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Gas Food Lodging

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2018 8:53 am
by domino harvey
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THEY’RE SISTERS. BUT IT WILL TAKE A MIRACLE TO MAKE THEM A FAMILY.

Adapted from the novel Don’t Look and It Won’t Hurtby Richard Peck, Allison Anders (Grace of My Heart) whipped up a storm at the 42nd Berlin International Film Festival with her masterfully crafted tale of a young woman trying to find love while struggling to bring up her two daughters.

Abandoned by her husband, Nora (Brooke Adams, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Stuff) waitresses to keep her head above water while raising two teenagers in a small New Mexico town trailer park. Beautiful and rebellious, Trudi (Ione Skye, Wayne’s World, Zodiac) quits school to work alongside her mother, while her sister Shade (Fairuza Balk, The Craft, American History X) whittles away her time watching old movie matinees. Their life is turned on its head when Trudi finds that she has fallen pregnant after a string of promiscuous relationships and the girls' absent father returns with hopes of mending the relationships he broke when he left.

A wonderfully engaging story of the woes of teenagers reaching adulthood, Gas Food Lodgingis a distinctly American portrayal of a mother trying to raise two wayward teens with growing pains, who are learning about love, life and each other. This director-approved restoration finally affords this 90s modern classic the home video treatment it rightly deserves.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS:

- High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation, approved by director Allison Anders
- Original uncompressed 2.0 audio
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- The Road to Laramie: A Look Back at Gas Food Lodging, a brand new interview with Allison Anders and Josh Olson
- Cinefile: Reel Women(Chris Rodley, 1995), a documentary looking at the challenges women face in the film industry from independent to studio filmmaking, featuring interviews with Allison Anders, Kathryn Bigelow, Jane Campion, Penny Marshall, Gale Anne Hurd and others
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Matthew Griffin

FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film

Re: Gas Food Lodging

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2018 9:03 am
by What A Disgrace
Smithers! Release the Border Radio jokes!

Re: Gas Food Lodging

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2018 11:27 am
by domino harvey
That reminds me, I should add Border Radio to the Forum Reference Guide

EDIT: It is done

Re: Gas Food Lodging

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2018 11:43 am
by domino harvey
This actually doesn't sound terrible, though. Am I mistaken? Will I regret watching this like we all regret even having looked at the cover of Border Radio?

Re: Gas Food Lodging

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2018 12:04 pm
by KJones77
Has anyone seen this one? Sounds interesting.

Re: Gas Food Lodging

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2018 12:05 pm
by Dr Amicus
It got good reviews when it opened and I'm sure there was an article in Sight & Sound about it. I seem to remember really liking it when it first turned up on TV a couple of years later, but that's going back a bit.

Re: Gas Food Lodging

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2018 12:05 pm
by colinr0380
That Cinefile extra is excellent. That particular episode was a sort of context setting documentary made to introduce Channel 4's "Reel Women" season in 1995 which featured the premieres of Point Break, Blue Steel, Little Man Tate, Gas Food Lodging and Rosa Luxemburg, as well as some interesting curios such as Diane Kurys' film about a romantic affair during an international film shoot, A Man In Love and Susan Seidelman's sci-fi Making Mr Right, featuring a sexy John Malkovich! (Its kind of how I would imagine the love child between Dead Ringers and Earth Girls Are Easy to turn out! And weirdly the later Gattaca did almost the exact same ending, for almost entirely the same character reasons!)

I remember loving Gas Food Lodging (but bear in mind I quite enjoyed Border Radio too!), but I'm afraid it has been too long since seeing it to remember the details unfortunately.

Re: Gas Food Lodging

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2018 12:50 pm
by DarkImbecile
I'm still unreasonably bitter about this film despite never having seen it due to this terrible decision.

Re: Gas Food Lodging

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2018 4:09 pm
by zedz
On release I found this to be a very generic 90s indie, inoffensive but unexceptional (I actually prefer Border Radio).

The best Anders film I've seen, by a country mile, is Grace of My Heart: fine acting, great subject, fantastic soundtrack - with the sore-thumb exception of Dinosaur Jr.'s contributions, which are complete failures as Beach Boys soundalikes. I suppose loyalty is a virtue, but there are artists who can do the Beach Boys in their sleep, so why couldn't she have given XTC, or Teenage Fanclub, or the High Llamas a call?

Now that we know more about the film's background, Grace of My Heart would have made for a very topical release.

Re: Gas Food Lodging

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2018 5:10 pm
by John Cope
I haven't seen this since it was released but I loved it then. Of course some of it may be that I just especially appreciate the cast. But its portrait of this milieu, this community, seemed astute and convincingly detailed as well as sympathetic. Anyway, it resonated with me; that's all I can say at this point.

Re: Gas Food Lodging

Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2018 3:46 am
by colinr0380
The other thing that this release makes me hope for is that the next film by Anders that has really fallen into obscurity, 1993's Mi Vida Loca, might turn up at some point.