Dreamqueers

Rating: 5/10 (8 September 2007)

Dreamgirls is the Hollywood musical genre at it's best, although, in truth, I feel strange saying that since I could never sit through a Hollywood musical without feeling completely sick. At six years old, I watched Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and fainted midway through, tumbling off the arm of the sofa and onto the floor of the den  much to the consternation of my siblings and parents. I believe that at that instant, they knew I was gay. I mean, what other little boy faints because he is visually overwhelmed? It happened one other time when I was 15 years old on a school trip to Paris. Upon walking into the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, my lips became suddenly numb, my head felt as though it were detached from my shoulders, the room spun and I buckled. A handsome security guard, understanding perfectly that I was "un peu fragile", gallantly carried me outside, where the intelligently contrived visual disarray of Andre le Notre's English Gardens seemed to revive me. In the film Dreamgirls, Jennifer Hudson as the character Effie, is a force of nature. When she belted out "that" song, everyone in the movie theatre, including myself, "witnessed" as though we were attending a revival meeting - and rightly so. Ms. Hudson puts her own, unique stamp on it and let me say one thing for the record, the bitch can sing. She has got the Aretha thing happening for real, and must be cast as the lead in her life story when the time comes. She's a good actress too, unafraid of the camera, with a husky laugh and excellent comic timing. I'm telling you children, a star is born!
The movie and the Broadway play are however, major revisionist history as any Supremes buff knows. Ms. Ross was not nearly so kind to Florence Ballard, the Supreme who inspired the Effie character. Flo died in an SRO hotel in skanky ass Detroit City while living on welfare. Ms. Ross re-released many of the original Supremes songs under her own label, many years after she divorced Barry Gordy, and she never paid one penny in royalties to Florence or Cindy Birdsong, the other Supremes. She knew very well that they did not have the financial wherewithal to battle her in court. It stands as one of the most ruthless, heartless scandals in pop music history. Further, the crook had the unmitigated gall to attend Flo's funeral, uninvited, and was booed by the crowd of 3,000 mourners who lined Woodward Avenue, Detroit's main thoroughfare. Then, as if attending, uninvited, wasn't enough of a stab wound, "Call Me Miss Ross" walked straight up the center aisle and sat in the front pew of the church next to Flo's grieving family. Quelle Sangfroid!!! She is the Gordon Gecko of Motown.
The funeral services were presided over by Reverend C.L. Franklin, Aretha's father! Children, it was a pop culture, Afro-American, Kodak moment the likes of which we shall not see again.
Now, for the record, let me qualify this next paragraph by saying that I am not, and never have been a Broadway queen. Similar to Hollywood musicals, I despise the manipulative and maudlin machinations of the Great White Way, although, admittedly, many of the songs are hum-worthy, especially while vacuuming. I lived in New York for 20 years and saw, against my will or better judgment, exactly 3 Broadway plays:
1. The Fifth of July because I had a perverse desire to see the lead actor, Richard Thomas, who played John Boy Walton on the television show "The Waltons". Never mind that I actually watched The Waltons on television - that in itself is frighteningly suspect. I needed to be sure he was a real human being, not an alien visitor, as my highly credible older sister so often stated. His co-star was an actress named Swoozie Kurtz, and I thought the name was so ridiculously pretentious that I had to put a face to it. The play was abysmal and I am not yet convinced of John Boy's human credentials.
2. 42nd Street because I was volunteering for an AIDS organization who were given a boatload of free, seat filler tickets to pass out liberally. That tawdry spectacle gave me a horrific migraine that persists to this day. I left at intermission.
3. Dreamgirls, because my friend Ross Laycock insisted on taking me and paid for the ticket, all the while raving about the voice of a newcomer named Jennifer Holliday. Again, I was mostly bored except for those few brief moments.
Broadway is visual fast food. It provides a teaser of stimulation to briefly satisfy an intangible, but very profound need, let's call it hunger or loneliness or longing or boredom. It serves a dollop of emotional nutrition - just enough to get you through two hours of razzmatazz, hustled out of the theatre and into a cab. As the cab speeds downtown, you snap to and are left wondering what the hell happened to your IQ level, your hearing, your wallet and your waistline. Only five days later, as you vacuum and find yourself humming a vaguely familiar, but indelible ditty do you break out into a cold sweat and realize that you've been bamboozled.
When I witnessed the original Jennifer (Holliday) play Effie on Broadway (1982) and sing "And I am telling you, I'm not going", she was crying and sweating so hard I thought she was going to have a heart attack. Kind of frightening, but that, to my dismay, is the image looped forever in my mind. I remember thinking (all 21 years of me), that my ears could not really be hearing what I thought I was hearing, because there was no way that any human being could have such vocal power. I still don't believe she was real. I think of her like Catholicism. The only things plausible are the miracles.