Jubilee!, the last Las Vegas show featuring showgirls, closed in 2016.
If you visit the Strip you can see something resembling showgirls — women posing in revealing rhinestone sets and tall feather headpieces, offering to take photos with tourists — but you won’t see them perform. Director Gia Coppola’s new film The Last Showgirl gives viewers the chance to relish an old Vegas icon. In a dreamy 89 minutes, it follows a fictional veteran of this now-lost art, Shelly Gardner (played by Pamela Anderson), as she struggles to reinvent herself when her trade becomes obsolete.
During a recent virtual press conference, Anderson told press she wanted a rebirth for herself, from her image as a Playboy model and red-bathing-suit-clad Baywatch star to that of a serious actress. Her Last Showgirl role has already earned her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Female Actor in a Motion Picture (Drama) — though she lost out to I’m Still Here’s Fernanda Torres at Sunday’s ceremony. In recent years, Anderson has starred as Roxie Hart in Chicago on Broadway; was the subject of the documentary Pamela, a Love Story; released Love, Pamela: A Memoir, which featured her poetry; and even authored a cookbook titled I Love You: Recipes From the Heart.
Filmmaker Coppola (yes, of the Hollywood Coppolas) says that while she was watching Anderson’s documentary, it struck her that she was the one for the part, which was written by Kate Gersten.
“I could see that there were some parallels, but I could also see a woman that was really hungry to express herself creatively, and that she has just a well of knowledge with art and so much to draw from that I knew it had to be her,” Coppola said during the press conference.
Anderson is supported by a nearly unrecognizable Jamie Lee Curtis, who plays Shelly’s best friend Annette, a former showgirl, with perfect comedic timing and rough-around-the-edges attitude. (An aside: I appreciate that both Anderson and Curtis have been vocal about their decisions to avoid extensive plastic surgery and age naturally.) Dave Bautista is perfectly cast as tough-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside club manager Eddie. I loved seeing one of my childhood favorites, former Disney Channel regular Brenda Song, execute a compelling dramatic role, and another lady of my era, Miley Cyrus, provided the haunting original song “Beautiful That Way.” Carrying some of the film’s most heart-wrenching scenes, Billie Lourd co-stars as Shelly’s daughter Hannah, and Kiernan Shipka plays young showgirl Jodie, bringing depth to the story.
Hannah wants to be a photographer, and Shelly bristles at another character’s suggestion that her daughter should go into graphic design, a more stable career path. Shelly’s showgirl schedule always made Hannah feel neglected, and now there isn’t much to show for it — but Shelly loved it, and doesn’t that count for something? It’s a sentiment that those in precarious professions can identify with.
When the Scene asked Anderson how she hopes her younger co-stars’ Hollywood experience will differ from her own, she pointed out that she feels former child stars Song and Shipka and legacy actress Lourd (the daughter of Carrie Fisher and granddaughter of Debbie Reynolds) have more experience in the industry than even she does.
“I just hope that they are taking on projects that they’re very proud of,” Anderson said. “Because everything is in this world forever, so every choice we make leads us down this road. I feel like I took an unorthodox route to the beginning of my career. This feels like the beginning of my career, so I’ve just scratched the surface.”
Though I assumed The Last Showgirl would feature more dance performance sequences than it did, by the end of the movie, I didn’t care. (I was too wrapped up in a feeling I describe as “Landslide-y” — a melancholic state, its name inspired by the Fleetwood Mac song, during which I think about the passage of time.) The Last Showgirl does feature show-stopping Bob Mackie designs that had been in museum storage for 30 years. The filmmakers also enlisted some of the dancers from Jubilee! to help the actors manage the heavy costumes.
Anderson told press she wasn’t sure if she’d ever get to do a dramatic film like The Last Showgirl, so she gave it all she has. It will be clear to viewers that it’s personal.
“Everything I’ve gone through in my life, from childhood till now, it was all worth it,” Anderson said. “I put it all in this film. It has a place to live now, and I can let a lot of that go.”
