AMERICAN FABULOUS at SF Main Library — Thursday, June 16th @ Noon
American Fabulous (1991) USA, English, 120 mins.
Director Reno Dakota will be at the screening for a Q & A session.
Winner of the 1991 San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival Audience Award for Best Video.
Adding to a hearty tradition of ascerbic gay folklore, American Fabulous is the very oral biography of Jeffrey Strouth, a wild, storytelling homosexual whose unglamorously picaresque life makes for compulsively addictive narratives that are unbelievable, hilarious, and movingly tragic. From a thronelike position in the backseat of a 1957 Cadillac, Strouth indulges in an autobiographical yakfest while the uninspiring landscape of Columbus, Ohio, provides a moving backdrop. He recounts a life so relentlessly melodramatic that, as he says, “nobody could make this up, and if they did, why would they want to?” Between cigarettes Strouth tells us about his first gay friend, the toothless “Myth Earl”; his psychopathic, abusive father; being kept, at 14, by a kindly 400-pound drag queen with a closet full of faux denim leisure suits; his passion for sex and drugs; and just about all the poop on the East Village club scene. Like a queeny, white-trash Kerouac, Strouth's most poignant moments take place on the road. To hear his epic of hitchhiking from Ohio to Hollywood with a mincing, Tallulah Bankhead groupie boyfriend, a tiny yapping dog, and a finch in a cage is classic Americana, alone worth entering this tragicomic universe. As indulgent as its subject, the tape's two-hour length may send you out screaming, but if you can stick with it—and I suggest you do—Strouth emerges as an admirably uncompromising "free spirit" who has more than earned his endearing bitchiness.
The screening will be introduced by series curator Jenni Olson and is co-presented by Wolfe. Please click thru for more info HERE.
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