These were grimey city bars that felt like saloons, with female bartenders who spent as much time dancing on the bar as they did pouring shots. The real Coyote Ugly was one of a wave of so-called “bra bars” that opened in New York in the ’90s. Like, how did they know?” This is the (somewhat chaotic) story of how Disney cleaned up New York’s Meatpacking District before gentrification ever did. “That some 12-year-old would watch it at a sleepover. “I still think somebody was a genius to see what they saw with ,” says Gilbert. In fact, it’s become the ultimate Noughties period film an ode to prerecession capitalist values, raunch, and low-rise trousers. ![]() Watching the movie as an adult, it’s a problematic mess of an artifact, but it’s still raucous and fun enough to remain a cult hit. (If you were a preteen girl in the year 2000, the definition of “being sexy” suddenly involved buckets of water and EMF’s “Unbelievable”-I know, I was one.) It was almost a gateway drug for the decade that followed: 10 years filled with thongs, Playboy phone cases, and sex tape scandals, post–Spice Girls but pre-fourth-wave feminism. Looking back, it’s wild that the film ever got made, and even wilder that it was made for such a young audience. Then LeAnn Rimes appears and sings “Can’t Fight the Moonlight.” She, of course, falls for a fluffy-eye-lashed burger chef who stalks her home (so romantic!) and she’s emboldened by her time bartending in-and on-the Coyote Ugly bar. The story follows a sweet girl from the suburbs (Perabo) as she tries to push past stage fright to make it as a songwriter in the big, tough city. En Vogue’s choreographer created the dance routines and Madonna’s former stylist designed the outfits. The rugged Coyote Ugly bar was reimagined as a glossy Christina Aguilera video set, the bartenders a girl-band lineup of beautiful new talent: Piper Perabo (“the Jersey nun”), Bridget Moynahan (“the New York bitch”), Izabella Miko (“the Russian tease”), and Tyra Banks. The result was a Girl Power movie with a side of lingering shower shots. ![]() And while it was originally written by Gina Wendkos (who went on to do Princess Diaries), the script was ultimately Frankensteined from at least six versions, including one by Carrie Fisher. Coyote Ugly, as it became, was produced by mega-producer Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by David McNally, who until then was best known as the guy who made that Budweiser commercial with the lobster. “ The Muse of the Coyote Ugly Saloon” was sanitized by Hollywood and reborn as a PG-13 sleepover movie about sisterhood, the American dream, and grinding on a bar in a python vest. “And it was much more Charles Bukowski short story than Disney movie.” But in August 2000 that’s exactly what it became. “The bar was built on how you manipulate men into giving you all of their money,” says Gilbert. ![]() The feature described it as a grungy hole full of Jack-swigging rednecks who’d tip like hell when their favorite bartender got up on the bar to dance to the jukebox or put her hair in “farm girl” pigtails and milk beer out of a rubber glove. ![]() In 1997, Eat Pray Love author Elizabeth Gilbert wrote a piece for GQ-her first ever-about working at a dive bar in New York that was owned by a woman and hired only women.
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