Speaker 1: We're Tomy Lorenzo and this is the Bitter Kitten Movie Club.
Hellicit's welcome back to another edition of the b k MC,
a supplemental edition of the PSO podcast where we take
a look at one film per week and give it
the t low treatment. This week's film is Dolomite Is
My Name, and this is the first time I haven't
screwed up the intro. So yay me, we are officially
a podcast because I can get through the intro without
screwing it up. Okay, So, this week's film is Dolomite
Is My Name, by director directed by Craig Burwer, starring
Eddie Murphy as the semi legendary Rudy Ray Moore, also
starring d I enjoy, Randolph Keaty and Michael Kay, Wesley
Snipes and just an a list collection of black actor
and honestly, we had so much fun watching this. Now.
I have seen this film when it first came out,
and in fact, we had a it's still floating out
in the world. I don't know what's going to happen
with it, but we had a movie costume book proposal
where we picked a bunch of movie costumes to talk about,
and one of them was the lattice work pink suit
that Eddie Murphy wears by costume designer Ruthie Corder. I'm
going to get into all of that, but my point
is that this movie's actually been on my radar for
a long time. We loved it when we watched it
the first time in twenty nineteen. I have written stuff
that you haven't seen about the costume design, and yet
I came away with something new, and that is what
I want to talk about in this podcast. We're gonna
talk about all of it.
Speaker 2: But.
Speaker 1: So Dolomite is not Let's start with this. Dolomite is
My name is Joyous, right, I mean, that's such a
feel good movie.
Speaker 2: It's as you said, we watched it back in twenty nineteen,
and I when we sat last night to watch it,
I could. I was like, I know what it is, right,
I don't remember everything, but and I forgot how funny?
How I mean funny.
Speaker 1: Eddie Murphy is so good at this.
Speaker 2: He's bigger than I mean, he's just insane. He explodes.
Speaker 1: It's just the role of a lifetime form. Yes, and
it is honestly so tragic that he did not get
nominated for her Now, I can't believe that was an
Oscar winning performance. It was like the ultimate Eddie Murphy
performance and just the like I said, feel good, like
at the end of the movie, how can you not
feel good at the movie? It's like the highest number
of motherfuckers you lover hear in any two hour movie,
and yet it's just so joyous. So we both this
morning came to a different came to the same conclusion
for different reasons. One is, I'll start off just start
off saying what you noticed.
Speaker 2: Well, here's the thing. I completely forgot who was in
the movie aside from him. So Divine is there, and
I'm like, oh my god, and she's amazing. From from
scene one, yes, she's amazing, absolutely amazing. I kept watching
her the whole time, her character especially.
Speaker 1: And they had a pseudo romantic but not relationship.
Speaker 2: As I said, I forgot about the movie and I
didn't know all the details, like all right, he's gonna
end up, you know, having a relationship with her, and
nothing happens, andthing happened, and then when he gets to
the sex scene that they're shooting.
Speaker 1: The movie, and he's clearly uncomfortable and she's.
Speaker 2: So supportive, you know, She's like, no, we'll figure this out.
We're gonna do I was like, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I just don't say what I can't. So
I'm watching it last night and like the film. It's
one of the great things about this film is that
it pays the man so much respect while also acknowledging like, yeah,
of course he was a hustler and a clown and
these were not high quality films that he was making,
but they gave him his due as the godfather of rap,
which is something most people probably don't know. And they
spent time showing how he literally took African American oral
storytelling traditions and codified them and turned them into a
form of entertainment. And all I could think through those
scenes was all the research I had done we had
done when we were writing Legendary Children, which was a book.
If you haven't bought it, you really should buy it.
It'll be great for pride months for your pride reading. Anyway.
It's an examination of gender non conforming queer artists and
mostly drag queens, and how queer art has been and
the history of art and how it has been created
and all everything that he was doing in those scenes,
I was like, Wow, this is so queerer, and I
remember feeling a little guilty and thinking to myself, I
really can't make that connection because, you know, in the podcast,
are in the write up, because as a gay white man,
I don't want to claim kinship with what is clearly
a black cultural tradition. But I kept thinking about how
what he was doing was exactly what queer artists doing.
