Girl 6

Plot synopsis:
In Manhattan, New York City, Judy, also known as Girl 6 (Theresa Randle), is at a very awkward audition with Quentin Tarantino. Judy seems to grin and bear it. Tarantino reveals that the film Judy is auditioning for is "the greatest romantic, African-American film ever made. Directed by me, of course." However, Judy grows suspicious of the audition, when "Q.T.", tells her that "Wesley, Denzel, and Fishburne" are signed up to play supporting roles. Judy seems to keep her cool until it is requested that she remove her blouse so "Q.T." and his assistant can see her breasts. She reluctantly complies, but not for long. She walks out on the audition.Her agent (John Turturro) is furious. Having worked hard to get Judy her audition with such a prestigious director, he quickly and angrily drops her from his roster of clients. Her melodramatic acting coach (Susan Batson) is also extremely displeased. When Judy tells her why she did not go through with the audition, the acting coach still does not see any reason why Judy should have walked out. This, topped with the fact that Judy has not paid her rent in a very long while, forces her to drop Judy from her roster of clients as well.Now unable to secure acting work, Judy must find a way to make ends meet. She tries a number of jobs: passing out fliers, waiting tables at a club, etc. At one point she agrees to be an extra on a movie set. However, it is cold and unpleasant, as is the director. Judy is sick with a cold, and still trying to secure work. While reading a newspaper, she sees an ad for a "friendly phone line", as well as one with the headline, "mo money, mo money, mo money". She circles them both.This brings her to a meeting at a phone sex office. She meets the boss (Jenifer Lewis), who seems to be an assertive but friendly woman. The two click and the "audition" goes over just fine. The boss, now known as Lil, says that although she can't promise anything, she'll put in the good word for Judy. Judy also goes to another meeting, but the boss there wants her to do more visually related work, so she declines. Then, she attends another meeting, at a strip club/phone sex line with a relaxed boss (Madonna). She would take the job, but the content allowed for on-line discussion is a bit too heavy for her taste. She decides to stick to her original application with Lil.We now look in on Judy's dissolved relationship with her kleptomaniac ex-husband (Isaiah Washington), as well as her relationship with her baseball-memorabilia obsessed best friend, Jimmy (Spike Lee). Jimmy is reliant on his collection for money, but until it accumulates enough age to be worth money, he gets his rent money from Judy.Throughout the film, the phone sex line, having been secured at Lil's company, begins to take its mental toll on the newly christened Girl 6. She trusts her clients too much at times, and is therefore tricked repeatedly. She even agrees to meet one of her callers at one point, but he thinks she is a white girl, and when he walks toward her, he sees she is African American, so he just walks by her as though he were someone else, leaving her on a bench alone. It is visible to everybody, especially Lil and Jimmy, that Judy is having a breakdown. The movie culminates in a dark sequence in which she enters a snuff fantasy with a caller (Michael Imperioli). It becomes serious when she discovers the caller knows where she lives. Running upstairs for shelter with Jimmy, she decides that it is time to leave the phone sex career behind and get her acting career in motion. Finally reconciling with her ex, she decides to move to Los Angeles.Oddly enough once in California, Judy attends another audition in which she experiences the same problem as the one with "Q.T." She again walks out. However, it is clear that Girl 6 has reclaimed her dignity, and will find work sooner or later. On that hopefull note, the film comes to a close.

Tags: pornographic

Review:
They (even the positive ones) completely enforce exactly what this movie is actively trying to point out about our society.Several people noted that the narrative was weak or nonexistent, that the film didn't "go" anywhere, and/or that there was too much extra "stuff" that distracted the story from the "real" plot line.
I'm here to tell you that this is the whole point of Spike Lee's brilliant Girl 6.
It does exactly what so many people were disappointed not to see, by subverting our expectations and implicitely pointing out that this is NOT a movie you can just "fall into" and become a passive spectator, that it actively engages the audience and breaks down our concepts of the master narrative by giving us an ending we did not expect.Girl 6 is not a movie about phone sex, as so many of you seem to believe.
She can hardly get a job and eventually resorts to using her talents to the most basic and competently lucrative degree as a phone sex girl.The film held my interest to a great degree, but only because of the visceral experience of watching it.
In "Girl 6", based on a screen play by the talented Suzan-Lori Parks, a playwright herself, the director directs his satire to the porn industry.
