David Schmader loves bad movies, but even he has his limits. Having become enamored of the Paul Verhoeven-Joe Eszterhas sleazefest Showgirls after watching it at the insistence of a friend, Schmader attended a screening of 2001’s Glitter, in the hopes that the campy Mariah Carey vehicle would turn out to be a “new Showgirls.” It wasn’t—he was confounded by the film’s 1980s setting and use of Robert Palmer’s “I Didn’t Mean To Turn You On”—but the film at least provided a memorable theatrical experience. “There weren’t many of us [there]—10 of one group and 10 of another,” Schmader told The A.V. Club. “And 10 of us were there to cackle, and 10 people were there like ‘Shh! We’re trying to watch Glitter!’”
The screenings of Showgirls, Leonard Part 6, and other notorious cinematic stinkers hosted by Schmader, a Seattle-based journalist and stage performer, provide similarly memorable experiences. Like an academic counterpoint to the irreverent riffs of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (or Austin’s own Master Pancake Theater), Schmader provides a running commentary on and a deep understanding of these movies’ multiple failures—giving them a second, legitimately entertaining life. Schmader will present Showgirls at the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown Dec. 8, but tonight, he’ll be at the theater for a screening of Purple Rain—a movie that’s by no means good, but is a hell of a lot better than the movies Prince made after it. In anticipation of the screenings, Schmader phoned The A.V. Club to talk about the terrible thrills of filmmakers drunk on their own power, why no one is surprised when a Jennifer Lopez movie is bad, and which recently released movie might be that long sought after “new Showgirls.”
The A.V. Club: What do you look for in a bad movie? Is there a rubric you follow?
David Schmader: The platonic ideal is always going to be Showgirls. I did a series of screenings up here a year ago that made think, “What does Showgirls have? It’s firing on all cylinders, but what are those cylinders?” Constant surprise—so many bad movies, you recognize how they’re going to be bad and they play themselves out. It’s why bad J. Lo movies aren’t fun, because it’s like “She’s a maid—and now she’s in love,” but there’s no surprise to it. There’s usually not an element of surprise and horror to the badness.
Bad acting, bad directing—hubris is the main thing, also. With Showgirls, these were people at the top of their professional game, at least. That was the highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood [Eszterhas]—he and Verhoeven were drunk with power after Basic Instinct. They had that weird Hollywood phase of glory where they were just pooping gold. And Showgirls was a part of it—there was so much hubris there that it wasn’t like picking on midgets. There’s no surprise when a B-movie or a Lifetime movie is bad—because the stakes aren’t so high.
And then the last thing is that magical je ne sais quoi. With Showgirls, it’s nauseating tonal shifts—they keep going between heartwarming and the foulest pornography ever.
AVC: On the hubris note, you’ve said previously that Madonna is flummoxed by her inability to conquer film in the same way she conquered pop music—do you see the same frustrations throughout Prince’s filmography?
DS: There’s a ton of similarities. They both had this pristine debut when they were still hungry and letting themselves get bossed around by professional directors, where they weren’t powerful enough where they were like, “I’m Prince, I get to direct!” or, “I’m Madonna, I get to choose who’s in the cast!” In Desperately Seeking Susan, Madonna is delightful, and in Purple Rain, Prince is amazing. He had a director that was smart enough to say, “Just say things—we’re going to know you’re a band because you play music together.” And then once Purple Rain was a hit, he was mad with power, and we got Under The Cherry Moon, which was the opposite of charming. Same thing happened with Madonna—once we got to The Next Best Thing, she’s calling the camera shots, she has a swath of lighting across her head that shadows her neck in every single shot. And it’s just that Barbara Streisand thing where you have too much power, and no one’s there to say, “You look stupid.”
AVC: A lot of the movies you presented in your Bad To Worse series had a musical element. Are songs something that can prop up a bad movie and make it watchable?