Requiem For A Dreamgirl

[December 20th, 2006] Strip it to its core, and Dreamgirls is the story of one song: "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going." Take a step back from the screen and it's also the story of two weighty black girls, both named Jennifer, who will forever be identified with the song—and the enviable white, queer men who've made that song into a defining moment in our culture.

A little background.

In the early 1980s, gay musical-maker Michael Bennett delivered Dreamgirls (written by Tom Eyen and Henry Krieger) to the stage. At the time, the choreographer/director took heat for bringing the story of an African-American girl group to Broadway because, with few changes, it was the thinly veiled life story (and condemnation) of Diana Ross, the Supremes and their often troubled times with Motown's go-getter, Berry Gordy Jr. The show was Bennett's swan song—he died of AIDS in '87—but some of his immense legacy lives on through the show's biggest number. Originally sung by the then-21-year-old, already diva-worthy Jennifer Holliday, it played endlessly in queer fern bars everywhere. Cast as the ultimate outsider, Holliday was Effie Melody White, the Florence Ballard-like character who was kicked to the curb, the soul of a musical seeking to capture the soul of the Motor City. It was, and still is, the defining role of Holliday's life.

Fast-forward to Nov. 20, 2006.

Almighty Oprah had just seen the movie version of Dreamgirls. Chatting up its A-list "stars," BeyoncÉ Knowles and Jamie Foxx, you could tell Oprah was itching to get to her next guest. At 23 minutes past the hour she introduced Jennifer Hudson, an American Idol "loser" who beat out nearly 800 hopefuls to play Effie in the film version of the play. Stamping her approval on the project and calling Hudson's performance "transforming"—in part because I think it reminded her of her own experience with Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple—Oprah had officially passed the baton from Holliday to Hudson, awarding (and perhaps cursing) her with the musical's heavyweight title.

It wasn't easy getting this musical made into a movie. David Geffen, the out Hollywood Über-tycoon, had produced the play and has held the film rights tightly in his grip for more than 20 years. It wasn't until another queer Hollywood insider, director Bill Condon, who directed Gods and Monsters and was the writer of another successful musical-turned-movie, the Oscar-winning Chicago, signed on that Geffen allowed Dreamgirls to be made. And Condon didn't mess with Geffen's baby. Well, at least not with its biggest number. Like the stage version, he places this musical's showstopper toward the center of the film. In this pivotal scene, where The Dreamettes' Effie (Hudson)—who has been replaced as lead singer by the slimmer, more "likable" Deena (Knowles)—realizes she's been booted from the group entirely, the shit hits the effin' fan. Filmgoers familiar with the score wait for it like manna from heaven. Those who know little about it will be frozen in their seats when it arrives. And Hudson's performance is good—really good. It has to be. The song requires a gut-wrenching turn, and it's safe to say the 25-year-old Chicago native channeled the pain of every not-easy-to-peg, chubby outsider into this one shining moment. Although I've only seen Holliday's performance on YouTube, you could say Hudson's surpasses the original. And it will likely haunt Hudson, a first-time actor, like Holliday, for the rest of her life.

That's how powerful that one song—the emotional fulcrum of Dreamgirls—is. That's why the movie is this year's Brokeback Mountain (and why there is so much Oscar buzz attached to it). It works because this film reaches a place few do: the raw center of your psyche. It's that proverbial fork in the road everyone must face. How do you stay true to the difficult path (or lover) you've chosen without destroying everything in its way? Brokeback told a story few audiences have witnessed, gay cowboys in heat. It felt fresh, new. By placing its story, right after the birth of the civil-rights movement, when music was all about a "new sound," Dreamgirls is able to find a new angle on the plight of African-American artists struggling to "cross over" into mainstream (read: corrupt and white) society.

But there is a small (OK, big) problem with this dream of a movie. Like its source material, the film is thin at times. No matter how incredible it is, one song does not a movie make. Nothing before—or after—it comes close to the magic that is that one song. Not Eddie Murphy's dramatic turn as James "Thunder" Early, a performance that will have you wondering why he's wasted his life on such crap as Daddy Day Care (although this story probably mirrors Murphy's career more than he would care to admit). Nor BeyoncÉ's performance as Deena (even though what happened to her own girl trio, Destiny's Child, is also hinted at here). The actor who comes close to Hudson's performance is Jamie Foxx, as cutthroat car-salesman-turned-music-executive Curtis Taylor Jr. and recipient of Effie's wrath.

Their pairing isn't magic, but it works. And when she sings that big song of hers to him, it doesn't really matter that the rest of the film doesn't measure up. That moment is worth everything else. That's why I'm telling you I will go see it again. It's not every day lightning strikes twice in the same place. Luckily it has happened here, and we have a couple of white gay guys to thank for it (we can also blame them for the parts of the movie that doesn't measure up). At least for now, we have this dream to hold on to.