And I kept thinking about, you know, the cultural tradition
that he was codifying was called the dozens, which is
where you do these one up stories with it that
rhyme and tend to insult one another. You know, people
go and it's it's the precursor to things like rap battles.
But it is also clearly a cousin to shade and reading.
And when we wrote Legendary Children, we did say that
shade and reading were strictly African American traditions that black
queens took into gay, you know culture. So I'm thinking
all this and I'm like, I don't know, I don't
know if I want to make this connection as a
white man, because I might be overstepping my bounds. So
I get up this morning and I'm doing some research
and it turns out he was probably gay, Rudy, they say, yeah,
and well, frankly, when someone says that about someone, and
I don't mean when someone identifies BY, but when someone
says that about someone, they're just saying they're basically covering,
but they probably have no connection with ever seeing them
date women.
Speaker 2: The feeling I get when someone says stuff like that
is that about another person, about another person specifically, my
feeling is always like, Okay, the person is gay, but
I'm letting that person.
Speaker 1: I'm not giving them a backdoor.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also it's not my place exactly, especially people Rudymore's direction.
I am not and we are not suggesting that people
who identify as BY are not really By. That's not
what I'm saying. We're saying it's that people often misidentify
gay people by because they don't want to call him gay. Anyway,
I was shocked by that, because I wasn't shocked by it.
Anybody can be gay. I've been around long enough to
know you don't have to fit a stereotype. Of course,
Rudy rymwore. And if you look at some of the
costumes that guy wore, especially later, extremely flamboyant, like Elton
John level of flammable.
Speaker 2: Also, he's frying at the store played by Titus you know,
he's gay. So interesting because the movie really dances around
the gayness. At one point, titus burg guest makes this
so comment about sucking dick in prison. Yea, and Eddie
just sort of waves off the comment in a way
that he didn't seem. Let me put a to you
this way.
Speaker 1: The film is very I have to give a credit
clever about if you know where to look, it's there,
if you really know where to look. Now, as two
gay men who are culturally tuned into queerness, we picked
up on it, but even we were like, we didn't
think it was. I did not finish the movie thinking
that that guy was gay. And I can't tell if
I think that's a failing of the film or not,
because here's how I feel. Do you remember that, right,
of course you do. That Ryan Murphy miniseries Hollywood, and
part of it was we've talked about this.
Speaker 2: Before, based on a book and some of it, Yeah.
Speaker 1: But part of the miniseries had a fictionalized Rock Hudson
who took his black boyfriend to the Oscars. You know,
it was a totally fictionalized version of his life. These
things could have never happened back then. And I remember
getting into a tussle with another queer culture writer on
Twitter at the time because I said, I found the
whole thing offensive to Rock Hudson's memory, And he said,
don't you think Rock Hudson would have wanted to be
able to do that? And I said, honestly, no, I
don't know that Rock Hudson, someone born in like nineteen twenty,
whatever year he was born in, as a queer man,
I'm not sure him someone of that generation, would have
had that dream to take his boyfriend to the Oscars.
And I'm not sure rud Ray Moore would have wanted
his story to be that's the story of a gay man.
Speaker 2: The problem that I have with that that type of
far and thank yeah, no, I mean the guy on
Twitter is that you are reinterpreting history. You're you're presenting
a history that never happened, and at the same time.
Speaker 1: You act like you're doing that person a service.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you hiding what really happened, and that.
Speaker 1: His struggle was his life. So the fact that he
couldn't do those things.
Speaker 2: So if you're a young person today, a queer person today,
and if that's what you watch, you don't really know
what really happened, because you know, we tend to not
no history at all.
Speaker 1: It's like the bridgetonization of fictionalized history. And I'm not
I mean everyone, I think everyone looks at Bridge gen
it's the fantasy that it is, but it is. You know,
this is not what history was like. This is not
what it looked like, right, I.
Speaker 2: Mean, it's complicated. It's the same thing going on Blue
Peter and Jonger right now.