In fact, Spike Lee shows us how women, especially young ones, are vulnerable to fall pray to these unscrupulous operators just to get into the movie business.
One thing is evident: Spike Lee is a director who gets magnificent performances out of the stars of his films.
In fact, this young actress turns a great performance under Mr. Lee's direction.
Spike Lee himself is the next door neighbor, but he takes a back seat in order to leave the front to the amazing Theresa Randle..
Let us start with the story - an Afro-American actress refuses to expose her body for screen tests, finds herself unemployed, and the lucrative job she finds is in the phone sex industry.
I have always like Spike Lee's movie due to the intelligence he puts in the plot and in the dialogues.
I liked (very beautiful) Theresa Radle performance and Spike Lee himself is also good.
This movie is by far one of my favourite Spike Lee movies, along with "She's Gotta Have It"  It follows the trials and tribulations of an actress trying to make it in New York City.
At 106 minutes, which should be average length for any movie to aspire to have, it's a few minutes too long and although one might lose the visual metaphor of the drop down the elevator, whatever it really means, the whole sub-plot involving the little girl falling down and breaking her head is unnecessary throughout and brings the film to a halt every time the 'newstory' segment pops up.
And every so often, though not frequently, a technical touch or a performance might be a little too over the top, too flamboyant even for the Spike Lee Joint standard.But aside from this, Girl 6 is fun and enjoyable "fluff" for Spike Lee, which means that it's still risqué and poignant and sharp-tongued (more than usual here and in more ways than one, some pun intended), and loaded with hit or miss R&B songs (this time by Prince, not quite as cool as Batman tracks but close).
It's about an aspiring actress (Theresa Randle) who hits roadblocks in her career when she gets told to take her top off for a "TOP Hollywood DIRECTOR" called "Q.T.", and played not too embarrassingly by the man himself.
After some crappy gigs she goes for something that involves sex but only with the vocal chords, and indeed involves a kind of on-the-spot improvisation: phone-sex operator.From here the plot kind of takes off, however episodically and sometimes very loose in structure (there's some connection with one phone sex guy, Bob, whom Girl 6 crushes on and gets practically dumped, and a "Scary Caller" who treats her like dirt), and mostly involves us seeing what the person on the other line might look like in grainy video, and her own fantasies of movie-stardom from her favorites.
While some of the visual flourishes we all like from a Lee Joint are present, and maybe too typical, it's fun to see Lee work through talky material, and all the actors have fun with their roles; especially Randle, who gives it her all in a seemingly breakthrough serio-comic turn and who gets to dress up and go for broke in many moments.Bottom line, it's not as bad as you've heard or seen it rated on this site, but it's also somewhat of a trifle in the Lee cannon, albeit within its own limitations almost (though not quite) the level of romantic-comedy we might expect from the director of She's Gotta Have It. Hey, it's better than She Hate Me, at the least, and somewhat less incoherent..
place your rating here.Theresa Randle deserved far, far better than this movie as directed by Spike Lee. Ms.
Randle plays an aspiring actress mercilessly beaten down in the beginning by neurotic acting coaches, lecherous s.o.b. directors (except for Spike, of course), abusive production assistants telling her she can't go to the bathroom, etc., all laid on in hystrionic overdrive by Mr. Lee.
I *don't* believe this was an intentional point by Spike Lee.)     Randle is presented by walking out as a woman of character and integrity.
We learn what the horny male perception would like the phone sex industry to be, which is especially bizarre considering this movie was written by a woman.
Girl 6 takes to phone sex like a fish to water, getting more turned on than her clients as the movie proceeds.
Was the "6" in the title referring to the girl's I.Q., or to Spike's, for expecting us to believe this happens, or that phone workers get turned on while talking to anonymous, masturbating schmucks?
And that Theresa Randle, a first-rate actress, has been exploited by a man who claims to understand the word more than any other director around, but understands women about as deeply as the clients who call Girl 6.
Upon the first viewing of "Girl 6", one would think that this movie is simply about an out-of-work actress who finds another job where she can "act" as a phone sex operator and "get paid lots of cash".However, upon repeated viewings, you might ask yourself questions like: "Why does Judy/Girl 6 (played by the beautiful Theresa Randle) care about the little girl falling down the elevator shaft?" OR "Why does the film go from a high to a low?" For this reason, I look at this script as one of the most spiritually philosophical ones that Spike has put to film.
