The Agony of “Gay” “Cinema”: All Over Me
The tragic tale of a teenage floozy who never learned how to walk.
Hey look! The Agony of “Gay” “Cinema” is back once again! Except now it is going to be monthly-ish! Probably. I think. We’ll see.
This month, which is still currently late September, also known as False Fall in New York, we are revisiting a movie I randomly remembered a few weeks ago when it was still August and a billion degrees hot. All Over Me takes place in New York City—Hell’s Kitchen, I want to say—during the summer of, like, 1996, and concerns a toxic friendship that rots in the sweltering heat like a bag of braising garbage on the sidewalk.
Best friends Claude and Ellen live in pre-gay-gentrification Hell’s Kitchen (confirmed by graffiti in the opening credits!) and are trying to maybe start an alternative rock ’n’ roll music band during summer break so that they can smash the patriarchy with guitars. Except the problem is that their relationship is hideously toxic due to them both being 15 year old teenagers and Ellen being extremely troubled and Claude basically being in love with her.
Now, Claude is the main character and we must PROTECT SWEET CLAUDE at all cost! But I need to talk a lot about Ellen. God she is a glorious mess! She has kind of an indistinctly traumatic homelife which really doesn’t get explored much, but she’s constantly staying at Claude’s apartment and is extremely needy, but also she’s always lashing out and undermining Claude. Ellen is a horror show, and also she’s not even that serious about their band.
One of the ways you know Ellen is so troubled is because no one seems to have ever taught her how to walk. She is forever teetering around on the towering blocks of plywood she has duct taped to her feet and decided to call “shoes.” Like, even before she gets addicted to DRUGS (spoiler? I mean, look at her, she already has racoon eyes and a Courtney Love bleach job!) she is forever in imminent danger of tumbling over upon to the sizzling New York pavement and getting stuck there like all those poor prehistoric beasts in the La Brea tar pit (which is an L.A. thing, but I’ll allow it)!
Claude also kinda has low self-esteem due to Ellen and Claude’s mom constantly telling her she’s fat. Which she is not, she’s just tall and curvy and super cute, actually. And also fat is neither a shameful or bad thing to be, so fuck off Ellen and Claude’s mom! (But also, sorry you’re both so traumatized by toxic patriarchal body image nonsense!)
Claude’s homelife is…fine, I guess? Her mom is Ann Dowd! But she’s…also kind of a floozy? She exists on a diet of Slimfast and cigarettes and enjoys romancing her doofus old boyfriend. But also, she does love Claude. She’s not a bad mom—I mean, except when she’s trying to drill an eating disorder into her teenage daughter—she’s just got her own thing going on! Let beloved Emmy-winning floozy Ann Dowd live!
Anyway, one day, just as summer is starting, a new gay rock’n’roll guy named Luke (Pat Briggs from real life 90s glam rock band Psychotica) moves into an apartment in Claude’s building. He’s really nice and cute and totally sees Claude and Claude feels seen maybe for the first time ever. He’s like, “Hey, cute chill baby dyke, ditch your floozy friend who can’t walk and go see some girl bands.” So, obviously Ellen immediately wants her boyfriend to stab him in the park across the street hates him.
Things start going terribly awry when Ellen gets all obsessed with her new boyfriend Mark, who I think is a Nazi from John Singleton’s Higher Learning and also might be kind of a Nazi in this movie too a little bit? One night, Ellen creeps into Claude’s bed after being out doing straight sex stuff with Mark, and they start tentatively fooling around a little. Right after she was doing straight sex stuff with Mark! Ellen is a mess! But then they stop, because while Ellen is a cavernous void of neediness who seems to, for unexamined reasons, associate affection/love/etc. only with being sexual, she’s also super manipulative and probably not at all queer?
Mark also takes an immediate dislike to Luke due to his being a big tough alpha male monster and Luke being a flagrant homosexual with nail polish and great hair. (Possibly a wig? This is unclear.)
