Gas Food Lodging

TCM's Women Make Film series from last autumn gave me the opportunity to record several movies I hadn't seen before, although I probably could have recorded more had I had the room on my DVR. That being what it is, one of the films I did make room for was Gas Food Lodging>.

Fairuza Balk plays Shade Evans, who at the start of the movie is watching a movie of her favorite actress, Mexican Silver Age star Elvia Rivero (not a real person in case you're wondering), in a theater in the small desert town of Laramie, NM. After getting out of the movie, Shade goes to meet her elder sister Trudi (Ione Skye) at the diner where her mom, Nora (Brooke Adams) works as a waitress. Busboy Javier (Jacob Vargas) spills a drink on Trudi, who responds with racial epithets and results in the end of Javier's employment there.

Trudi is one angry young woman, resentful of having to live in a trailer park in a dead-end town like Laramie with a single mother because Dad walked out on them years ago. Trudi rebels by going out every night and skipping school, and when Mom confronts Trudi, she drops out of school to take a job as a waitress at the same diner where Mom works. It's there that she meets Dank (Robert Knepper), a British geologist looking for some of the fluorescent rocks for which the region is apparently known. They start a relationship because Trudi jumps quickly to any man who shows interest in her. Shade, meanwhile, has some interest in emo kid (not that they called them this back in the early 1990s, I don't think) Darius (Donovan Leitch Jr.; he and Ione Skye are both children of 1960s singer Donovan), although he seems to be a bit coy about returning the favor.

Mom, meanwhile, had an on-again, off-again affair with married man Raymond, and has neighber Hamlet (David Landsbury, nephew of Angela), who installs satellite dishes, showing an interest in her. But Nora is a bit unsure of whether to start a relationship with Hamlet, and is also a bit put off by his slightly goofy nature, even though he's really a nice guy at heart. Shade tries to set up a blind date for Mom, but it's with Raymond, whom Shade didn't know already had that affair with Mom so it leaves some tension between Shade and her mother.

Love changes for both Shade and Trudi. Trudi goes out to the caves with Dank, who shows her those fluorescent rocks before they have sex the one time which is just enough to get her pregnant, although it's not the first time she's actually had sex, just the first time with Dank. Mom is understandably pissed and insists that Trudi get an abortion; when Dank doesn't return, Trudi decides to leave for Dallas to have the baby and give it up for adoption. Shade, having been rejected by Darius, runs into Javier, who actually really likes Shade, and the two of them start up a relationship.

Meanwhile, when Shade is on her way back from a party, she gets picked up by a guy named John (Josh Brolin), who points out that his last name is Evans and that he is in fact the children's father. He's in a new difficult relationship and has a couple of stepchildren, and has never been able to summon up the courage to see Nora or the kids.

Gas Food Lodging is more of a slice-of-life movie that reminded me of several I've blogged about here. One is The Last Picture Show, with some obvious resonance to a dying desert town and a main character who likes the movie theater, although of course most of the main charcters in that one are men. A couple of other movies that really look at the small-town white lower class also came to mind, At Close Range and Ulee's Gold, even though both of those have rather different themes from Gas Food Lodging. But what made me think of those two is that all three movies have extremely evocative production design.

Gas Food Lodging also has a pretty darn good story, even if I wonder whether a town like Laramie would have anybody like Darius living there. The acting is more than adequate, and the entire movie as a whole is quite engaging even if there are a few parts that feel a bit contrived for the purpose of moving the story along, or a bit slow. But the flaws are minor, and Gas Food Lodging is a memorable movie that really deserves to be better known than it is.