Thumbs up to Suzan-Lori Parks on the screenplay, to the director of cinematography, to the Prince soundtrack, and to Mr. Lee on the direction for creating the perfect hybrid for this film..
A good performance by Theresa Randle carries the movie.
Prince wrote some of the songs and in particular there is a really nice blues vocal in the scene where Girl 6 waits to meet 'Bob Regular'.Complaint:  I wish Spike Lee would stay out of his own movies - he can't act.
Theresa Randle plays a failed African-American actress in New York City who turns to phone sex for a career change.
This Spike Lee effort, which he produced and directed, from a maladroit script by Suzan-Lori Parks, opens with an excruciating scene which typifies the rest: Randle, auditioning for a movie role for a questionable filmmaker (Quentin Tarantino in a cameo), is asked to remove her blouse; she hesitates, but eventually strips under pressure.
If the sequence is supposed to be funny, the punchline is sadly missing--but, as long as we get to see the woman's breasts, I guess Lee figures he's making his point.
Now out of the work, scoring the odd extra audition, Randle finds a new way to tap into her talents, as a phone sex operator.
The stalker who played De Caprio's dying friend in The Basketball Diaries, a year earlier, sent some chills through me when getting to the crux his threats, on poor suffering Randle, where this change of mood to the film was good.
Burning bridges with her agent and acting coach and desperate for work she takes a job as a phone sex operator.
Sloppy, disjointed and in a constant state of funk Girl 6 is filled with lackluster performances and insipid "goofs" by Lee such as a smoldering cameo by Madonna reminding us just how bad an actress and self parody she is along with an obnoxious turn by Tarantino as himself.
I can totally understand why so many people just hated this film - god knows it does itself no favours - however fans of Spike Lee should find much to keep them watching as it is very much the director's film.
The film leaps all over different styles including the Jeffersons, Foxy Brown and many others; in a way I suppose this is meant to be 6 losing touch with herself on the way to finding inner confidence and peace but it doesn't really work (and the `falling down a dark lift shaft' subplot/snippets are too heavy handed on top of this).Lee's direction is the first reason for watching this film, but equally worthwhile is Randle (and not for the reason rather juvenilely suggested by many reviews here).
Randle is a great actress and she shows it here - it is rather sad that she has actually done quite few films and too many of them have her in small supporting roles (Bad Boys I & II, Spawn, Space Jam, Malcolm X and so on).
She is asked to do a lot and, despite lacking audience involvement in 6, her performance shows the range that she has - she should really be given better roles on the basis of this film, it's just a shame there aren't really that mean good roles for actresses approaching their 40's (never mind black actresses approaching their 40's!).
The callers include people like Lee-regular Byrd, Peter Berg, Imperioli and Richard Belzer - they do what is asked of them and it isn't their fault the film doesn't work.
If you are a fan of Spike Lee then you will enjoy the style of the film and the fact that his behind-the-camera skills are there for all to see.
Aside from this the only other reason to really watch it is a great performance by Randle that will almost act like an audition tape for her - no character but plenty of range and ability!
Spike takes on phone sex.
Spike Lee directed this look at one woman's attempt to improve her life by working in the phone-sex trade.
Teresa Randle (Bad Boys, Bad Boys II) plays a struggling actress that takes a phone sex job and finds that she is good at it.
Now, how can someone who got upset taking off her top for Quentin Tarantino want to do phone sex?
I'm having a hard time figuring out what Director Spike Lee is trying to accomplish.
Maybe that is why it didn't last very long in the theaters as no one else can figure out what he was trying to do either.The film featured others like Isaiah Washington (Grey's Anatomy), Michael Imperioli (The Sopranos), Richard Belzer (Law & Order SVU) Madonna, and Naomi Campbell (New York Sanitation Department).Of course, any movie that features Halle Berry, even briefly, is worth a look.
I am a huge Spike Lee fan and like any huge fan I enjoy everything he makes.
We meet an actress (Theresa Randle) in the middle of an audition being conducted by Quentin Tarantino.
Complete with fantasy scenes, Prince music, cameos and Spikes trademark shots Girl 6 was an OK comedy at best.
Once again, I've watched a Spike Lee movie and wasn't very impressed.
So what does principal actress do after refusing to take off her top-she gets a job acting about having virtual sex!
This is evidenced about halfway through film when boss tells all the phone sex women to be white unless asked to be otherwise.
He simply takes over the screen and shows why he is one of the top 5 actors today.3 - spike lee.