Speaker 1: You know with the Odyssey exactly, well, that's not history,
that's myth. You can cast anybody in those things like
that's just silly right wing shit, I know exactly.
Speaker 2: So it's complicated.
Speaker 1: But when it comes I remember when Little Richard died
and we did write a piece about him under our
legendary tag which was basically for queer Figures, and tried
to pay homage to the fact that he was a
clearly gay black man and it informed his artistry, Like
you can't look at some of his work and not
see the queerness in it. But at the same token,
he was till the day he died. He I mean,
he flirted with coming out a few times, but for
the most part, he was not of a generation that
wanted to make that part of his life public and
did not want his work to be classified that way.
And I do feel with queer artists, especially when you're
talking about like people from marginalized communities, like black artists
from fifty years ago, sixty seventy, eighty years ago. It
was the same thing with Gladys Bentley. I cried telling
those stories on our book tour. Gladys Bentley was a
non gender conforming female present you know, assigned female at birth,
but she wore the I'm going to use female pronouns
because she did her whole life. And this goes to
my point of you need to respect where people were
in their lives. Yes, and Gladys Bentley wore tuxedos and
openly dated women and sang raunchy songs in Harlem about
you know, eating out women and stuff like that. And
in the nineteen fifties she found Jesus and started wearing
dresses and married a man and spoke out against all
her sinful ways. And we wanted to include that story,
and it was very important to me in the telling
of her story to say it's it's easy for us
to say how sad for her, how tragic for her,
and I'm not suggesting it wasn't. But at the same time,
we need to pay respect to who she was and
where she was. Who am I to claim that a
mid century lesbian black woman or non gender conforming black
woman made the wrong choices? Who am I to sit
in all my priv So I feel that way about
Rudy ray Moore, and and I do in a lot
of ways. I respect what the film has done because
they really do give it all to you without taking
you right up to it.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's not even the sex scene for the movie.
In the movie, it's pretty much lady read lines when
she says, you know, like when she says, you know,
thank you for making thank me for putting me in
your movie. And you know, I've never seen myself like that,
that kind of conversation that a queer guy would have
with a woman.
Speaker 1: It's so true. Yeah, But the thing is, Eddie Murphy's
been charged with homophobia a lot in his career, and
I'm not here to unpack that. I'm not sure if
I have the knowledge to unpack it. But I do
get the general sense that he is not a guy
who wants to play gay on camera. Yeah, probably that
was a big part of it too. I don't think
that's something he wants to do, and whatever, you know.
I mean, I do come from a generation that tends
to criticize that sort of thing, but actors are allowed
to make their own choices. Like I said, I I
picked up on the subtle queerness of it, and and
I do think they were rather clever about it. And
in a way, I think telling his story in that
way is respectful to him. That's what I'm trying to
get across. It is how he would have wanted that
story told. He would not have wanted scenes of him
having sex with men as part of his biography. Probably
just not it. And you know that's I don't know.
I don't have a problem with that. Moving on from that,
the other thing I wanted to talk about, Actually, we
should probably take a short break. Why don't we take
a short break, and when I come back, I want
to talk about the other connection that I felt the
movie depicted to our book, Legendary Children. We'll be right
back we're back talking about Dolamight is my name, and I,
as I said, I wanted to make another connection to
our book, but it is not a connection to queerness,
but it's just a similarity. And it's when we wrote
Legendary Children. One of the things we came away from
our in our newfound understanding of cultural history is how
much of history is just about people on the margins
or in the underground doing what they need to do,
turning their patch of dirt into a garden, creating something
that is queer culture, but that is also one hundred
percent African American culture. That is exactly and you know
the beauty of African American well, I mean, it depends
on how you want to look at it, but they
created American culture essentially a Black Americans created the music,
created the humor, created the language that we that we
use today. And I love the scenes of Rudy and
his little troop basically creating this new form of entertainment
and going around to small clubs or going around to
house parties and you know, recording records at house parties
and with no more than twenty or thirty people in
them and all makeshift curtain hanging up. But that's history
to me, that is culture. To me, that is those
people create culture. And I love when a story gives
someone like that, gives scenes like that a place where
we can because I mean, I'm some white guy. I'm
not going to get invited to a black house party
in nineteen seventies, so you know, I get to see that.
