This week I am in love with Not Bakula and enjoying the endorphins from discovering something new and amazing. I can’t even bring myself to be snarky about a movie this week; I’m filled with that much love. Today, I am 85% love. (And 15% dorkosity.)

So this week in Questionable Taste Theatre, I present SOAPDISH. Soapdish is more or less the soundtrack to my life; not one day goes by wherein I can’t quote this movie. Having a family of performers, way more theatre experience than is healthy, and a work history that includes working next to soap-opera writers convinced me that this movie, while it may seem to be a comedy, is in fact exactly like life.

Nutshell: There’s a soap opera, which is hilariously bad. Everyone involved? Hilariously bad. Dialogue? Best ever.

Join us for some of my favorite quotes from this movie, partly because the plot defies description, so I won’t bother, and partly because, no joke, some of the funniest lines I’ve ever heard.

(I like the word Peppy, and the word Cheap. Peppy and Cheap.)

[an audition]

Betsy Faye Sharon: Very, very good, Mark. And very true. I love what you’re doing. I just, I think if we could try it one more time, and this time… I don’t know… maybe try one without your shirt.
Mark: Sure.
[Removes it and reviews the script]
Mark: “Will you be having wine with dinner?”
Betsy Faye Sharon: …I think we’ve found our waiter.

*

[Studio head Edwards lays down the law.]

Edwards: I would like to voice my strong concern about this show’s spiraling decline in ratings. David, ever since you took us to the Caribbean, it’s been Jamaica homeless people sucking soup, and a big wave outside that cost a hundred thousand dollars. That’s depressing and it’s expensive, two words I hate. You know the words I like? I like the word “peppy” and the word “cheap”. Peppy and cheap.

*

[Lori Craven, Celeste's "niece", tries to get her start.]

Lori Craven: Hi. Uh, I’m Lori Craven and… I’m an actress.
Betsy Faye Sharon: An actress! Really! How nice for you! I’m Betsy Faye Sharon and I’m a bitch. Now get out of here.

*

[On bringing back Celeste's ex, Jeffrey Anderson]

David Barnes: I was under orders.
Celeste Talbert: So – was – Hitler! Oh, no, I don’t mean Hitler, I mean the other guy, the other one.
David Barnes: Himmler.
Celeste Talbert: No, no, no.
David Barnes: Hess.
Rose Schwartz: Eichmann.
David Barnes: Eichmann.

*

[If you have ever seen a soap opera, you've heard these lines.]

Ariel Maloney: Why, Bolt! I didn’t realize you were here.
Bolt: Well… I am.

*

[Montana and David share a tender moment.]

Montana Moorehead: YOU – promised me you would get rid of Celeste. WE WERE BOTH NAKED AND YOU PROMISED! NAKED!
David Barnes: Hey! We were never naked.
Montana Moorehead: Well, we could have been!

*

[Lori has found out she's Celeste's daughter.]

Celeste Talbert: I never said I was the best mother in the world. Give me a little credit, will you, credit for being someone who tried… to love you the only way she knew how?
Lori Craven: I know that speech.
Celeste Talbert: You do?
Lori Craven: Yeah, it was the, uh, the Thanksgiving show, when Maggie meets Bolt’s blind nephew.

*

[Their live episode goes all to shit.]

Mr. Edwards: There’s a nurse in the restuarant…did I miss a meeting?

*

[Best movie conversation ever. No joke.]