We follow Girl 6 from the bubbly slimy fantasy of her phone conversations to the stark neon landscape that is her real life, eventually the boundary between them blurs and our character has to make a stand to sort it out.Although the film ends on a light and disappointingly frothy note, the complexities of sexuality, sex-work, and being a black woman are dealt with in a startling and oftentimes revelatory fashion.
Theresa Randle was the only reason why this film actually got a six from me...after all she was "Girl 6"   : ).
(SOME SPOILERS) With it's release in Spring of 96, "Girl 6" was called "the worst Spike Lee film".
"Girl 6" is about Judy (Theresa Randle), a struggling black actress looking for work.
Like most of Spike's films, there are the multiple stories (her ex-husband wanting her back, the sick guy that keeps calling her, the little girl Angela, Judy's friendship with Jimmy, her fantasies and Bob) The film did have it's flaws.
A plus for the film was the soundtrack by Prince and his related bands (Vanity 6's Nasty Girl was so perfect for this movie) This cast was a who's who of celebrities (Maddonna, Naomi Campbell, Quentin Tarantino, Ron Silver and a Halle Berry cameo) Michael Imperioli was sadistic and creepy as the crazed "Scary Caller #30".
I was talking to a friend not long before I saw 'Girl 6' about how interesting it would be to see a documentary about the women who take a job doing phone sex.
Then I heard that Spike Lee was directing a film about that very subject – even better.
Having seen Lee's film, I'm still waiting for that documentary.Spike Lee's 'Girl 6' is an overstuffed movie about a woman who takes such a profession but uses it as a clothesline on which to hang a lot of unnecessary and puzzling subplots.
In need of an income she takes a job working for a phone sex operation.
I was puzzled by this scene because an opening scene showed a director at an audition demanding to see her topless and she seemed humiliated – now she is having phone sex and seemingly enjoying every minute of it.The problem with 'Girl 6' is it's point of view.
There is the good-hearted neighbor played by Lee himself.All of this stuff in unnecessary and should have been trimmed to make for a much simpler movie.
Phone sex has often fallen short of my high expectations in carnal satisfaction because they lack the lustful passion that drives the performance given by the goddess Girl 6 in the Spike Lee joint "GIRL 6".
If there ever was a fantasy woman of lust I believe Spike Lee found her in the gorgeous lust temptress Miss Theresa Randle.This film, ignited by Miss Randle lustful performance, showed the world how much power these true temptresses can have over their clients when they are gifted with the steamy ability of Girl 6.
I went into this movie not knowing to much about it although I did know it was a Spike Lee picture.
And after seeing it I must say I thought it above average though I'm not surprised a lot of people may not like this as it is definitely not a mainstream flick.Girl 6 seems to be a very polarizing film in that people seem to either absolutely love it or despise it.
I feel neither way, I liked it a lot and could see maybe loving it after I see it again a few times but as it stands now I see it as an interesting, unusual film that takes on a little bit of a taboo subject and features some great performances but that still has some flaws.I'm not going to get into reviewing the plot but will say that Theresa Randle should really be a household name as she was excellent.
I will also say I disagree with a lot of critics about the fact that this film almost makes the phone sex industry look to glamorous.
Quite the contrary, this film did with phone sex what "Boogie Nights" did with the porn industry and that is show the inner workings in a detached, dispassion rather monotonous way.
I think the film's to be commended for that.Then there's the question of the movie maybe being unrealistic in Girl Six's gradual addiction to the job.
In terms of that, it would be difficult for me to comment as I have no idea whether phone sex workers ever do in fact become addicted, but I will say that there isn't much in life that someone, somewhere, probably has not had an addiction to and I think Theresa Randle does a wonderful job in painting a poignantly sad picture of the loneliness that envelops Judy/Girl 6 so whether or not this plot line maybe realistic, strong character development helps with that.
We have parallel story lines that go exactly like this : a black girl who works in the sex phone business; making a living during her suspended career as respectful actress wanna-be, her talks with a guy who loves her, a good neighbor, her fantasies about herself as one of the black icons in the history of Hollywood, her dealing with her customers as horny lonely mostly sad callers, one of them is a deranged, and an accident of a black poor child who's trying to survive.
But with that script forget it !The effort done by (Theresa Randle) to make her character believable and effective, the movie's only positive thing, was wholly wasted among the cold dealing with the material.