Meanwhile, Luke also makes friends with Claude’s co-worker, baby gay Wilson Cruz. Claude and Wilson Cruz work at this pizza parlor run by Big Pussy from The Sopranos, who, with his limited screentime manages to convey a fatherly protective vibe re: his sweet queer teenage employees, which is nice. RIP Big Pussy.
Luke is like, “Me want PIZZA,” so that night he goes to Big Pussy’s Pusseriza Hut. There’s this scene here between Luke and Wilson Cruz that I think I totally misread when I first saw this movie in high school. I thought Luke, who is probably supposed to be in his 20s, was flirting with Wilson Cruz. He’s like “Do you have a boyfriend?” And 15-year-old Wilson Cruz is like “Splutter splutter, whaaaa whaaaat???” And Luke is like, “You would have scared the shit out of me when I was your age.” And then he says that if Wilson Cruz ever needs to talk, he’s there.
So, rewatching this now, I think Luke is just trying to be a nice supportive older mentor type figure to a kid who probably doesn’t have any gay role models in 1990s Manhattan, because, recall, this is all way before the gays took over Hell’s Kitchen. And maybe Wilson Cruz has kind of a crush on him, but I choose not to read anything inappropriately sexual on Luke’s part. Maybe I’m wrong, but I just don’t think that’s what the movie is implying between them. (Meanwhile, baby gay me in 1990-whatever badly wanted these two to make out, which they don’t.)
But, oh fuck! Mark is also at the Pusseria with all his malefriends and also Ellen who is wasted and starting fights with him because other than sex that’s the only way she knows how to interact with people who care (?) about her. So, Claude tries to intervene and Luke kinda passively tries to defuse the situation by taking Claude aside and giving her his lucky coin instead of a tip. (TIP YOUR SERVERS, LUKE!) But this only enrages Mark more and he vows to destroy Luke! He and his cronies storm off in a rage, and Ellen stumbles off after them on her walking stumps.
On her way home later, Claude finds Ellen crashed in a dumpster and wobbles her back home where they pass out.
The next day, Ellen is so hungover and barfing in the street that they barely notice the murdered body in the park across the street. But that night, Ann Dowd is like, “Squawk squaaaawwwk! The rocking and rolling gay downstairs was murdered to death!”
Claude is freaked out and tells Ellen—who is now 100% fully addicted to DRUGS—about the murder. And Ellen is like, “I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT MARK DEFINITELY STABBING LUKE TO DEATH WITH A KNIFE WHICH I SAW BECAUSE I WAS THERE, I need some druuuuuuuugs now.” So, naturally, Claude sends her to bed with some spaghetti and goes out to a rock’n’roll club.
On her way there, she runs into Wilson Cruz, who is super depressed about Luke’s murder. “Maybe they’ll kill me next!” he says and skateboards off, traumatizedly. UUUUGH! PROTECT BABY WILSON CRUZ!
At the rock’n’roll music club, Claude meets lesbian pixie dream girl Leisha Hailey. They go back to Leisha Hailey’s apartment and talk about music and flirt a little. Claude finds a Patti Smith CD and Leisha Hailey is like, “Play that!” But Claude is like, “Iiiieeee dunnoooo, it’s kinda intense.” But she plays it anyway and has a full-on emotional meltdown which ends in her ugly crying in a fetal position on Leisha Hailey’s bedroom floor.
Which makes Leisha Hailey make this face:
And it’s like, dude, she told you it was intense! YOU did this, Leisha Hailey!
Meanwhile, Ellen has risen from the dead and invited Mark over TO CLAUDE’S ROOM! Ugh, gross. This scene is weird though, because suddenly Mark is kinda humanized because he’s trying to connect with Ellen without having sex, but she is psychotically having none of that. Then she remembers how much she always wants DRUGS and starts snorting literally all of them. And Mark is like, “You should not do all of those drugs that I probably gave to you.” And then he picks her up and deposits her outside of the room and locks her out like she’s Fred Flintsone in the opening of The Flintsones, while he hides all the drugs in his pocket where drug hound Ellen will definitely never find them.
