Hollywood Sleaze
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies and many more at Trailers From Hell. This week we dig deep, for the sleazy side of Hollywood. We also ignore those asking “There’s another side?” and pair appropriate wines with these inappropriate films.
Hollywood 90028 comes from 1973 to show the soft underbelly of filmmaking – porn. This film makes the Boogie Nights depiction of the porn world seem positively glamorous. A fellow by the name of Mark lands in Hollywood with dreams of becoming a movie cameraman. Things go south for him when the only gainful employment he finds is in the porn industry. A gal by the name of Michele is also riding the skids of her career dreams, on the other end of Mark’s lens – which, it turns out, is not a very nice place to be.
Missing out on the career of one’s choice doesn’t necessarily make one a homicidal killer – but Hollywood 90028 indicates that sometimes it does. Ask Mark, or any of the women with whom he has slept. And try not to yell too loudly at the screen when Michele’s turn to go off-camera with him comes around.
Googling “wine” and “porn” together brings some awfully sleazy responses. The website featuring “wine bottle porn videos,” I don’t want any part of that. However, Sexy Wine Bomb has not only a sleazy name, but a sleazy label, too. They say the flavor stays with you, as will the aroma if you spill it on your shirt.
In 1960’s Sex Kittens Go to College, forget the cast – even though it features Mamie Van Doren, Tuesday Weld, John Carradine, Jackie Coogan, Louis Nye, Vampira (not as herself) and Elektro the Robot as Thinko the Robot. Check out the character names – Admiral Wildcat MacPherson, Legs Raffertino, Woo Woo Grabowski (pretty much his real name) and Tallahassee Tassel Tosser, among them. That last name is a tipoff that strippers are involved, but don’t get too excited unless you have the version which was released to adult theaters, featuring a lengthy dream sequence starring those exotic dancers. Hollywood sleaze? You be the judge.
Going with the title pairing, here is a wine for actual kittens: White Kittendel Cat Wine has real catnip in it for $10 a bottle. Hey, if you have that kind of money to throw away, just send it to me. I’ll spend it on real alcohol. Oh, a wine pairing, right. Meiomi sounds like something a sexy kitten would say. For twice the price of that catnip, they have a good Chardonnay for sale. Don’t give any to your cat.
Star 80 is from the 1980s – the decade of sleaze. The story of a Playboy Playmate’s murder at the hand of her husband is ripped from the proverbial headlines by writer/director Bob Fosse. It’s an adaptation of the book about Dorothy Stratton’s all-too-short life. Yes, it is a disturbing film.
Depending on when you were born, the decade of the ‘80s could be a fun childhood, an MTV-fueled adolescence, or a bitter disappointment for one who came from an era of better music, better movies and better TV. I’m still working on getting past that.
Mariel Hemingway is the playmate and Eric Roberts is her sleazy husband. If anyone plays sleaze better than Roberts, please let us know. We may be able to come up with an award for that.
For a nude photo shoot, what better pairing is there than a Naked Wine? The wine club business model promises to put great wines on your doorstep at affordable prices. The various winemakers are mostly small producers who work fully clothed.
Randy Fuller
NowAnd Zin Wine – www.nowandzin.com
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