Speaker 2: I think the most beautiful part about the movie, I
think is showing black culture, black history, the struggle, pure love,
pure love, things you created to survive, to entertain yourself,
you know. And and the fact that Rudy ray Moore,
you can tell he never takes a no, never takes
because he understands that's all he's given, knows and and
he has to do something to get what he wants
and he gets there. I also love the fact that
he's not delusion about the movie. He knows the movie
is not a great movie, but it's the movie that
people want. And I think that's such a great message
because I think we're in terms of culture in general,
we're so focused on what's going to please everybody, what's good,
the mass culture, the mass culture, the critics and all that.
And if we and if weget that sometimes you make
something to entertain people a certain segment of the population.
Speaker 1: Yes, and that's that's the kind of culture. That's where
I feel the connection to queer cultural It is about
people who are like, I'm making this for my people.
There's a line where a white movie executive says, you're
just going to make you're going to play this movie
for in the same five blocks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have the quote here he says. He said,
he says, you're not supposed to make a movie for
the five square blocks of people, you know, And then
he says, well, that's fine with me, because every city
in America got those same five blocks, and those folks
is going to love it.
Speaker 1: That is it right there. It's it's it's looking at
your local community and identifying it as part of a
larger connection of communities who have a similar culture.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: And I just love, love love stories like that. I
love when you give people like that a spotlight and
elevate them and say look in their time, because we're
reread to read more died penniless in their time. These
people were not elevated, but we can look back at
them now and see the good that they were doing
for their community for their culture.
Speaker 2: He made he made millions.
Speaker 1: Right, No, I mean he died penniless, I read.
Speaker 2: I don't know. But he made a lot of money
with the first movie.
Speaker 1: No, No, he had terrible business sense. I mean that's
pretty clear anyway.
Speaker 2: But they made they made seven more movies. I think.
Speaker 1: I know the movies made money, but I don't know
what that's going to be actually made all that.
Speaker 2: But the scene in the limbo, I love this. That's
we're in the car and filmmaking and it's just gorgeous
because they're reading all these reviews and that they're getting
they're trash in the movie, and they're getting upset. But
then they see all the crowd outside cheering, And to me,
that's more important than anything else, is the fact that
you created something that made someone Helpy happy. And I
say that kind of like, you know, I get a
little emotion because it's the same thing, the same way
when we're we do what we do with our site,
with our blog, and we feel like, yeah, whatever, and
then we get an email from somebody saying that you know,
I love your site, that you know your site has
helped me blah blah blah. I just love these things
because you forget who's out there, you do. You forget
who's out there, who's reading you, who's listening to you, and.
Speaker 1: You other periods where you wonder if people care.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly so. So that scene when they get out
of the limo and they see all the crowd, Yeah,
they see the crowd and they see all the people
screaming and all that, and it's just beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 1: It's, like I said, total feel good movie. I know,
I think it did okay, I know critically it did well,
but it really should be agree more of a classic
than it is. It's just the perfose now, I mean,
all right, if we want to do some critical stuff here.
The entire structure of the film is a cliche. About
is a show business cliche. It's just all dressed up
in like sixty seventies ghetto Chitlin circuit style, but it
hits every beat of all you know, club owners saying
don't you do that on my stage? And then suddenly
the crowd turns and it's a big hit. And then
there's a montage where they just you know, all of
that is there all and it's you know, emotionally It
hits every single beat of those kind of biopics where
he he stands up and he's like, I don't care
what everybody else says. I'm going to do this where
I'm an artist, blah blah blah. None of that's new.
But I don't really see that as a draw back
because it's dressed up and stuff in a black exploitation
setting that gives it a nuance and gives it a
feeling and gives it a joy that it might not
otherwise have had.
Speaker 2: Oh what I love about it is that it shows
that these people are not naive. They know exactly what's
going on with the life.
Speaker 1: Of course, they're not business savvy, but they know what
they're doing.
Speaker 2: They're knowing what they're doing. They're know that they're being
exploited in a way, but they want to move on
with whatever they have in mind. You know, they what
they want to do.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what they have a need to
tell their stories.
Speaker 2: They have a need to tell the story and to
do what. You know, he started with the records and
then decided to make movies. And I actually went on
YouTube and you can watch the movie.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you can watch the movie it's not going
to send some links to any review that we do.
Speaker 2: So over the top, it's ridiculed.
Speaker 1: He was a real clown and a real hustler. And
I just want to briefly touch on Ruthie Carter's costume design.
We're gonna have more of that's going to be in
the post that we accompanyed with this podcast, because we
can use pictures and stuff. But I just want to
point out that I think, you know Ruthy Carter. She
has done She did Sinners last year, She's done both
Black Panther movies, she did Baps's. She is just an
icon and a legend, especially with these major, major black films.
I think this is her best work. To be quite honest,
I think this exceeds Black Panther. And the reason I
think that is because I am very much of the
opinion that costume design is not simply about massive ball gowns,
period pieces and superhero costumes, because that is what people
think of when they think of costume design, and of
course those are the showiest examples, those are the most
elaborate examples, and they deserve. You know, her work in
Black Panther. I'm pretty sure she won the Oscar for it.
But what I love about Dolomite is how much love
and respect are in those costumes because she I mean,
if you see Rudi ray Moore back then, the costumes
were flamboyant and typical of pimpware of that period. They
were cheap, I mean, they were not expensively made, and
she really threaded this needle, no pun intended where she
sourced polyester fabrics from the seventies, from the sixties and
the seventies. She wasn't using couture fabrics. But the pieces
are impeccable. Everything is accurate. She just slightly elevated it
to give him and the other characters dignity.
Speaker 2: Everything is gorgeous.
Speaker 1: It would be so easy to make jokes those outfits,
to have to just like, look at this ridiculous pimp
wear that he's wearing. But the outfits are actually gorgeous.
They are beautifully fitted, beautiful, beautifully instructed. And I think
that goes hand in hand with the whole film's approach
to Rudy ray Moore, which is to sort of elevate
him to this mythic status that he did not actually
have while he was alive. And they did the same
thing with the costumes, where it's like, Okay, he wasn't
wearing coature, but he deserves to be wearing it in
this story, so we're going to give him cauture.
Speaker 2: Right. Eddie apparently had seventy five costumes, and she said
that every single one, hats, everything was built from you know, scratch,
because she works.
Speaker 1: She builds the ground up.
Speaker 2: And she said because it was hard. It also was
hard to find vintage Striker. Right.
Speaker 1: That stuff does not survive.
Speaker 2: No, it doesn't, it doesn't.
Speaker 1: Those clothes were cheaply made back then. True they were.
They were very cheaply made. And that's what I love
about the clothses Stylistically, they are absolutely accurate, but they
actually look expensive on screen. All right? Do you have
anything else you want to add? Much more to say
in the review that accompanies this little pot all right?
Speaker 2: I mean, aside from the strong language that might you know,
trigger you.
Speaker 1: I mean, yes, there's like ten motherfuckers in the first.
Speaker 2: That's a lot more than that, yeah, in the jokes,
but aside from that. I when we were done watching
the movie, I was so happy, which still to say good,
but I was just like please and happy that I
watched it. I was like, this is so wonderful. Yeah,
just great.
Speaker 1: More people need to see this. It is just fun
and uplifting and just a great, you know, sort of
rags to not exactly riches but pseudo rags to riches story.
All right, we will be back next week with a
regular podcast and also another b KMC where we are
looking at Nicole Kimmins to die for, which I love.
The spoiler I probably shouldn't. I shouldn't admit this. I've
never seen that.
Speaker 2: What I know, Oh my god, it's one of the best.
Speaker 1: I know, it's kind of embarrassing. Oh she's great, I know,
I know. All right, we'll be back next week. Until then,
take care of yourself. Let you mean it.
Speaker 2: Bye bye bye