Plot summary (with spoilers): Joe Gillis is a washed-up screenwriter living in Hollywood. And he's dead. He's floating face down in a pool, with two gunshots in the back and one in the gut. But through the magic of Hollywood, he's able to narrate to the masses, just exactly how he got there. It all started when some well-dressed repo men arrived at his dingy Hollywood apartment to repossess his car. He'd been behind on the payments, see. But he told the men that he didn't have the car because he'd loaned it to a friend upstate. The repo men leave, but warn him they'll be back tomorrow. Joe brags in voice-over that he actually had the car all along, and that there was no "friend" upstate, and in further fact he had managed to stay "one step ahead" of the repo men by parking his car across the street from his apartment complex. Wow, that is fucking diabolical, Joe. All the way across the street, you say? Who are you, Jason Bourne?
Oh, and he totally lives on Franklin Ave, just north of Hollywood. It's totally recognizable, despite the fact that there's no traffic and the streets are clean. Then the DVD skips ahead about three or four minutes and I can't get it to replay no matter how hard I try, but as near as I can tell, Joe's driving down Sunset Boulevard for some reason, and the incredibly diligent and not-busy enough repo men follow Joe and he loses them up in the hills by Beverly/Westwood I'm guessing, and pulls into a dilapidated old mansion. He decides to pretend that his tire is flat and ask if he can leave the car there for a few days. He goes to the door and encounters a creepy old bald man named Max who tells him that he's late and the madame is upstairs waiting for him. Joe does that movie thing where he tries to explain the misunderstanding, but somehow can't get the words out, so winds up going upstairs on a lark.
And upstairs is Norma Desmond, aging movie star and every drag queen's role model. She's a woman of a about fifty, and she talks like Cruella di Ville and mugs and skulks and moans and gesticulates with reckless abandon. Joe recognizes her from the old silent movies. "You used to be big."
"I am big. It's the pictures that got small!", says Norma and every gay man over 50 simultaneously. She has the dead body of a monkey in front of her, lying in a casket. She mistakes Joe for the man conducting her monkey's funeral. Joe finally clears things up and says he's a writer. She so happens to have a script for him to took at. It's a screenplay, about the story of her life.
And so begins a beautiful parasitic and mutually manipulative relationship. Joe pretends to work on her script for 500 dollars a week and free room and board, and Norma pays the man to be around her and give her a break from her crushing loneliness. They screen old silent movies together. Her own, of course. ("We didn't need dialog! We had faces!").
Eventually, the repo men track down Joe's car and tow it away, but fear not, because Norma has an old 1920's jalopy for him to drive around. She buys him many things: clothes, a watch, a bag for her to carry his dick around in. The usual.
She teaches him Bridge, and they play with other silent movie stars, whom Joe refers to was "The Waxworks", and they include an elderly Buster Keaton in a cameo. Aw....
Finally, Norma asks Joe to get all dressed up for her New Year's Eve Party. He dresses up big, in a tux and tails that she bought for him. He meets her in the ball room and she asks him to dance. There's a big spread out, and a live band. But no other guests. He asks when any others are arriving, and she says they're it. He freaks and splits, hitching a ride down out of the Hills and into Hollywood. He meets up with some friends who are having a party. One of them is Nancy Olson, the girlfriend of one of his buddies. She's a Hollywood writer, too. But unlike Norma, she's wholesome and pure and cornfed and apple pie and Jesus. She flirts a little with Joe and asks him to help her with a script she's writing. He considers it, but then decides to call back to Norma's house and tell Max to pack up his stuff and have it waiting for him, but Max is a bit snippy, and tells him that he'll have to call him back, because "the Madame" has tried to kill herself. Joe immediately rushes back to Sunset Boulevard, and arrives just in time to see a doctor leaving. He goes upstairs to Norma's room, and both her wrists are bandaged. She's super melodramatic and says life's not worth living without him and he...kisses her. The camera is as grossed out as we are, and hilariously fades out before they lock lips.
