Drop Dead Gorgeous (film)

Drop Dead Gorgeous
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Michael Patrick Jann
Written by	Lona Williams
Produced by	Lona Williams
Starring	Kirstie Alley Ellen Barkin Kirsten Dunst Denise Richards Allison Janney Sam McMurray Mindy Sterling Brittany Murphy Amy Adams
Cinematography	Michael Spiller
Edited by	Janice Hampton
Music by	Mark Mothersbaugh
Distributed by	New Line Cinema
Release date	July 23, 1999 (1999-07-23)
Running time	98 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$15 million
Box office	$10,571,408

Drop Dead Gorgeous is a 1999 American dark comedy film directed by Michael Patrick Jann and starring Kirstie Alley, Ellen Barkin, Denise Richards, Brittany Murphy and Kirsten Dunst. Shot in a mockumentary format, it follows the contestants in a beauty pageant called the Sarah Rose Cosmetics Mount Rose American Teen Princess Pageant, held in the small town of Mount Rose, Minnesota. The film is also notable for featuring the debut of the Academy Award nominated actress Amy Adams.

Plot

Many Mount Rose girls compete in the pageant simply to have something to do while others seek to win the scholarship money to leave the small dead end town of Mount Rose. One of such contestants, Amber Atkins, does it in order to be more like her idol, Diane Sawyer. Rebecca Leeman is the daughter of the richest man in town, and her mother, Gladys Leeman, is not only the head of the pageant organizing committee but also a former winner. Various business connections between the Leeman Furniture Store and the judges of the pageant (one is an employee) prompt many whispers around town that the contest will be fixed.

Many odd things start happening to people in the run up to the pageant; one of the contestants, Tammy Curry, is blown up while riding a tractor. Brett Clemmens, Rebecca's love interest (who is more interested in Amber), is shot dead in a "hunting accident." Fearing for her life, Amber decides to pull out of the pageant after her mother, Annette, is injured during an explosion at their mobile home. After a pep-talk with a family friend, Loretta, and a heart-to-heart with her mother, Amber reconsiders. At the dress rehearsal, fellow contestant Jenelle Betz (originally contestant number 8), swaps positions with Amber (originally contestant number 1). When Jenelle walks on stage at the beginning of rehearsal to perform her talent piece, a stage light falls and hits her in the head, knocking her unconscious, later revealing to have rendered her deaf.

At the pageant (despite her tap costume going missing), Amber performs her tap-dance number to a standing ovation, while Rebecca Leeman sings (appallingly badly) and dances with a Jesus doll on a rolling crucifix. Though Amber gains an outfit that replaced the one that mysteriously disappeared, she only ends up first runner up to Rebecca. However, during the victory parade the next day, Rebecca Leeman, in an elaborate swan float designed by her mother and constructed by her father's Mexican workers, is incinerated in a freak accident caused by Gladys lighting the fireworks at the base of the swan. Standing by the burnt-out float, the grief-stricken Gladys admits to killing Tammy and to being responsible for all the attempts against Amber in the run-up to the pageant in order to get rid of all of Rebecca's competition. She is then arrested. At Rebecca's funeral, Amber is crowned Mount Rose's American Teen Princess and goes on to the state competition.

At the State Competition, Amber wins the Minnesota American Teen Princess title by default after all the other contestants fall ill with seafood-related food poisoning. (Amber's mom taught her not to eat anything that carries its house with it because "who knows when's the last time they cleaned it.") It turns out later that Gladys was behind the food poisoning incident after asking favors from her cellmates who have friends on the outside. As the winner, Amber gets an all-expenses-paid trip to Lincoln, Alabama, where the national Sarah Rose American Teen Princess Pageant is held. Upon arrival, Amber and the other contestants find that the company has been shut down by the IRS for tax evasion. While the distraught girls wreck the forecourt of the shuttered Sarah Rose Cosmetics building, Amber simply sighs and gets back onto the girls' chartered bus.

At the end of the film, after being runner up in a prison beauty pageant, Gladys escapes from prison and takes a sniper position on top of a local supermarket, determined to take Amber down. During the six hour police siege, a television reporter doing a live report at the scene is hit by a stray shot; Amber quickly picks up her mic and takes over for her. The film closes with Amber as anchor of the evening news for a Minneapolis/St. Paul television station, presuming that the wounded reporter had died and Amber was given her job for showing extreme grace under pressure.

