fORT yORK
Friday, June 24, 2022

but i’m a cheerleader

With the short film I Wanna Make a Movie, or I Wanna Die Trying

"Two high-school girls fall in love at a reparative therapy camp." Jamie Babbit’s original one-sentence pitch may have been enough get Babbit the funding for this mainstay of the New Queer Cinema – a body of formally innovative queer work that made waves on the film festival circuit during the 1990s – but it undersells the utter charm and campy satirical perspective that makes this film a beloved queer cult classic. When But I’m a Cheerleader’s innocent teen Megan Bloomfield (an early career Natasha Lyonne) is suspected by her parents of being a lesbian, she’s thrown into conversion therapy. Despite Megan’s insistence that she’s straight – “but I’m a cheerleader!” – she’s whisked off to a camp run by Mary Brown (played by a delightfully campy Cathy Moriarty) and “ex-gay” Mike (a never better RuPaul) to learn how to be a heterosexual alongside other unfortunate teens, including unexpected love interest Graham (Clea Duvall).
Spoiler alert: it doesn’t work. 

Toronto-based filmmakers Eric Bizzarri & Pony Nicole Herauf explore similar themes of failing to perform in I Wanna Make A Movie, or I Wanna Die Trying. Struggling actor Dom is trying so hard to find her breakout acting role, and she thinks she finally found it in Dallas: a foul-mouthed, fearless cowboy who is everything she’s not. Her best friend Jack, however, throws a wrench in her plans, jeopardizing Dom’s dreams and their friendship.