![]() An NEA grant finally secured McDowell's film. Primary shooting of the film was done in two months in 1976, but it took eight years to finance and finish. Now everyone else wants to try it! Director Curt McDowell died of AIDS in June 1987. There's a terrific scene where the mother, emotionally inside herself, slides onto the kitchen floor, and in her print dress flows through a protracted orgasm it's at first hilarious, then embarrassing, then glorious! Although her wish was granted instantaneously (she relived her entire life, this time without moral stresses), the orgasm was a kind of residue from the experience. Pupik (`pupik' is Yiddish for belly button), who sings revealing jingles and eats things like Christmas candy wrapped in slices of olive loaf. After the `enlightenment,' Buster is stunned that his kooky, closed mother comes to his tavern. Blake is the marvelously pinched backbone of this body of decadence and Dionysian mania. `Sparkle's Tavern' is a lusty, bizarre, sexually-dripping marvel of the emotional dangers in a dysfunctional family crippled with secrets and lost passions. This info allows Jock to blackmail Buster and seize control of his tavern. When gang leader Jock `rapes' Sparkle in his apartment already full of `whiskey-laden, naked' bodies, his jealous, white-trash girlfriend, Brenda (comparable to actress Yvette Mimieux), spills the beans about Beth Sue (Sparkle) and her non-sensual, highly dramatic Mom. These siblings are terrified that their fragile, obsessive-compulsive mother will one day discover her children's secrets. Buster, the proprietor (and Sparkle's gay brother) runs around nervous all the time and occasionally helps out at the stalls: `All this is going to give me the runs,' he says at one point. In the Convenience Parlor in the back of the tavern are four more holes in the `Suck Stalls.' When the chorus girls and headliner Sparkle aren't singing and dancing, they're servicing the leather-cowboy patrons. `Imagine,' I said, `a family so lost that the mother is scrubbing the bathtub while her son takes his shower.' Welcome to Sparkle's Tavern, a bizarre little hole-in-the-wall. For the final scene in which she's decked out in an elaborate costume, George Kuchar got her to shed real tears by handing her a note which read, "There is shit on your shoe."īefore attending the screening in October, 1992, I'd been talking with friends about the mixed-up family dynamics of American values. Melinda McDowell didn't know how to cry on cue, so they shoved an onion under her pillow for the scene where she's lying on the bed. Feeney's cocaine habit was spiraling out of control, so Eaton got him to invest during post-production in an effort to divert money that he would've otherwise spent on drugs. Star Marion Eaton was dating executive producer Bill Feeney, who did not become involved with the film until after it was shot. A barren view of this same loft was featured in Loads (1985). The set were erected in the loft apartment where Curt McDowell and Melinda McDowell were living at the time. "Pupik" is a Yiddish word for "belly button." ![]() When he began developing the story, Curt McDowell asked sister Melinda McDowell what her main sexual fantasy was, and she responded that it was to be in a room filled with cowboys who all wanted her. The film is quasi-autobiographical for writer/director Curt McDowell and his sister/star Melinda McDowell. Star and primary financier Marion Eaton speculated that the sexually-charged short Loads (1985), which was made concurrent with Sparkle's Tavern, was born out of McDowell's frustration for being unable to include pornography in the film. Initially Curt McDowell had intended to incorporate hardcore sex scenes into the picture, but the Thomas brothers, who produced Thundercrack! (1975) had such difficulty marketing that film that they urged him not to. 'Curt McDowell' first announced his ideas for the movie to Marion Eaton and Melinda McDowell as they were riding home from the Filmex world premiere of Thundercrack! (1975). In 2014, the film was among those chosen for preservation by The National Film Preservation Foundation. Writer-director Curt McDowell didn't have the money to complete the film, which sat unfinished for several years, so Eaton helped him raise funds to get the film completed and a print struck. ![]() Marion Eaton, who plays the mother, was also a primary financial supporter of the film. Filming took place in the summer of 1976 in San Francisco.Īccording to star/friend George Kuchar, writer/director Curt McDowell penned the script in Yosemite National Park while high on LSD.
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