Last week I was cursing Logo (the “gay” channel) for showing nothing but stupid lesbian movies and even stupider episodes of Queer as Folk, when I stumbled up a documentary called For the Love of Dolly. I set up the TiVo to record it and forgot about it until I got bored this weekend.
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! Please click on the link above and watch just five minutes of this gem. I swear to god, it’s like a lost Christopher Guest movie… but better. You can’t make this shit up.
The documentary follows 5 of Dolly’s biggest fans:
Melissa and Jeannette.
These bitches were the craziest. Melissa moved to Dolly’s home town where she drives around stalking Dolly and Dolly’s childhood friend, Judy. Jeannette, on the other hand, has recreated Dolly’s Tennessee mountain home in her mother’s backyard. The (second) creepiest moment of the entire show was when Jeannette and Melissa went to the local used car dealership because they thought they saw Judy’s car in the lot. They proceeded to “test drive” the car, which did indeed turn out to be Judy’s, and they were over joyed to find a bunch of strands of long blond hair in the car, which of course they kept. They also smelt the seats and Jeannette licked the seat belt. You could tell that Jeannette was crazier than Melissa, which made it all the more heartbreaking at the end when Jeannette tried to pass Dolly a note during the Dolly Parade in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, but the security guards wouldn’t let her.
Patric and Harrel.
O.M.G. I’m not sure that I can say Melissa and Jeanette were the craziest. Patric and Harrel definitely gave them a run for their money. The above picture doesn’t even do them justice, since for the documentary, Patric still had his brown goatee, but bleached hair. Every single inch of their house was covered in Dolly memorabilia. And on top of that, Patric took home the creepy cake by molding Dolly dolls. Patric and Harrel also shared the very special story of how they got together. Patric was married at the time, and his second daughter (who, as he told the camera, was a mistake– yeesh, hope she wasn’t watching) wanted to be a model. And it just so happened that Harrel was the modeling director for Dallas. The first time Patric met Harrel he said, “He gonna be mine, he don’t know it yet… but, he gonna be mine.” Yeah, bet your wife and kids didn’t know it yet either.
David.
David is mentally handicapped, therefore I feel like I shouldn’t be making fun of him. Let me just point out that his creepiest moment was any moment that they filmed in his parents house, where he lives. Their entire house was filled with life-sized cut out of Dolly, including a cut out of the above picture (where Dolly secretly looks terrified, but it’s hard to spot under all the make-up and plastic surgery.) I’d also like to point out that during the parade the security guards allowed David to give Dolly a homemade fly swatter that he crocheted for her… totally unfair to Jeanette, she seemed just as handicapped as David!
In case you didn’t believe me about this documentary being a Christopher Guest movie, below are some of my favorite quotes:
“They’re my children, you can’t have a favorite. Well, you can…“ –Harrel, talking about his dolls. He then went on to talk about how he wasn’t his parent’s favorite because they disapproved of his lifestyle.
“He was my soulmate.“ –Jeanette, on her (deceased) dog “Lil Andy” (named of course, after the Dolly song.) She then went on to talk about her replacement dog: “Dany with one ‘n.’ I scrambled up Andy’s letters in his name, to name him after Andy.“
“I prayed for cancer, because I wanted to be a Make-A-Wish kid, and then I wanted to die because I wanted to get out of what I was living in.” –Melissa
“Life sometimes slaps me, and I have to try to slap back.“ –Patric, on his wife’s death.
Corky St. Clair would be proud!
