Party Girl (1995 film)

Mary is a free-spirited party girl who spends her time dancing in clubs and throwing house parties. After she is arrested for illegally charging attendees at an underground rave, she calls upon her godmother, Judy Lindendorf, to bail her out. In order for Mary to repay the loan, Judy employs her as a clerk at the library where she works. Mary reluctantly begins her new job while striking up a romance with Lebanese street vendor and aspiring teacher, Mustafa. Though she initially has misgivings about her new line of work, she is inspired to learn how to use the Dewey Decimal System after smoking a joint at work, causing her to miss a date with Mustafa. Gradually, she becomes very good at her job but she gets fired after having sex with Mustafa in the library. With no money to pay the accumulating rent, she and her roommate Leo, a club DJ, face eviction from her apartment. Mary sells her clothes at a vintage shop in order to get money for the rent.

She also goes to make up with Mustafa, but during one of her parties, she has a fight with him and takes drugs to forget. Her friend Nigel tries to take advantage of her, but she fights him off. The next day, she decides to get her life in order and become a librarian. Her fellow librarians help her sort out some of the areas in library sciences she could study. She invites Judy over to talk, but when they arrive Mary discovers to her horror that her friends have thrown her a surprise birthday party, complete with a male stripper. Mary tells a skeptical Judy that she has finally found her calling in life, and Mustafa and Leo tell Judy that Mary used her library science skills to help them with their careers. Impressed, Judy gives Mary her job back, and joins her god-daughter in dancing and eating hash brownies with her friends.

• Parker Posey as Mary
• Guillermo Díaz as Leo
• Liev Schreiber as Nigel
• Anthony DeSando as Derrick
• Sasha von Scherler as Judy Lindendorf
• Omar Townsend as Mustafa
• Simon Verhoeven as Kurt

The film had a budget of $150,000[3] and was shot in 19 days.[4] Much of the cast and crew were already immersed in the queer downtown club scene long before the movie was made. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Posey recalls that in the early 1990s she "would go out rollerblading at The Roxy on Sundays and to [the party] Love Machine, where I first saw RuPaul," and that, much like in Party Girl's club scenes, Posey "would dance with the queens, and they would just annihilate me on the dance floor with their moves."[3]

According to the director Daisy von Scherler Meyer, "the fashion was really invented for the film. [Michael Clancy] created an aesthetic for the character and for the movie and combined that with Parker Posey’s own fashion obsession."[3] Posey says that they relied on favors to assemble the outfits: "“The wardrobe designer, Michael Clancy, and his assistant Vicky Farrell...pulled a lot of things from their friends" like designer Todd Oldham.[5]

Much of the film takes place in clubs and at parties, and a supporting character is a DJ. There are many scenes directly discussing or playing music appropriate to the mid-1990s club scene, several local performers, and most music is diegetic, being clearly played in the scene.

The film opened on June 9, 1995, and grossed $472,370 during its initial theatrical release,[7] and has since become a cult classic. Posey says she often gets approached by librarians who are fans of the film: "Librarians and people who work in bookstores are like “Oh my God, thank you so much. Party Girl made me want to become a librarian.”[3] Von Scherler Meyer thinks Party Girl resonates with audiences because of the movie's authentic depiction of underrepresented communities: "When people say 'Oh, the world [in Party Girl] is so diverse,' it’s like 'No. That’s the world. You don’t represent the world in your stuff. Why is your world so segregated?' I think the world is messed up, and Party Girl is normal."[3] The movie has a 79% on Rotten Tomatoes from 33 reviews.[8]

A television series based on the film was produced in 1996, starring Christine Taylor as Mary and Swoosie Kurtz as Judy. Although six episodes were filmed, only four were aired and the show was quickly cancelled.[11]

• Party Girl at IMDb
• Party Girl at AllMovie