Dirty Girl (2010)
Little Birds (2011)
The Three Musketeers (2011)
Killer Joe (2011)
Small Apartments (2012)
Jack and Diane (2012)
Despite a substantial effort to integrate gays into mainstream America, anti-homosexual violence continues for those who don’t conform to this country’s far too conservative mores. Though it’s hard to believe that it continues, bullying still spurs teen suicides in a country charged by Tea Party extremism.
So director Abe Sylvia used his experiences as a gay kid growing up in 1980s Norman, Oklahoma to fashion his debut feature, Dirty Girl, a comedic search for identity and freedom, to illustrate the effect of such abuse and how it stimulates a will to escape.
As the “dirty girl” of Norman High, Danielle (Juno Temple) sluts her way through school but her misbehavior gets her demoted to Special Ed. There she joins up with abused closet-case Clarke (Jeremy Dozier) and they go on an illicit road trip to flee the repression and discover themselves through their unexpected friendship.
After touring the festival circuit (including 2010′s Toronto International Film Festival), Dirty Girl has been released this month. The following Q&A is culled from a roundtable with the two leads.
Q: Much has changed since 1987; what did you learn about that period?
JT: We had to do a lot of research on the music and stuff.
JD: I really hadn’t listened to Melissa Manchester but she’s this icon for Clarke. So I did a lot of research and watched her on YouTube. I found it fascinating how powerful she was on stage.
I also did research on the time period, the clothes and everything, which was a lot of fun. It was a time when being gay wasn’t really talked about so I think that’s changed a lot since then, thank God.
We’d walk onto set and everything was decked out in ’80s gear. It was so much fun, this different world.
JT: It was like walking into a new world in a puff of smoke.
