comedy I can think of that gets more bad laughs than good ones...We go to a Waters film expecting bad taste, but we also expect to laugh, and ''A Dirty Shame'' is monotonous, repetitive and sometimes wildly wrong in what it hopes is funny."[4]

Box office

''A Dirty Shame'' opened on September 17, 2004 on one Baltimore screen to $29,384. The next weekend, it expanded to 133 venues, where it grossed $448,914 ($3,375 per screen). It ended its North American run with $1,339,668.
Overseas, the film earned an additional $529,584, making its global total $1,869,252.

External links

★

★ Official site