Party Girl is a 1995 American comedy-drama film starring Parker Posey, directed by Daisy von Scherler Mayer, and the first feature film to premiere on the Internet.
Synopsis
Mary is a free spirit filling her days dancing in clubs and throwing house parties. After being arrested for organizing an underground rave, she calls upon her godmother Judy Lindendorf to bail her out. In order for Mary to repay the loan, Judy hires her as a clerk at the library she manages. Mary reluctantly begins her new job while striking up a romance with Lebanese street vendor and aspiring teacher, Mustafa. Despite initial misgivings about work, Mary is inspired to learn how to use the Dewey Decimal System after smoking a joint. Gradually, she becomes very good at her job, but is later fired after having sex with Mustafa in the library. With no money to pay the accumulating rent, she and her roommate, club DJ Leo, face eviction from their apartment. In desperation, Mary sells her vintage couture in order to pay the bills.
During one of her parties, Mary takes drugs to forget a fight with Mustafa. The next day, she decides to get her life in order and become a librarian, and her fellow workers discuss a path of graduate study. She invites Judy over for a serious talk, but then Mary is dismayed to discover a raucous surprise birthday party complete with a male stripper. Mary implores with a skeptical Judy that she has finally found her calling in life, then Leo and Mustafa each share how Mary used her library science skills to help them improve their careers. Impressed, Judy gives Mary her job back, then joins the party.
Cast
Parker Posey as Mary
Anthony DeSando as Derrick
Guillermo Díaz as Leo
Donna Mitchell as Rene
Liev Schreiber as Nigel
Omar Townsend as Mustafa
Sasha von Scherler as Judy Lindendorf
Becky Mode as Ann
Simon Verhoeven as Kurt
Production
The film had a budget of $150,000 and was shot in 19 days. Much of the cast and crew were already immersed in the queer downtown club scene long before the film was made. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Posey recalls that in the early 1990s she "would go out rollerblading at The Roxy on Sundays and to [the party] Love Machine, where I first saw RuPaul", and that, much like in Party Girl club scenes, Posey "would dance with the queens, and they would just annihilate me on the dance floor with their moves."
According to director Daisy von Scherler Meyer, "the fashion was really invented for the film. [Michael Clancy] created an aesthetic for the character and for the movie and combined that with Parker Posey's own fashion obsession." Posey says that they relied on favors to assemble the outfits: "The wardrobe designer, Michael Clancy, and his assistant Vicky Farrell ... pulled a lot of things from their friends", such as designer Todd Oldham.
Internet broadcast
Party Girl had an Internet premiere ahead of its wide release, transmitted from the office of Glenn Fleishman and his Point of Presence Company on June 3, 1995. While the early video transmission was limited to black and white, it marked the first time a feature film with an American movie theater release was broadcast generally online. Appearing live in the PoPCo offices, Posey welcomed Internet viewers and then introduced the film.
Fleishman recalled the event: I helped launch the first official full-length [Internet] movie premiere in 1995 in my offices in Seattle. The film was broadcast to several hundred people worldwide over a CU-SeeMe reflector at Point of Presence Company's offices in downtown and then [in] a few minutes, it was projected at The Egyptian in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. Parker Posey was in our offices to hit the start button on the broadcast. I was one cog in a larger set of wheels that involved the Seattle International Film Festival, Film.com (now part of RealNetworks), First Look Releasing, and the film's producers, as well as another online development company and a CUSeeMe engineering consultant, Joseph Kahan who also worked at NASA down in Texas. The launch was shown on NBC Nightly News in a five-minute segment at the bottom of the Sunday broadcast that week.
Music
With much of the action driven by clubs, party scenes, and a DJ character, most of the film's music is diegetic, with characters often engaging with music appropriate to the mid-1990s club scene.