So now, they're a couple. Norma sends in her rewritten screenplay to her old friend Cecil B DeMille (actually played by him), and then puts on a show for Joe, dressing up as Charlie Chaplin and doing a pratfall routine. Okay, that was insane and awesome. Then, a studio exec calls the house and Norma thinks it's a lackey for DeMille, and won't speak to him until Cecil himself gets on the phone. The exec calls ten more times over the next week or so, and so finally Norma, Max, and Joe decide to go to Paramount and work out a deal with DeMille. While at the studio, Joe sees Nancy again and flirts some more, while Max discovers that the exec calling Norma wasn't working for DeMille at all, but rather was just trying to rent her car for a movie. Cecil lets Norma down easy with a bunch of false promises, then Max and Joe coddle her and take her home.
Meanwhile, Joe starts sneaking out at night to help Nancy with her screenplay, while Norma thinks that any day now DeMille will begin working on her movie, so she begins "beauty regimens" to stretch her skin and peels and hair stuff and all that girl stuff. She looks even more repulsive than before. She continues to be super needy and creepy and keeps buying Joe stuff and he keeps feeling more and more disgusting and disgusted.
(Interesting that these Olden Times movies always have horribly fucked-up gender politics that we can safely judge from 2012's perspective, but the idea of an rich old deluded hag and a freeloading hunky paramour is still as looked-down upon now as it was then).
So then Norma figures out that Joe's seeing Nancy on the sly, and calls Nancy up and basically calls him a whore. Joe invites Nancy to come to the house and see for herself what he's been up to, and she does. He admits he's a Kept Man and this repulses her, but she begs him to leave anyway and be with her. But Joe is too ashamed of himself and tells her to run far far away. (Okay, maybe we're not quite as judgmental about this in 2012. They're acting like he's killed someone or something).
Once Nancy leaves, Norma dials to ghoulish craziness up to 11, thanking him profusely for staying with her. But Joe says he's leaving her, too. She threatens to kill herself again.
Joe: Oh wake up, Norma. You'd be killing yourself to any empty house. The audience left 20 years ago.
Ooh. Cold, Joe.
So he walks outside, and suddenly she's shooting him.
Bam! Bam bam! Twice in the back and once in the gut. We've come full circle. Joe remarks that the police pulled him out of the pool gently. "It's funny how gentle people get when you're dead".
The police come to arrest Norma. The news crews arrive, too. Upon hearing the news from Max, Norma says "cameras"? The cops unnecessarily stage-whisper that it would be an easy way to get her to go without a fight. So Max says, "action" and the cameras roll, and Norma walks down her staircase for the last time. She stares creepily into the camera, intoning "I"m ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille".
Credits roll.
Review: Very good. The writing is terrific, with tons of one liners that make you sit up and take notice or involuntarily "ooh" or "aaah" with reverence at such a clever turn of phrase. Gloria Swanson's so big, so over the top, that it really shouldn't ring true or be believable, but somehow it does. With the older gays, it's considered a "camp classic", but to me real camp is something that tries to be sincere and comes off corny and embarrassingly earnest, like Elizabeth Berkeley having sex in a pool in Showgirls or Elizabeth Berkeley od'ing on diet pills on Saved by the Bell or other non-Elizabeth Berkeley art forms. This succeeds in being dramatic and deeply sad and totally realistic. I think Swanson's character gets away with being so campy because everyone else is so grounded and real and they react to her how people really react to those that live life on the fringe--ie, with confusion and a wary distance. Every time Norma says a ridiculous "camp" line, Joe's there to pop her balloon and react as the audience surrogate with a snide remark or an eyeroll. The many real life celebrity cameos also gave the movie an aura of believability and an extra layer of sadness, too. After just singing Buster Keaton's praises, I see him effectively put out to pasture. I'm assuming the other Bridge players where silent film stars of yesterday, too. So yeah. Hopefully this makes up for the All About Eve debacle.
Stars: Four out of five.
Next, "2001: A Space Odyssey", and then the Vince Vaughn/Anne Heche classic, "Psycho".
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