Unpaid Spokeswomen #13

Welcome to Unpaid Spokeswomen, a column where we log what we’ve been into this week. Behind the wigs, makeup, costumes, and several layers of irony, we are two humans who genuinely enjoy doing things. Here is a weekly roundup of our unfiltered expert recommendations.

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Trixie:

Demolition

Ladies I know this one is a little bit vague and a little big out there, but I have found in the first few weeks of the renovation of The Trixie Motel (coming to Discovery+ in Spring 2022) that there is something so freeing and magical about breaking shit. I feel like I measure success by what I build and construct and put on display. And so surprisingly, I have found swinging a sledgehammer and dismantling cabinetry and ripping up carpet to be extremely fulfilling. It’s fun to use your hands and your muscles to demolish something. You are powerful and everything around you is able to be dismantled.

Of course not everyone has a giant motel that they can smash apart. But I recommend you find something you no longer want in your homes.  Maybe it’s a VHS player from beyond the grave. Maybe it’s your stinky microwave. Maybe it’s the Habitrail where your dead gerbil used to live. Maybe it’s your stepdad! Go to a hardware store, buy a sledgehammer, and take that item into the back alley. Wear safety goggles and long sleeves. Put on some ABBA. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and go ham, bitch. Smashy Smashy! Or how fun would it be to even do something small?! Smash your old iPhone or a dead lightbulb. Snap all your press on nails in half before throwing them away. Give a wig a bad haircut. Just break something and you’ll feel better.

I came in like a Wrecking Ball (again)

Juliette Lewis

How is this woman such an icon? How is she so beautiful?

Her earlier works? Amazing. Cape Fear?! Bitch, I hadn’t even seen that until last year and I can’t believe how amazing she is at just eighteen years old. Natural Born Killers? Transcendent! The Other Sister? Lit! From Dusk Til Dawn? Life-changing.

Her other career highs for me are the television series The Act (she plays a Wisconsin mom) and of course the instant classic, Ma. (Let me know if you want me to write an entire Substack article about Ma because I really could.) I am also deeply in love with her musical work in her band Juliette and The Licks. Stop reading this now and listen to “Got Love To Kill” by Juliette and The Licks and tell me the rubber on the bottom of your shoes doesn’t burn off from thrashing your body around.

She is also, in a word, stunning. In addition to being truly bewitching as a storyteller and an actress, she is just so beautiful. Full lips, doe eyes, flawless bone structure, and somehow only prettier as the years go by. We also owe her for the iconic meme “Can you save us, Britney Spears? Can we be saved? Is Satan controlling the universe!?!?!” I just love her so much. 

Katya: 

The acting coach in Girl 6

When I was in high school, I was obsessed with Spike Lee’s Girl 6, a strange romantic thriller starring Teresa Randall as an aspiring actress struggling to make ends meet who takes a job as a phone sex operator. It’s not a great film by any means, but it is filled with just enough outrageous moments and a few standout performances by an ensemble that includes Jenifer Lewis, Naomi Campbell, Debi Mazar and Madonna. But there is one scene in the film that has carved itself so deeply into my memory, a brief but hysterical bit where the the main character struggles through a lesson with her very intense acting coach, played by Susan Batson, who is actually a legendary acting teacher with an impressive roster of A-list students like Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx, Oprah Winfrey and Nicole Kidman (who name drops Batson in her Golden Globe acceptance speech.) There is a low-quality clip of the full scene on YouTube and it deserves a watch even out of context, as every single line that she delivers is insane, funny, and iconic.  

SOAPDISH 

If you haven’t seen this 1991 ensemble comedy about a struggling television soap called The Sun Also Sets, then I invite you to do that, if only to see how easily it could be rebooted and cast with drag queens for an updated version called SOAPFISH that takes place on a reality TV drag competition show. I loved this movie so much growing up,  but unfortunately it is ruined by an absolutely horrifying transphobic plot twist reveal at the end, as it was sadly commonplace at the time to see violent and humiliating trans-panic plot points (like in The Crying Game, later spoofed in Ace Ventura.) So, if I had about $50 million lying around I would love to rewrite this wrong and cast a bunch of drag queens in the reboot. This of course begs the question: who would play her?

Celeste (Sally Field) - Jinkx Monsoon

Lori (Elisabeth Shue) - Blair St Clair

Rose (Whoopi Goldberg) - Bob The Drag Queen

Studio Head (Gary Marshall) - RuPaul

Montana (Cathy Moriarty) - Willam 

Ariel (Teri Hatcher) - Tatianna 

Betsy (Carrie Fisher) - Shangela

Tawny (Kathy Najimy) - Darienne Lake 

Leeza Gibbons - Trixie Mattel