A PARKER SYMPOSEIUM

With neither bloodshed nor ceremony, Parker Posey quietly, effortlessly, became our queen. In films by Linklater, Araki, Hartley, Baumbach, and Guest, she was a total actor, an indescribable presence, untainted by studio polish or cynical career moves. For late Gen X and early Millennials she was our DIY star and if she yelled “air raid” at us, even now, we would drop to the ground.

1995’s Party Girl would be her debut as a lead. She plays Mary, a downtown New York scenester who vogues at Nell’s, steals couture clothing from uptown apartments, and is arrested after a rent party in Chinatown. Bailed out by Judy, her librarian godmother, Mary goes on a mission to prove she can be a serious person and commit to a life as a librarian. Party Girl is the debut from director Daisy von Scherler Mayer and is a low-budget miracle of a film that uses screwball comedy to capture a now-vanished NYC and the joys and pain of being 23.

Emily Schultz and I have collectively seen a lot of Parker Posey movies. We’re talking deep cuts like Sleep With Me, Frisk, and House of Yes. But we had never seen Party Girl until the reissue this year by Fun City Editions. Join us below as we use the film to talk about the highpoints and blackouts of our own 1990s.

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BRIAN J DAVIS: This could be it—just watching the menu loop.

EMILY SCHULTZ: No movie needed. Just Parker Posey walking in 1990s SoHo.

BJD: When were you first Parker Posey-aware?

ES: I think I was aware the moment I first saw her.

BJD: That’s it! I remember seeing Dazed and Confused and thinking she was a fully there on arrival—

ES: She was also terrifying in that role.

BJD: In an interview with Daisy von Scherler Mayer she said that one of Posey’s inspirations was Bill Murray. Now it clicks! It’s so part of her: the deadpan commitment countered with the explosions.

ES: Let’s play it.

BJD: We never saw this until recently. I’ll tell you my epiphany of why I never saw this mid  ’90s movie about a drug addled club kid with no direction…it’s because I WAS a drug addled club kid with no direction in the mid ’90s! To my credit I was coming off of being a teen crust punk, so it was a lifestyle upgrade.

ES: Look! It’s baby Liev Schreiber! I relate way too much to his falling down the stairs, if I may comment on my own youth.

BJD: DJ Leo wants to go from crashing on a couch to moving in.

ES: That happened a lot to me.

BJD: You did have the temerity to pay rent and have an apartment! We should mention how good the script and directing are. It is up there with The Lady Eve, Tootsie. It achieves the weightlessness of perfect screwball comedy and that never happens when most people try to do it. Party Girl shouldn’t work but it does. And it’s a 16mm movie that cost $150,000.

ES: It’s beautiful for 16mm.

BJD: A Hannah Arendt joke! That is faith in your audience and it’s wonderful.  And now Parker Posey is yelling. Nothing is more terrifying.

ES: Also, kind of hot.

BJD: As someone who both partied…and actually studied…in the ’90s, what do you think you would have thought of this movie back then?

ES: I would have loved it. Imagine my life if I went for library sciences instead of an English BA?

BJD: Here’s how charming this movie is. You love this movie, but you loathe electronic dance music.

ES: I hate it so much.

BJD: When we were watching this you asked if I knew the tracks that DJ Leo was rattling off. I said: I know every goddamn one.

ES: It’s Artie from The Sopranos!

BJD: Getting into a fight with Liev Schreiber in leather pants.

ES: Did I ever tell the story of the drag queen’s black pumps?

BJD: I am going to be a TV host and say, why don’t you tell our audience Emily?

ES: My roommate was a drag queen— a working drag queen. And one night, a week before he had a tour, my dog ate his favorite black pumps. I’m 22 and where am I going to find size 13 black pumps in a small college town? He comes home and I’m about to confess but then he shows off a gift from his boyfriend:  a pair of six-inch patent leather platform stilettos.  After that, those pumps didn’t exist anymore!

BJD: Gift of the Magi?

ES: Gift of the Drag-i?

BJD: This speech is painful: “Would I make a great…designer…writer…actress?”

ES: This is everyone in their 20s. Rewind it. We missed “Imitate a Cat Puking.”

BJD: Are those Fluevogs?

ES: Those are beautiful Fluevogs! I’d wear those now.

BJD: She’s ghosting her date to conquer the Dewey Decimal system. It’s safe to say you’re a fan of any movie with a research scene in it.  If someone is in a library at night, whether it’s Zodiac or Party Girl…

ES: Be still my heart.  I don’t know if she’d flake on her date though.

BJD: When you were 23 did every date matter?

ES: I didn’t consider anything a date.

BJD: Mic drop moment for Emily.

ES: Apparently, I had entire relationships that I didn’t think were relationships.

BJD: “No that wasn’t a date…I don’t go on dates…Who is this?”

ES: What I really like is this movie shows her falling in love with her own obsession. I didn’t learn how important that was until a few years later.

BJD: She’s yelling again. Remember how good she is in The Staircase?

ES: Parker Posey is in The Staircase?

BJD: She’s the prosecutor. And it’s a good example of how she’s changed as an actor in middle age. There’s no filter between her interior life and her surface now. It’s just that amazing presence sharpened.

ES: I still think the Dairy Queen monologue from Waiting for Guffman is my favorite Parker Posey scene. Probably because I worked at an ice cream shop.

BJD: Our lives are intersecting with Parker Posey to a scary degree!

ES: I think it’s all the downtrodden characters we’re relating to.

BJD: I think her relationship with Judy, her godmother, is so similar to your relationships with older women throughout your life. So many of them were like, “I expect much more of you.”

ES: Unlike Parker Posey I would just slink away and feel bad.

BJD: Donna Mitchell as Sober Rene! This is the performance of the movie. Whenever you have a gem of an indie movie this is one of the things you look for.

ES: That supporting performance that comes from out of nowhere.

BJD: A really refreshing thing about this: there is no grunge anywhere! It’s so not a cliched ’90s film.

ES: It actually has a timelessness to it. I couldn’t place the year.

BJD: We should do a special: “Grungesploitation: From Pump up the Volume to SFW.”

ES: I love the shower scene. Roommates fighting while naked.

BJD: No! We are so not opening up the seventh seal that is “sleeping with roommates.” There are not enough therapy hours for that.

ES: She’s selling her clothes—a New York tradition I proudly continue.

BJD: She’s getting an insane amount of money for those clothes compared to Buffalo Exchange.

E:S “We don’t take vintage!” Heard that.

BJD: “Soul Reflector” by Deee-Lite is playing! Everyone is all about “Groove is in the Heart” but Dewdrops in the Garden, their third and final album, is the jam. Now Party Girl has left her own party. How many times have you done that?

ES: Only a couple.

BJD: Oh, and now the final party. Cinema Dirtbag rule #1 is in play: Every character is in the final scene.

ES: I love how every little thing is resolved. There are no loose ends. That’s solid old school comedy writing.

BJD: On the count of three, say your favorite Parker Posey film. One, two, three…

[Both] Best in Show!

BJD: We’re so gross.

ES: We’re so lucky to have been raised amongst catalogues.