[Reading unrehearsed lines off the TelePrompTer]
Celeste Talbert: [as Maggie] Dr. Randall, what a surprise! Are you having lunch here?
Jeffrey Anderson: [as Dr. Randall] I will if it’s that sample. Huh… I wish it was that simple.
Edmund Edwards: [offstage] This guy never heard of contact lenses?
Jeffrey Anderson: [as Dr. Randall] The test results have come back.
Celeste Talbert: [as Maggie] And?
Jeffrey Anderson: [as Dr. Randall] And I’m afraid the results are very disturbing. It seems that Angelique has a rare case of brake fluid…
[pause]
Jeffrey Anderson: Bran… fluid. Bran flavor.
Burton White: What the hell?
David Barnes: [offstage] Brain fever!
Edmund Edwards: [offstage, loudly] Say it!
Celeste Talbert: [as Maggie] Brain fever!
Jeffrey Anderson: [as Dr. Randall] Yes. Brain fever. Or what we call in Austria…
[they both goggle at the word]
Jeffrey Anderson: Kopfgeschlagen. At the current rate of inflation, her brain will laterally explore the…
Celeste Talbert: [as Maggie] Literally explode?
Jeffrey Anderson: [as Dr. Randall] Exactly, within the next three houses.
Celeste Talbert: [as Maggie] Hours?
Jeffrey Anderson: [as Dr. Randall] Yes, will literally explode within next three hours. I would suggest leaving the restraint.
Celeste Talbert: [as Maggie] Restaurant?
Jeffrey Anderson: [as Dr. Randall] Restaurant, yes.
Celeste Talbert: [as Maggie] Her brain will actually explode?
Jeffrey Anderson: [as Dr. Randall] Yes, yes, I’ve, um, seen it happen. It’s a dreadful, dreadful thug. Thing.

I dare you to find a situation in which the suggestion “Peppy and cheap” is not useful. You can’t! There isn’t one!

Say what you will about the enduring artistic merits of this movie, there has not been a movie before or since with dialogue like this. I love you, movie.

You would think that Il Fantasma dell’Opera>would be the first time in a person’s life when she would have seen a man getting it on with an animal.

Well, guess what!

Nutshell: An adaptation of Honore Balzac’s short story, Passion in the Desert centers around a French officer who gets separated from his regiment and ends up forming a bond with a female leopard who helps to keep him alive. And, uh…other things.

Yeah, those things.

I almost can’t believe I saw this years ago, mostly because you’d think it would have inured me to ratsex. But nope!

I will say that I didn’t necessarily enjoy the movie; the first half is a lot of men in period costumes running awkwardly in the sand and making big speeches, and the second half is a really uneasy blend of social statement and man/leopard porn.

“You shut up about my girlfriend!”

What’s amazing about the movie is the level of (non-sex) intimacy between the actor playing NoBoundaries and the leopard. On the official site, the director talks about how they planned this movie years in advance and actually raised three (apparently abandoned? already captive? Oh, documentation on animal rights, you’re so elusive) leopard cubs to be comfortable around humans. They cast the part by bringing the top choices to the zoo and putting them in front of a fully-grown tiger, which, HA! “If you don’t pee yourself, the part is yours!”

Another thing this movie does well is that it constantly reminds you that the leopard is an animal, and the fact that this guy starts humanizing her and looking at her romantically is because the desert is making him TOTALLY CRAZY and not, you know, suggesting that getting it on with leopards is at all acceptable.

“I SAID SHUT UP ABOUT MY GIRLFRIEND!”

The rest of the movie is clearly just warm-up for the (admittedly evocative) shots of leopard/man drinking/fighting/frolicking/lovin’, and the tragic payoff when he tries to tie her up to make her wait for him (men!), and she’s like, “That’s interesting! Or we could try this,” and bites his arm off.

The metaphors do slowly unfurl if given enough time, and despite all its total ickiness, the relationship between the man and the leopard is beautifully filmed and the resolution is about what you’d hope from a guy who messes with wild leopards.

Sadly, if you’re looking for any kind of in-depth commentary I’ll have to bow out; I haven’t seen this movie since the first time, back in 2000. (I rode my steam-bike all the way to the general store to meet the Pony Express rider who delivered it to me!) Some of my memories are fuzzy. THANK GOODNESS. (Uh, except that one time I made watch it with me. I’m a terrible person.)

So that no one has to actually watch the movie, some brave soul on YouTube (who is not me!) made a clip of all the good parts, and by “good” I mean both “beautiful shots of animal-and-man living together” and “screamingly uncomfortable make-out scene between a MAN and a LEOPARD WHAT IS WRONG WITH SOME PEOPLE.”

“DO WE NEED TO GO OUTSIDE AND TALK ABOUT YOU DISRESPECTING MY GIRLFRIEND?”