As all of you who pay attention to my blog [maybe two of you] know, I have a cult classic film, Mad Mazzy Mickle Goes Looking for Love, recurring in my fictional oeuvre. Modeled after The Rocky Horror Picture Show, MMM is a musical melodrama about sex, death, and drag racing in really cool cars. So far it has appeared in two places. One, a short story with the same title as the movie, follows Sarah, who played Mazzy, dealing with the legacy of stardom and typecasting in her 30s. The film also shows up in Me and My Muses, where college student Ellery watches it as part of her journey of self-discovery. I’m also planning to bring MMM into Zombieville, but I’m not giving any details.
Characters
Preferred name: Mad Mazzy Mickle
Given name: Lee Masters
Age: north of 16, south of 21
Sex: “Sure!”
Pronouns: Ze/hir
Race: “Fast.”
Family: Unknown, except for twin sibling who died shortly after birth
Colors: Pale blue, pale green
Motif: Comet
Style: Neo-retro astro-chic
Job: Ticket seller/concession manager/usher/factotum at the Psycholodeon, the city’s art-house movie theater
Pastime: Star gazing
Car: Hearse rat rod
Conflicts: Parents are actual movie stars, but ze keeps this a secret, wanting to live unaffected by them. Convinced that ze should have died instead of hir twin. Not-so-secret death wish.
Preferred name: [the] Dude
Given name used at start of movie: Richard “Dickie” John Hitchcock III
Age: 19
Sex: Male
Pronouns: He/him
Race: South Korean
Family: Adoptive super-rich white fathers, adopted younger brother
Colors: Black, dark grey
Motif: Moon
Style: Greaser/biker/Goth
Job: Back-up vocalist for the Thereminions, an ambient space techno band
Pastime: Lucid dreaming
Car: Limousine
Conflicts: Feels divorced from origins as a transracial adoptee. Dropped out of high school and now working on GED, but feels fake. Has no idea what he wants to do with his life, which freaks him the fuck out.
Preferred name: Cyn
Given name used at start of movie: Cynthia Ann “Cindy” Sweet
Age: 17
Sex: Female
Pronouns: She/her
Race: Black woman of color
Family: Working class, mother, father, two older sisters
Colors: Red, orange
Motif: Sun
Style: “Whatever’s cleanest.”
Job: Auto mechanic at Sweet Rides, the family garage
Pastime: Queering old movies
Car: 1980s station wagon with fake wood paneling that she rebuilt herself
Conflicts: Overshadowed by academically successful siblings. Feels invisible and ugly. Pretends that she doesn’t care about her practical, grease-stained look, but would much rather be “elegant.”
Plot
Intro to Dickie and Cindy and their respective families and conflicts. Then Mad Mazzy Mickle shows up, and we’re off. Everyone sings a song about what they want, and Mazzy sings seduction songs with both Dickie and Cindy with automotive puns. Seduction scenes also include stylistic transformations for Dickie/the Dude and Cindy/Cyn. Dickie/the Dude > handcuffs off, color on. Cindy/Cyn > grease off, elegance on.
For a brief, shining moment, Mazzy, the Dude, and Cyn form a happy family. Mazzy sings a song about finally feeling happy, worth something, excited about life, not wanting to escape to the stars. Planning for the big drag race — car prep, more automotive puns, increasing excitement and obsession.
Cyn’s and the Dude’s families confront them, warning them to slow down. The Dude and Cyn interpret this as rejection of their new selves, Mazzy, and their coming out in general. They remain defiant. In fact, they throw themselves into race prep even more. Mazzy sings, worrying about going too far, too fast, crashing and burning, how nothing good can last.
The race occurs: Mazzy competing against Cyn and the Dude. Cyn and the Dude tie for first, but something goes wrong with Mazzy’s car. It hits a tree and gets totaled. Cyn and the Dude discover that Mazzy appears not to have been in the car, but no one knows where ze went. Convinced that ze’s dead, each of them grieve with their families. The final scene shows Cyn and the Dude watching stars together, and they see a shooting star. Mazzy sings a song over the credits about being a star.
Fandom
MMM came out a while ago — I have to check my notes. Critical consensus thought that the young unknowns were hot and the costumes were fabulous, but the acting quality was dubious, script hackneyed, lyrics inane, and ending a tonally discordant downer. Popularly, though, MMM proved to be a hit, especially with genderqueer, trans, and/or queer youth, poly people, Goths, transracial adoptees, gay dudes, lesbian women, bi people, lucid dreamers, amateur astronomers, feminists, femmes — anyone who could find something of themselves in the main characters. MMM was a movie that people came out to and cited as life-changing. [It also changed the lives of Sarah, Sean, and Bebe, who played Mazzy, the Dude, and Cyn. They were inevitably typecast and confused with their characters, but that’s another story.]
MMM showings turned into gatherings for all the weirdos who identified with the movie on some level. Talking about the movie and celebrating favorite characters, fans naturally started yelling at the screen, dressing up for the showings, and acting out the whole thing in front of the screen. Over time, people formed casts to do regular showings, and an audience participation script was codified.
In the present day, though MMM is decades old, it remains popular for all the reasons it originally sparked interest. MMM now has a reputation of being a rite of passage that enhances one’s cred, especially if one is gay, lesbian, bi, poly, trans, genderqueer, intersex, non-binary, or otherwise non-conforming in sexuality and/or gender identity and/or gender expression. Given the intensely personal nostalgic admiration with which this crowd views MMM, you’d think it was an exemplar of sympathetic, inclusive representation, intersectional feminism, and general awesomeness. Let’s just say it’s not, which gives scholars endless fuel for their academic analyses of the film and its subculture.
I should also mention that the ending of MMM has prompted much controversy. It’s a tragedy on the scale of Romeo and Juliet. It’s the ol’ homophobic Kill the Queer stereotype write large. It condemns Mazzy by killing hir off. It idolizes Mazzy by making hir a star. Cyn and the Dude are totally getting together at the end, and this is awesome. Cyn and the Dude are totally getting together at the end, and this is some heteronormative cop-out. Mazzy is dead, having become a metaphorical star. Mazzy is not dead, because the song ze sings over the credits proves that ze survived the crash and became an actual star like hir parents. Let’s argue till the cows come home!