Variety is a 1983 American
independent film directed by
Bette Gordon
Bette Gordon (born June 22, 1950) is an American filmmaker and professor at Columbia University School of the Arts. She is best known for her films ''Variety'' (1983) and '' Handsome Harry'' (2009) both of which received critical acclaim in Nort ...
with a screenplay by
Kathy Acker
Kathy Acker (April 18, 1947 isputed– November 30, 1997) was an American experimental novelist, playwright, essayist, and postmodernist writer, known for her idiosyncratic and transgressive writing that dealt with themes such as childhood trau ...
from a story by Gordon. The film stars
Sandy McLeod
Sandy McLeod is an independent filmmaker. She is a member of the Directors Guild of America and has been nominated for an Academy Award.
Career
Born in Pontiac, Michigan, she was raised in Alabama. In her late teens, she moved to New York City a ...
,
Will Patton
William Rankin Patton (born June 14, 1954) is an American actor and audiobook narrator. He starred as Colonel Dan Weaver in the TNT science fiction series '' Falling Skies''. He also appeared in the films ''Remember the Titans'', ''Armageddon'' ...
, and Richard M. Davidson. The film follows a young woman who takes a job at a New York City pornographic theater and becomes increasingly obsessed with a wealthy patron who may or may not be involved with the mafia.
Plot
Christine, an aspiring author, desperately needs a job. Her friend Nan gives her a tip that the Variety, a pornographic theater in
Times Square
Times Square is a major commercial intersection, tourist destination, entertainment hub, and neighborhood in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It is formed by the junction of Broadway, Seventh Avenue, and 42nd Street. Together with adjacent ...
, is looking for a ticket-taker. Christine takes the job and becomes interested in the movies that are playing. Her boyfriend Mark, an investigative journalist, is concerned and confused about her interest in her new job. At the Variety, Christine meets a rich patron, Louie, with whom she spontaneously decides to go on a date. After he abruptly leaves, she follows him in a cab, watching while he meets a mysterious man. Later, she shares her suspicions with Mark that he is involved in some kind of mafia operation. Increasingly obsessed, she follows Louie to
Asbury Park
Asbury Park () is a beachfront city located on the Jersey Shore in Monmouth County in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It is part of the New York metropolitan area.
As of the 2020 U.S. census, the city's population was 15,188 , New Jersey, sneaking into his hotel room, from which she steals a pornographic magazine. Her obsession with Louie and her own awakened sexuality ultimately leads her to call and threaten him unless he meets her. The final, mysterious shot is of an empty intersection at Fulton and South Street, where Christine has told Louie to meet her.
Cast
*
Sandy McLeod
Sandy McLeod is an independent filmmaker. She is a member of the Directors Guild of America and has been nominated for an Academy Award.
Career
Born in Pontiac, Michigan, she was raised in Alabama. In her late teens, she moved to New York City a ...
as Christine
*
Will Patton
William Rankin Patton (born June 14, 1954) is an American actor and audiobook narrator. He starred as Colonel Dan Weaver in the TNT science fiction series '' Falling Skies''. He also appeared in the films ''Remember the Titans'', ''Armageddon'' ...
as Mark
* Richard M. Davidson as Louie
*
Luis Guzmán
Luis Guzmán (born August 28, 1956) is a Puerto Rican actor. His career spans over 40 years and includes a number of films and television series. He has appeared in the Paul Thomas Anderson films ''Boogie Nights'' (1997), ''Magnolia'' (1999) an ...
as Jose
*
Nan Goldin
Nancy Goldin (born September 12, 1953) is an American photographer and activist. Her work often explores LGBT subcultures, moments of intimacy, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and the opioid epidemic. Her most notable work is '' The Ballad of Sexual Depe ...
as Nan
*
Mark Boone Junior
Mark Boone Junior (born Mark Heidrich; March 17, 1955) is an American character actor, best known for his TV roles as Bobby Munson in ''Sons of Anarchy'' (2008–14) and Patrick "Pat" Brown in '' Last Man On Earth'', and film roles in Christopher ...
as Business Manager/Customer
*
Spalding Gray as Obscene Phone Caller
Production
After meeting Kathy Acker, Bette Gordon asked her to collaborate on a screenplay for a new film. Gordon also collaborated with the burgeoning New York film scene: "The film is a sort of Who’s Who of downtown street cred: music by
John Lurie
John Lurie (born December 14, 1952) is an American musician, painter, actor, director, and producer. He co-founded the Lounge Lizards jazz ensemble; has acted in 19 films, including ''Stranger than Paradise'' and '' Down by Law''; has composed ...
, cinematography by frequent
Jarmusch collaborator
Tom de Cillo, script by former
sex worker
A sex worker is a person who provides sex work, either on a regular or occasional basis. The term is used in reference to those who work in all areas of the sex industry.Oxford English Dictionary, "sex worker"
According to one view, sex work i ...
and
Pushcart Prize-winning feminist novelist
Kathy Acker
Kathy Acker (April 18, 1947 isputed– November 30, 1997) was an American experimental novelist, playwright, essayist, and postmodernist writer, known for her idiosyncratic and transgressive writing that dealt with themes such as childhood trau ...
, and roles played by
Spalding Gray,
Luis Guzmán
Luis Guzmán (born August 28, 1956) is a Puerto Rican actor. His career spans over 40 years and includes a number of films and television series. He has appeared in the Paul Thomas Anderson films ''Boogie Nights'' (1997), ''Magnolia'' (1999) an ...