Cast and characters

Character	Portrayed by	Talent	Occupation
Amber Atkins (#8)	Kirsten Dunst	Tap dancing	Student/Cafeteria Worker/Make-Up artist for the deceased. Later became a news reporter like her idol Diane Sawyer.
Annette Atkins	Ellen Barkin		Cosmetologist
Loretta	Allison Janney		Promiscuous Neighbor of the Atkins'
Rebecca Ann "Becky" Leeman (#6)	Denise Richards	Singing and dancing with Jesus	Student/President Lutheran Sisterhood Gun Club/Died from exploding Swan
Gladys Leeman	Kirstie Alley		President Mount Rose Civil Servettes/Homemaker/Murderer/Presumed Captured or Shot Dead by Police
Lester Leeman	Sam McMurray		Furniture Salesman
Iris Clark	Mindy Sterling		Mount Rose Civil Servette/Gladys' right-hand woman
Leslie Miller (#3)	Amy Adams	Cheerleading	Student/Future Philippine Stripper
Lisa Swenson (#7)	Brittany Murphy	Musical and Dance tribute to New York	Student/Congenial sister of urban drag queen
Mary Johanson	Alexandra Holden	Lip synching to "Don't Cry Out Loud"	Previous Mount Rose American Teen Princess/Anorexic Hospital Patient
Jean Kangas	Lona Williams		Pageant Judge/Assistant at Leeman Furniture
Harold Vilmes	Michael McShane		Hardware Store Owner/Pageant Judge
Mrs. Howard	Patti Yasutake		Molly's adoptive Mother
Tina/Seiko Howard	Seiko Matsuda		Natural daughter of the Howards
Hank Vilmes	Will Sasso		Mentally-Challenged brother of Harold
Adam West	Himself		Host of American Teen Princess Pageant video
Miss Minneapolis	Amanda Detmer		Miss Minneapolis/First to exhibit signs of food poisoning
Miss Burnsville	Samantha Harris		Miss Burnsville
Colleen Douglas	Nora Dunn		State Pageant Coordinator/Co-founder of Minnesota Modeling Academy
Terry Macy	Mo Gaffney		State Pageant Coordinator/Co-founder of Minnesota Modeling Academy
Documentarian	Thomas Lennon		Never Seen but main Interviewer of Documentary Crew
Tess Weinhaus (#2)	Shannon Nelson	Dog barker	Student/Chunkblower
Molly Howard (#5)	Tara Redepenning	Line dancing	Student/Adopted by Asian parents
Michelle Johnson (#4)	Laurie Sinclair	Dramatic Monologue	Student/Aspiring actress
Jenelle Betz (#1)	Sarah Stewart	Interpretive Dance and Sign Language	Student/Deafophile
Tammy Curry (#9)	Brooke Elise Bushman		Student/Died from Tractor Accident
Brett Clemens	Casey Garven		Student/Captain of the Football Team/Died from Sniper fire
Pat	Jon T. Olson		Leslie's Boyfriend and father of her unborn child
Chloris Klinghagen	Mary Gillis		Mount Rose Dance Instructor
Lars Larson	Tom Gilshannon		Owner of Funeral Parlor/Amber's Boss
Connie Rudrüd	Kristin Rudrüd		Spokeswoman St. Paul Pork Products/Former Minnesota American Teen Princess
Iona Hildebrandt	Claudia Wilkens		Mount Rose American Teen Princess, 1945/Librarian
Mayor of Mount Rose	Dale Dunham		Mayor
Mr. Howard	Richard Narita		Molly's adoptive Father
John Dough	Matt Malloy		Pharmacist/Pageant Judge/Pedophile

Background

The movie is set in the fictional town of Mount Rose, Minnesota (which is a reversal of the real town of Rosemount or a play on Montrose). The accents portrayed in the movie are that of the North Central American dialect found in the Midwest, notably Minnesota.

Kirsten Dunst's character Amber Atkins was inspired by news reporter Diane Sawyer, who is mentioned throughout the film as Amber's idol.

Two Melissa Manchester songs are featured in the film as songs used in the talent portion by contestants. Mary lip-syncs "Don't Cry Out Loud", while Janelle sings and signs "Through the Eyes of Love".

Filming locations

• The giant cow statue at the beginning of the movie is at a creamery in Bongards, Minnesota.
• The funeral home and funeral home scenes near the beginning of the movie were filmed at the Wagner Funeral Home in Jordan, Minnesota.
• The church funeral scene near the end of the movie was filmed at a church on Highway 212 outside of Cologne.
• The mall parking lot that Gladys and the ladies pulled into was not the Mall of America. It was actually Eden Prairie Center in Eden Prairie.
• Both the trailer park and the Leeman home are located in Lakeville, Minnesota.
• The high school gym was filmed at Wayzata West Middle School in Wayzata, Minnesota.
• Downtown Waconia stood in during the parade scene. The Vilmes' hardware store is called Hardware Hank and is also located in Waconia.
• The Airport "Ho-Jo" was actually the Midway Marriott Hotel in St. Paul, which has since been torn down and replaced by a Target store. There are, in fact, no Howard Johnson hotels in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area as of today, although there had been at least one Ho-Jo motel located on the 494-Strip area in Bloomington a few miles from the airport as recently as the late 80's.
• The hospital scenes were filmed in Farmington, Minnesota
• The furniture store scene was filmed at an actual furniture store that had recently gone out of business in Chaska, Minnesota.
• The interviews were filmed at the VFW in Hopkins
• The country airport scene was filmed at Molnau Airpark in Waconia, Minnesota. This is also where they filmed the shooting scenes.

Production notes

• In the original script, Molly Howard's character and family had more scenes, including the father asking his biological daughter to stay out of the picture, tell her that he doesn't care that she's going to college in Japan or dislikes the United States.
• By the end of the film, in one of the last scenes, Molly was to be seen boarding a bus marked "Lutheran Orphanage" (suggesting that her adoptive parents rejected her after losing the contest), which is seen in the parking lot of the held-up Food Shack.
• Michelle Johnson's part during the "Proud to Be an American" scene was cut as well.
• There are also certain scenes shown in the trailer that didn't make it to the final cut of the movie, such as a scene where Colleen and Terry are wondering whether or not one of the contestants has had a "boob job", and scenes when the girls are learning the dances.
• Another scene shows a confrontation between Amber and Iris over Amber's missing costume, with Amber telling Iris "This isn't a contest, this is Nazi Germany!" In response, Iris speaks to the 'documentary crew' filming the contest, and says into the camera "Where do they get this stuff?" Actress Mindy Sterling, who played Iris, had just come off from shooting Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, where she played a Nazi-inspired German character.
• Allison Janney had also that year starred in 10 Things I Hate About You which featured the song "Can't Take My Eyes Off You". This song was sung by Denise Richards' character during the pageant.
• While the setting of Mount Rose, Minnesota is fictitious, the name is actually a play on Rosemount, Minnesota, which is screenwriter Lona Williams' birthplace.

External links

• Official site
• Drop Dead Gorgeous at IMDb