Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Female Trouble (1974)

Dawn Davenport: You pay some respect to your mother, Miss Taffy. And if I catch you spying and nosing around here one more time I'm going to put you in the mental hospital.

Gator: She can't help it. She's retarded.

Taffy: I am not retarded!

Dawn Davenport: Oh yes you are, Taffy. I had you tested when you were a little girl. A staff of doctors examined you. And maybe the reason you don't remember is that they told me you are most definitely retarded.

Taffy: I never went to any hospital. 

That is a rotten, filthy lie!

Dawn Davenport: I'm afraid it's the truth. I don't like it any better than you do. To think that my genes were polluted by your birth is not a very pleasant thought.

Taffy: Oh, how could I call you my mother? 

I wish I'd been an orphan!  

Gator: You can tell she's retarded. Look at her face. 

She has the face of an old woman.

Dawn Davenport: Oh, it's true. Look in the mirror, Taffy. For 14, you don't look so good. It's because you've been such a brat all your life that now all that brattishness is showing in your face... the face of a retarded brat.

There's not a single day of my life that goes by where I don't find some line of dialogue from Female Trouble on the tip of my tongue - today it just happens to be this beautiful passage. My boyfriend said he read John Waters recently opine that Serial Mom is his best made movie, and while I get what he's saying - it's actually well shot, tells a succinct story acted out by professional actors, and is very very very funny - Female Trouble is his masterpiece, says me. I mean if nothing else it gives me the opportunity, every time I have guests over, to holler, "HEY LADY! HAVE SOME CHIPS!" What more does one want from life?

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