,
Mark Boone Junior
Mark Boone Junior (born Mark Heidrich; March 17, 1955) is an American character actor, best known for his TV roles as Bobby Munson in ''Sons of Anarchy'' (2008–14) and Patrick "Pat" Brown in '' Last Man On Earth'', and film roles in Christopher ...
and photographer
Nan Goldin
Nancy Goldin (born September 12, 1953) is an American photographer and activist. Her work often explores LGBT subcultures, moments of intimacy, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and the opioid epidemic. Her most notable work is '' The Ballad of Sexual Depe ...
(who also took production stills)." Producer
Christine Vachon
Christine Vachon (; born November 21, 1962) is an American film producer active in the American independent film sector.
Christine Vachon produced Todd Haynes' first feature, ''Poison'', which was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the 1991 Sundan ...
, who would become a pioneer in the
New Queer Cinema
"New Queer Cinema" is a term first coined by the academic B. Ruby Rich in ''Sight & Sound'' magazine in 1992 to define and describe a movement in queer-themed independent filmmaking in the early 1990s.
It is also referred to as the "Queer New W ...
movement, also worked on the film as a production assistant.
The film was produced with an initial $80,000 budget, provided by ZDF West German Television, Great Britain's
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service ...
, and the
New York State Council.
Release
''Variety'' premiered at the 1983
Toronto Film Festival
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
and later screened at the
1984 Cannes Film Festival
The 37th Cannes Film Festival was held from 11 to 23 May 1984. The Palme d'Or went to the '' Paris, Texas'' by Wim Wenders.
The festival opened with '' Fort Saganne'', directed by Alain Corneau and closed with '' The Bounty'', directed by Roger ...
. It was given a small theatrical release in the US on March 8, 1985.
Reception
Contemporary reviews were mixed; while ''
New Statesman
The ''New Statesman'' is a British Political magazine, political and cultural magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first connected with Sidney Webb, Sidney and Beatrice ...
''s John Coleman disliked Acker's "dreadful dialogue,"
Amy Taubin
Amy Taubin (born September 10, 1938) is an American author and film critic. She is a contributing editor for two prominent film magazines, the British ''Sight & Sound'' and the American ''Film Comment''. She has also written regularly for ''The V ...
championed the film in ''
The Village Voice
''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newspaper, alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf (publisher), Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, th ...
'', describing how "the editing alternates conventional Hollywood action cutting with sequences that forcibly distance the viewer."
Janet Maslin
Janet R. Maslin (born August 12, 1949) is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for ''The New York Times''. She served as a ''Times'' film critic from 1977 to 1999 and as a book critic from 2000 to 2015. In 2000 Maslin ...
wrote in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' that the film had a "painfully underwritten screenplay (by Kathy Acker) and a static, uncommunicative directorial style." Critics compared ''Variety'' to Hitchcock films like ''
Rear Window
''Rear Window'' is a 1954 American mystery thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and written by John Michael Hayes based on Cornell Woolrich's 1942 short story "It Had to Be Murder". Originally released by Paramount Pictures, the film st ...
'' and ''
Vertigo
Vertigo is a condition where a person has the sensation of movement or of surrounding objects moving when they are not. Often it feels like a spinning or swaying movement. This may be associated with nausea, vomiting, sweating, or difficulties w ...
''.
The film was released in a particularly important time for feminist filmmakers, and Gordon was both criticized and praised for making a film about pornography. Gordon presented at the watershed
1982 Barnard Conference on Sexuality with
Kaja Silverman
Kaja Silverman (born September 16, 1947) is an American art historian and critical theorist. She is currently the Katherine and Keith L. Sachs Professor of Art History at the University of Pennsylvania. She received B.A. and M.A. degrees in Englis ...
, arguing that since cinema itself had recently been theorized as
voyeuristic
Voyeurism is the sexual interest in or practice of watching other people engaged in intimate behaviors, such as undressing, sexual activity, or other actions of a private nature.
The term comes from the French ''voir'' which means "to see". A ...
, then pornographic films have really become "extreme examples of mainstream Hollywood cinema,
ince bothemploy the voyeuristic mode to exploit women as objects of male fantasy and male desire." In 2011, Amy Taubin wrote in
Artforum
''Artforum'' is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ x 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notabl ...
, "Gordon realized that the problem of the objectification of women in film has less to do with the display of the body than with who has control of the narrative—of the desire that motors it and of how that desire is resolved, or left as an opening into the unknown. She also understood, psychologically and pragmatically, that for a woman to become a filmmaker or to simply enjoy movies, she had to take pleasure in her own voyeurism."
Home media
In September 2020, ''Variety'' received a
2K restoration on Blu-ray from
Kino Lorber
Kino Lorber is an international film distribution company based in New York City. Founded in 1977, it was originally known as Kino International until it was acquired by and merged into Lorber HT Digital in 2009. It specializes in art house films, ...
.
The release includes making-of featurettes and Gordon’s 1981
short film
A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...
''Anybody’s Woman.''
References
External links
*
*
*{{Rotten Tomatoes, variety_1983
1983 films
1983 drama films
1983 independent films
1980s feminist films
American independent films
Films about pornography
Films set in New York City
Films shot in New York City
1980s English-language films
Films directed by Bette Gordon
1980s American films