Bette Gordon’s film Variety (1983) follows Christine’s (Sandy McLeod) sexual awakening as she investigates the mysterious Louie (Richard M. Davidson). Christine begins the film as an out of work twenty-something who takes a job as a ticket-taker at the Variety theatre. It’s here, amid the hustle and bustle of New York City’s infamous Times Square that Christine begins to discover herself. First, through the pornographic movies screened at Variety and then in her investigation into Louie, who frequents Variety.
From the opening credits Gordon grounds her film in the tradition of gritty, grimy New York pictures. The flashing neon and twinkling lights of the opening credits recalls the New York films of Paul Morrissey and Ulli Lommel; former associates of Andy Warhol and recorders of New York’s underground cultural milieu. Sleaze permeates almost every public space in Variety, encasing the protagonist in a highly sexualized environment.
As Variety begins it resembles Claudia Weill’s film Girlfriends (1978). Gordon introduces Christine amongst a group of friends, each giving anecdotal evidence of the cruelty of men. The scene is long, dialogue driven and full of female camaraderie. Kathy Acker’s dialogue is awkward and the actors give it a stiff or jilted reading. This sequence makes it clear that the world of Gordon’s film will be a world about women.
From this instant Variety begins to segue off into Brian De Palma territory. On her breaks from the ticket booth Christine lights up a cigarette and watches some of a pornographic film. It is in a moment like this that Christine first meets Louie whom she will go on watching in the same way that he watches porn. This equates Christine’s voyeurism with the gaze of the spectator at Variety watching pornography.
Interestingly, the more Christine becomes immersed in her investigation of Louie, the more prone she is to break out into a monologue describing a scene from one of the pornographic films screened at Variety. These monologues stop the film cold to create external space for Christine’s internalized fantasies; to articulate the abstract. In these monologues Christine is again situated as an observer, never a participant.
When Christine decides to participate the entire dynamic of the film changes. She follows Louie to Asbury Park, New Jersey, where she breaks into his motel room and on a whim steals his pornographic magazine. From this interaction between Christine and the magazine, which represents a kind of shared fantasy between Louie and Christine, Christine begins to transform herself. Gordon stages a scene where Christine gets all dressed up like Annette Haven in Memphis Cathouse Blues (1982) and struts around her apartment. Suddenly Christine becomes the woman in her fantasies, in the films she has watched, and in the porn that Louie likes. This empowers Christine to call Louie and set up a rendezvous. Variety inverts and subverts the masculinist tendencies of the Hitchcock tradition in some truly compelling ways.
For cinephiles, Variety is a sort of who’s who of late seventies and early eighties independent filmmaking. John Lurie of The Lounge Lizards provides the Bernard Herrmann-esque score while another frequent collaborator of Jim Jarmusch and Sara Driver, Tom DiCillo, photographed the film. One can also see a young Mark Boone Junior and Luis Guzmán in supporting roles. But the most immediate pleasure that Variety offers is the chance to glimpse Times Square as it was before Disney got a hold of it.
