Studio Comparisons Forced Drastic Changes To Drop Dead Gorgeous

Without hyperbole, Michael Patrick Jann ("The State") and Lona Williams' ("Sugar & Spice") mockumentary comedy film about a small-town Minnesota beauty pageant is my favorite comedy film, ever. As a former teenage Midwest beauty queen myself, "Drop Dead Gorgeous" speaks to me on a religious level. My blood is not red, it is Mount Rose, and I am an American Teen Princess Pageant girl for life. "Drop Dead Gorgeous" turns 25 this year — one of the many teen girl masterpieces released in 1999 — but is still criminally underseen due to the film's poor box office performance at the time of release and subsequent years of physical releases being out of print. It's a shame because the cast includes Kirsten Dunst, Ellen Barkin, Allison Janney, Kirstie Alley, Denise Richards, Brittany Murphy, Amy Adams (her debut role!), Alexandra Holden, Nora Dunn, Mo Gaffney, Will Sasso, Matt Malloy, Mike McShane, Mindy Sterling, Sam McMurray, and the voice of Thomas Lennon as the documentarian, which is a real murderer's row of talent.

In many ways, "Drop Dead Gorgeous" is almost an anti-teen movie; the main conflict of the pageant is not just a competition, but also many of the contestants are being taken out one by one under mysterious circumstances. It's a delightfully dark comedy, but one that may have been too subversive for audiences primed on the teen girl fare of the time. Writer Louis Pietzman (and full disclosure, a friend I have made because of a mutual love of "Drop Dead Gorgeous") got to the bottom of it all with the complete oral history of the film, and, as it turns out, the studio was afraid of exactly that.

New Line Cinema was initially very supportive of the script's twisted sense of humor but started panicking once it realized the film wasn't tracking for the huge numbers other teen releases that year were earning. To fix it, the studio demanded extensive edits to lighten things up and put the film more in line with the teen girl classic "Clueless."

"Drop Dead Gorgeous" ends with pageant director Gladys Leeman (Kirstie Alley) being caught for the murders related to the pageant after her daughter Becky (Denise Richards) — whom Gladys rigged the pageant for her to win — dies when her swan float explodes before the start of a parade. Gladys is shipped off to jail and Becky's runner-up Amber Atkins (Kirsten Dunst) takes over the crown and advances to win Miss Minnesota's American Teen Princess after all of the other contestants get food poisoning from spoiled shellfish.

Sadly, when Amber arrives for the America's American Teen Princess Pageant, she and the other contestants learn the pageant is canceled and the company that runs it has gone out of business. Years later, Gladys breaks out of prison and ends up in a police shoot-out at the Mount Rose supermarket, intending to kill Amber. A stray bullet kills a reporter on the scene, and Amber takes over her microphone to continue reporting, leading the network to give her a job as a news anchor — bringing her one step closer to fulfilling her dream of becoming another pageant queen turned reporter, Diane Sawyer.

But the original ending was much darker, and audiences hated it. "In the original ending, Kirstie actually killed herself in prison," director Michael Patrick Jann said. "In the next scene, there was just her feet swinging in the jail cell, and it went from her feet swinging down to an ashtray with a still-lit cigarette." The shooting spree was instead carried out by Iona Hildebrandt (Claudia Wilkens) a former Mount Rose American Teen Princess from World War II (who had to give up her tiara for scrap metal) who snapped regarding what the pageant had become. "The first time we showed it, as dark as other parts of the movie are, the whole theater went, 'Ugh,'" Jann continued. "That was too much. That was one step over the line."

New Line pushed for more edits to resemble "Clueless." Don't get me wrong, I love Cher Horowitz, but "Clueless" is a fantasy film for teenagers. "Drop Dead Gorgeous" speaks to the people with big dreams who grew up in flyover states and did things like compete in podunk pageants in the hopes it would give them the skills to escape their hometowns. Shifting the film from a Minnesota mockumentary to a glitzy Hollywood story would have been impossible.

"It's too late," Jann said. "It's not like that. This is for the girls who went to 'Clueless' and were like, 'F*** them.'" Overhauling the film this close to the finish line was not only next to impossible, it was also a betrayal to the very heart of the film and what makes it so special compared to its contemporaries like "She's All That," "10 Things I Hate About You," "Never Been Kissed," and "American Pie." This was a movie for the "Jawbreaker," "But I'm a Cheerleader," and "Cruel Intentions" crowd — freaks, weirdos [complimentary], and queer kids.

"I just felt burned by the fact that everyone was so positive about it, and then everyone was so negative about it, like the flip of a switch," said Jann. "When they do market testing, it's like, all of a sudden an idea that everyone loves becomes an idea that everybody's like, 'I don't know...'" I've written before about how group testing is an inherently flawed system that only benefits films catering to the status quo, which "Drop Dead Gorgeous" is most certainly not. Unfortunately, New Line wanted this edgy film to be a hit with the mainstream, which is an awful lot like putting lipstick on a pig. "Instead of succeeding at being offbeat," Jann said, "it failed at being mainstream."

Fortunately, "Drop Dead Gorgeous" has found its audience over the years, and those of us preaching the gospel will never stop. After all, Jesus loves winners.