Lori Williams in Russ Meyer's Faster Pussycat...Kill! Kill!, 1965
A couple of my esteemed colleagues have expressed slightly guarded enthusiasm over the extremely shaky prospect that Quentin Tarantino will direct Britney Spears in a remake of Russ Meyer's 1965 exploitation classic Faster Pussycat...Kill! Kill!, but I can't say it pushes any of my buttons, personal or otherwise. Of course the argument that, for what it's worth, Pussycat got made but good the first time isn't gonna cut any ice if in fact a remake is in the cards. But really...Britney Spears. Who cares. Her cultural currency—which is entirely distinct, as I'm sure you know, from tabloid currency—is as low as it's ever been. She hasn't had a zeitgeist-nailing hit since "Toxic," four years ago, and it seems highly unlikely that she'll be able to ever pull another such piece of out of wherever she used to pull them from, or anywhere else. And indeed, her aforementioned tabloid currency is such that there aren't many followers of her exploits who would be inordinately surprised if she signed on to be a Vivid contract girl at this point. Now, if she'd opted to make a move along such lines instead of doing that insipid pile Crossroads back in 2002, that might have been something. But now? Shrug.
I know, I know—Tarantino revived John Travolta's career, and he could conceivably do the same for Brit-Brit's. Um, no. Travolta's turn in Pulp Fiction demonstrated that he was still a better-than-capable performer who remained quite able to turn on the cool. But, you know, he already had movie-performer chops, and boy, does Spears not. Whatever credibility she has is as a pop icon rather than a performer, and that will always be that. Having Tarantino hand-hold her through a turn as a loudmouth psycho drag-racing lesbian stripper will do exactly what for her at this point?
One is slightly reminded of that old Onion story, "Marilyn Manson Now Going Door-To-Door Trying To Shock People."
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