Angie Dickinson | First Impressions

I wanted to talk to James Cullen on Even Cowgirls Get the Blues because of his untrammelled love for the film, his enthusiasm, and the wide array of references he brings to this very intelligent appreciation of the film: Tim Burton, Bergman, Araki, Godard, Tarantino, Erika Tremblay, New Queer Cinema, A24 films, Brokeback Mountain (2005), Indigenous Cinema, New French Extremity, and more, .

In the podcast below we discuss why James sees the film as part of an unofficial trilogy alongside Drugstore Cowboy (1989) and My Own Private Idaho (1991); how the film may be seen as a thesis on the queer American road movie; What does it mean to do a queer female-focused road movie? A queer Western? What are the problems of finding a visual grammar for beat novels, acknowledging that ‘beat’ itself is a very masculinist concept? James sees the film as laudably unserious, a story about finding freedom that destroys all sense of coherence; comedic, silly, with a touch of magical realism; a film that destroys all sense of heteronormative experience, throws it in Hollywood’s face, and might give you tonal whiplash in the process; a film in which Van Sant tries to reinvent himself and fails, yet in the process creates his new style.

Amongst many other reasons, James loves the film because it is ‘Against all the heteronormative expectations we have from cinema as a medium. None of these A24 Neon filmmakers could make anything like this. There’s an audience for this film, it’s going to come from somewhere, sometime; and I want to be part of that audience’

And I want to be in the audience listening to James speak about it.

The podcast may be listened to here: