You Live Your Life in the Songs You Hear
BANG BANG BABY – a musical fantasy by Jeffrey St. Jules
Stepphy
(limited spoilers) ⁓ Stepphy Holliday (Jane Levy) lives with her alcoholic father George (Peter Stormare) in Lonely Arms, a fictional Canadian town fifteen miles from the US border, somewhere between Toronto and Montreal. She listens to American pop music, watches American TV, and aspires to be a film star. Stepphy is about to graduate high school, and with the help of Bennett (Stephen Joffe), a nerdy friend who has a crush on her, she applies to the American Ingenue Talent Competition in New York City and receives an acceptance letter. But her father, who was once himself a country singer, refuses her permission to go, and burns the acceptance letter (which she is required to bring with her) so she can’t run away. It is January, 1963.
Stepphy watching TV in her room. That’s likely a photo of her mother, who left shortly after she was born, on the wall behind her.
Months later, on prom night, Stepphy gets drunk and heads for the high school where she asks Bennett to take her away from all this. He can’t, even though he wants to, because he has another date for the prom. (Stepphy earier turned down his prom invitation, believing she would be in New York instead.)
Outside on the school steps, Stepphy sits drinking. Seeing her vulnerability, local chemical plant manager Fabian (David Reale) cheerfully agrees to take her for a drive. The ensuing date rape results in a pregnancy and Stepphy drifts into a fantasy world in which her favourite actor, Bobby Shore (a thinly disguised version of Fabiano Anthony Forte (aka Fabian) played by Justin Chatwin) comes through town. His car breaks down and they fall in love.
Bobby and his co-star Fifi (Chloe Rose) on black-and-white TV
Stepphy was watching one of Bobby Shore’s films, co-starring Fifi (Chloe Rose), on a black and white TV in her garage, when the postman delivers her acceptance letter. Stepphies’ developing fantasies share several elements with this film.
But all of it might not be fantasy. In BANG BANG BABY’s opening scene, New York film producer Jack Avery (Seán Cullen) worries about the state of his latest production. “Where is Bobby anyhow?” he asks someone on the phone. “He’s supposed to be here today for a press conference. Oh he’s finding himself? You tell him to find himself on an airplane and get here.” A siren distracts Avery, and his receptionist Joan (Jennifer Goodhue) tells him it’s coming from outside. It sounds much like the siren that will announce the chemical spill in Lonely Arms.
Joan
Joan has a ceramic bust of Bobby Shore is on her desk that is just like the one in Stepphy’s upstairs hallway, which Bennett gave her when he invited her to the prom, just before she turned him down.
There are times when reality intrudes into Stepphy’s fantasies. The best one of those is when Bobby points to a satellite that is far too visible in the sky and tells her “My President put that up there so we can bomb people from space.”
Bobby and his manager Helmut (Kristian Bruun), an overly fastidious man from East Germany who dislikes everything about Bobby’s involvement with Stepphy, and the little town of Lonely Arms.
Stepphy wears a pink hat and coat that looks quite a lot like a northern adaptation of the outfit Jackie Kennedy wore on the day of her husband’s assassination. (It has a fur collar and a more practical hat.) She wears it to the post office to mail her American Ingenue application. She fantasizes a production number of the film’s title song at what seems to be an open mike night at the local bar. But that production number (which all by itself makes the film worth watching) only occurs after a beat poet says: “Wake up. You’re all lost and alone in a fever dream, man.” and is ordered off the stage by an emcee who calls him a “peacenik”.
Stepphy Holliday in front of her father’s International pickup truck
Walking through town, Bobby articulates his social perspective: “You know what, baby doll? I truly feel like we are on the brink of something amazing in our time. I mean son we’ll all be interconnected by highways. Our lives will be simplified by technology, and you folks up here, I mean you’ll be just as much a part of things as folks in New York. I mean hell I could live right here with this beautiful countryside. It’ll inspire me to write songs that’ll touch the hearts of folks all over America.” Then they run into a man with a noticeable goiter, and Bobby suggests such people should not be allowed in the street.
George walks Stepphy down the aisle
On the night of the rape, Stepphy was wearing the pink coat but not the hat, and there was a toxic leak at Fabian’s chemical plant resulting in a quarantine of the town. This is perhaps a reference to Kennedy’s quarantine of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Stepphy imagines that, because of the leak, her unborn child is a mutant.
This story brings to mind another tale of toxic culture, Danny Perez’s ANTIBIRTH. That film also centers on a pregnancy resulting from date rape, and has a disembodied head that might parallel the ceramic bust of Bobby. ANTIBIRTH could function as a sequel to BANG BANG BABY, with the worst parts of Stepphy’s fantasies made real. The similarity is coincidental though, and unlike ANTIBIRTH, this film has a happy ending.
The ceramic bust of Bobby Shore. — Bobby Shore is also the name of the film’s cinematographer.
Writer/director Jeffrey St Jules explained his inspiration for the film to That Shelf: “The most basic inspiration I had,” he said, “was Ann-Margret’s character in Bye Bye Birdie. In that movie she plays this wholesome girl that has this kind of madness inside her, and I wanted to see what could be done if we expanded upon that. Her character in that movie is literally stuck in a musical, and she can’t relate to all of these one-dimensional characters around her…That was really what I wanted Stepphie’s life to feel like.”
Miscellaneous Info
The address of ‘American Ingenue’ – 209 Fairbank Crescent – is not a valid New York address, but the address does exist in Thunder Bay, Ontario.
The film’s soundtrack is available as a CD, or as a download. Jane Levy sings five of the eighteen songs.
Production has wrapped in Newfoundland and Labrador on Jeffrey St. Jules‘s upcoming science fiction drama THE SILENT PLANET, which stars Elias Koteas and Briana Middleton as two people sentenced to hard labour for life on a distant world. As time passes the two begin to lose their memories and their sense of self. Quiver Distribution has obtained world distribution rights.
Steve Joffe (Bennett) is also lead singer for the Toronto band “Birds of Bellwoods“. Their limited edition folk-rock vinyl LP “Everything You Want” was released in 2023 and is available from Wax Trax Records.
** — Revised. Originally published on 27 February 2017