“There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about ‘The Wizard of Oz.’”
David Lynch once said this during a Q&A at the New York Film Festival. And looking through his filmography, pretty much every single film can be connected back to the 1939 classic, in ways both obvious and subtle.
Well, it seems a different David has been thinking equally as often about “The Wizard of Oz.” But his brain takes us less in the direction of “Mulholland Drive” and more towards “Wet Hot American Summer.”
Filmmaker David Swain (with a co-writing assist from Ken Marino) is back with “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass,” a farcical romp that stretches from Kansas to Oz (AKA, Los Angeles), following our sunny, always-smiling protagonist (Zoey Deutch) on her quest to “find the wizard.” And by that, I mean, her quest to have sex with Jon Hamm (played, winningly, by himself).
Swain’s strengths have always leaned toward the stupider side of satire, and “Gail Daughtry” is no different. With a winning cast who are willing to go for broke to make fun of everything under the sun – whether that be Hollywood or themselves – “Gail Daughtry’s Celebrity Sex Pass” is a silly summer delight.
When we meet Gail, a hairdresser living her best life in rural Kansas, she’s set to marry her wet blanket of a fiancé, Tom (Michael Cassidy), in two weeks. They’re ridiculously, disgustingly in love, and one day have that classic conversation that every couple has joked about at one point or another – which celebrity are you allowed to have sex with if given the chance?
Gail picks Jon Hamm, and Tom initially picks Tilda Swinton (the one cool thing he’s ever done, probably). But after going to a book signing featuring none other than Jennifer Aniston, he changes his pick to the actress, and then promptly has sex with her. Gail, heartbroken, spontaneously joins her friend Otto (Miles Guiterrez-Riley) on a trip to Los Angeles.
“I just thought it was a silly little exercise,” Gail says, mascara running down her cheeks in the airport security line. “Not actual license to have sex with Rachel from ‘Friends.’” But, while Gail doesn’t go to L.A. with the express mission of having sex with Jon Hamm, that dream quickly becomes more than a silly little exercise for her as well. She collects a merry band of misfits along the way, mistakenly gets wrapped up in an Italian crime plot, and tries to pitch Jon Hamm a movie. You know, normal L.A. stuff.
Instead of lampooning summer camp as with “Wet Hot American Summer,” this time Wain and company are lampooning Hollywood itself – particularly as an Oz-like mecca for the masses. For Gail and Otto, Hollywood Boulevard is a place where they try delicacies like Starbucks’ frappucinos and McDonalds’ quarter pounders with cheese. When the duo is initially looking for Jon Hamm, a celebrity house tour guide played by Michael Ian Black points them in the direction of Creative Artists Agency (CAA). Immediately, an angelic choir launches into an ode to CAA as if it were the pearly gates – which to Gail and Otto, it might as well be.
David Lynch and the legacy of “Mulholland Drive” are more baked into the DNA of “Gail Daughty” than even their shared inspiration might suggest. As Gail, Deutch is taking on an exaggerated, funhouse version of Naomi Watts’ already exaggerated character in Lynch’s film. Her performance plays with her natural girl-next-door charm, stretching that character to its satirical limits. Her smile is a little too constant, and stretched a little too wide, playing up earnest yokel to great comedic effect.
The thing that makes the comedy in “Gail Daughtry” work is that, like Deutch, everyone is game to poke fun at themselves. From Aniston being willing to appear as a version of herself doing a dramatic reading from a cookbook at a book signing in nowhere Kansas, to John Slattery making a total buffoon of himself (and running away with the film in the process), there’s absolutely nothing self-conscious about any of the performances or the movie itself. It’s able to oscillate wildly within its comedy, running the gamut of the supremely dumb to the supremely dark (there’s a joke about what happens to Gail’s parents toward the end of the film that is completely out of left field, unexplained, and all the funnier for it).
That oscillation keeps you on your toes, and gets at the heart of the type of comedy that Swain and the rest of his cohort are dealing in. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, staying – to quote the end of the film – “loose and freaky,” and making us all laugh in the process.