Then I guess he leaves, because he’s gone when Claude gets home. But she’s still super upset that he was even there, which, obviously anyone would be too! So, she and Ellen have a big huge fight like always.
The next day at work, Wilson Cruz tells Claude that the cops have been asking him all these questions about whether Luke had a knife or if he was on drugs or maybe he hit on a straight. “You know, anything to make it sound like it was his fault that he died.” Claude is like, “Whhaaaa? Whoooaaa?” And Wilson Cruz laughs and is like “You have not talked to the cops much have you, white person?” Then Claude tries to give Wilson Cruz Luke’s lucky coin, but he won’t accept it. “He wanted you to have it.”
Later, Ellen drags Claude to some bar to hang out with Mark and his friends. WHY ARE YOU HANGING OUT WITH THIS MURDERER, CLAUDE??? But Ellen gets immediately catatonic on DRUGS and Claude has to barf her in the bathroom. Good god, Ellen genuinely needs help!
Feeling better, Ellen is like, “Waaaaahhhh, you hate meeeeeee!” But Claude is like, “Pssssh, no! It’s so obvious, I’m your dog.” And I don’t know if she means “dawg” which I think is a term for friend in the 90s, or if she means she’s a “dog” as in she’s ugly and Ellen just keeps her around to make her feel better about herself? Which, again, Claude is super cute! (But then, she is in a movie, and everyone in movies is on a spectrum of Super Cute to Impossibly Gorgeous, which is why they are in movies in the first place and nothing means anything!)
Back at their table, Mark has ordered a round of shots, which Ellen, who has just been barfed back to life by her best friend in a dive bar toilet, immediately drinks. And Claude has had enough! She flees the bar and Ellen teeters after her, but Claude just goes to Leisha Hailey’s house to play cards and make out. Yay, Claude! Meanwhile, Ellen manages to careen back into the bar on her useless hoofs without incident.
But then when Claude gets home, Mark is lurking outside her building. He’s like, “Why is my girlfriend sleeping in your bed???” And Claude is like, “Umm, maybe because I’ve never stabbed anyone to death?” Then he fully grabs her by the crotch and growls that he didn’t do no murderin’!
Upstairs, Claude tells Ellen that they have to tell the cops that Mark hate-murdered Luke to death. But instead, Ellen tries to convince Claude not to by kissing her. “I love you,” Claude says. But Ellen is like “BLLUUUULLLLGGGHHH, DON’T SAY THAT!” So, Claude storms out and sleeps on the couch.
The next day, after rage cleaning her room, Claude tells Wilson Cruz that Mark is the murderer of Luke, and they decide to go to the fully trustworthy NYPD cops tomorrow before work.
The next day, at Big Pussy’s Palace of Pizza, Mark and Ellen show up. Claude takes Ellen aside and is like, “Pssst, I told the cops on your boyfriend.” DAMMIT, CLAUDE! HE’S RIGHT THERE! DO NOT TELL THIS FLOOZY WITH BLOCKS FOR SHOES THAT YOU RATTED OUT HER MURDERING BOYFRIEND! Luckily, the cops show up at that exact moment and arrest Mark. But, oh god, I have no faith that these doofus cops are actually going to convict this white dude of murdering a gay in 1996, and now I am terrified that Mark is definitely going to get off on gay panic or Twinkies defense (all real things) and kill everyone and found the Proud Boys! Uuuuggghh!
Anyway, Ellen screams and cries and says she hates Claude. FRIENDSHIP TERMINATAED, and she teeters off on her stupid hooves tragically.
Sometime later, Claude and Leisha Hailey are practicing their guitars and kissing. They are girlfriends now! Hooray! Claude buries Luke’s lucky coin in a patch of dirt in the park where he was murdered, and spots Ellen across the street, still miserably stumbling around in her giant wooden shoes. WILL NO ONE BUY THIS POOR BROKEN FLOOZY SOME KEDS!?
The moral: Never trust a floozy unless it’s Ann Dowd.