Drop Dead Gorgeous: The Prophecy Fulfilled

The most prescient film of 1999

©New Line Cinema/Courtesy Everett Collection

The year 1999 was a landmark year for American film, among the best ever. There was Election, Being John Malkovich, Sixth Sense, Magnolia and the Talented Mr. Ripley, and that’s just scraping the surface. It was also the year of Blair Witch Project, which changed horror, The Matrix, which changed science fiction, and Toy Story 2, the best entry in a series that changed animation.

The year 1999 also brought us a movie so ridiculous and stupid that it was immediately maligned and dismissed. Entertainment Weekly gave it a D. Roger Ebert gave it 2 stars. It was a money loser, earning a paltry $10 million on a $15 million budget. The film was tasteless, obnoxious, unpleasant, and utterly excessive. Far too absurd to be taken seriously.

The movie is Drop Dead Gorgeous: A mocumentary-style film about a beauty pageant so vicious and competitive that contestants are being killed off.

The contest’s frontrunner is played by Denise Richards, who sweetly spews bullshit she does not believe when performing for the judges and crowd, but is a cruel narcissist at all other times.

And it stars Kirstie Alley as Richards’ mother, who buys her teen daughter guns, and who is also the organizer of the pageant and every year gives the event a theme that is some variation on “Proud to be American”. She calls her ability to come up with these names a gift from god.

It is an utterly ridiculous caricature of small-town America, replete with all the gun-loving, bible-thumping, flag-waving cliches one would expect from a cheap, shallow exercise of punching down at a community where boys have two ways out — scholarship or prison — and girls have just one way out: win the beauty pageant.

The absurdities and cliches pile up like a heap of steaming nonsense. No wonder the filmgoers of 1999 didn’t buy it.

Consider the litany of grotesqueries…

This is a movie where community leaders twist the rules in plain sight, smiling as everyone watches — and no one can stop them, not even the cops.

Where vulnerable people are compelled to fight each other — killing and dying in the process — rather than rebelling against the powerful forces that divide them.

Where grown-ups in power openly perv on underage teens…and get away with it.

Where people gleefully mock the handicapped…and get away with it.

Where the richest man in town openly rips off his customers, uses racial slurs, and smacks his female employees’ asses…and gets away with it.

Where past winners do not live in glory, but rather eke out a sad existence in low level jobs at sausage factories after their 15 minutes is up.

Where boys joyfully manhandle their favourite cheerleader in public, bounce off each other, howling and yelling in explosions of testosterone and toxic masculinity…and are rewarded with scholarships.

Where people are excited when a TV crew from the show Cops shows up because the most important thing is being famous on screens, regardless of the reason.

Where a pastor, a religious leader, uses a service to crassly tell his parishioners that god wants them to buy American.

Where a major corporation with a beloved brand turns out to be run by thieves and, in the aftermath, the only real victims are its vulnerable clientele.

Where a group of people turn into an angry, violent mob, looting and trashing a place they claim to care about, just because they didn’t get what they want.

Where people would rather kill than admit they lost.

Where a contestant hugs and kisses a cherished, sacred symbol on stage in the tackiest of displays, not because they have any real feelings for it, but because they know this garish performance will get them the votes needed to win.

It’s a scene so stupid, so ridiculous…

Hey wait a minute…

Yuri Gripas/REUTERS

Suddenly, it’s all so clear.

Drop Dead Gorgeous wasn’t an exercise in misguided excess.

It was a warning.

In 1999, we did not imagine this would be the most accurate depiction of the near future that cinema had to offer. We were fretting about The Matrix, which may still happen, but we overlooked the intervening step.

We thought the worldview satirized in Drop Dead Gorgeous was fading into irrelevance, too benign to mock; we had no idea it was about to take over.

Give it 25 years. Narcissists win. Tastelessness prevails. Appalling behaviour is rewarded. Being famous for no reason at all is a high honour. The disparity between the super wealthy and everyone else is beyond calculation and comprehension. Kindness gets you nowhere.

Drop Dead Gorgeous, the most prescient movie of 1999, we owe you an apology.

Like all great prophets, you were unappreciated and misunderstood in your time.

You tried to warn us. We did not heed the call. The prophecy was delivered as clearly as possible. And now it is fulfilled.

Amen.