YKWIM #69: Forget About It Friday - Holiday Heart (2000)
Open your hearts, baby!
Hello there! Here we are again. For anyone who needs a refresher, every other week is Forget About It Friday, and here’s the deal:
Forget About It Friday
A look back on films, both theatrical and made-for-TV, that have slipped from the pop cultural collective consciousness over the last thirty or so years. Most of these will be from the late 70s through the 90s, though not exclusively. Do these movies hold up? Have we forgotten them for good reason? Will the plots get weirder and weirder? Stay tuned!
I picked this movie because I thought it would be seasonably appropriate. There are five million Christmas movies and with a name like this, how could it not be? It wasn’t until about a half hour in that I was like, wait a minute, where’s Jingle Bells? There’s ten seconds of snowflakes falling at the very end and that’s about as holly jolly as it gets. But Ving Rhames and Alfre Woodard act the hell out of this. Is it campy? Has not aged well in some spots? Did it still make me tear up? Yes, yes, yesssss.
Originally an Off-Broadway play by Cheryl L. West, this was produced as a TV movie for Showtime. That means the budget was low and the number of eff-bombs were high for the sheer reason that they could do it. That’s premium cable, baby!
Also, just for clarity’s sake, I went with he/him pronouns for Holiday because that’s what other characters said.
Holiday Heart (2000)
Provided description, typos and all: The story of a gay drag queen (Ving Rhames) who begins to care for a girl, whose mother (Alfre Woodard) is fighting drug addiction, but a dealer (Mykelti Williamson) threatens everything.
Where to watch it: Stream on Prime, $3.99 rental on iTunes
We kick things off at a Black church service, everyone singing and clapping. In the center of it all is the piano player in the role of Master of Ceremonies. Love starting off with a blast of high energy.
The scene transitions to a bar. At first glance, you might think you were in a jazz club thanks to the general swankiness and a few old white people in the crowd, but oh no no, my friends. We’re at The Penthouse, the home base of Holiday Heart, the star drag queen of the last twenty years. Holiday is the piano player we just saw moment ago and he’s the center of attention while lipsyncing along to The Supremes song, “Baby Love.” Everyone loves Holiday.
But when Holiday parks his cherry red Thunderbird convertible at home that night, he leans back and looks at the house with somber eyes. We flashback to years ago, and Holiday’s boyfriend Fisher surprises him with the duplex. “If anyone asks, you have your side and I have mine!” Fisher is a Chicago cop and so of course, after this small bit of happiness, the next scene is Fisher’s funeral. Holiday is in full drag and trying to sing “Baby Love” but breaks down and has to be lead away from the podium, screaming. As a way to get over Fisher’s death, Holiday decides to go on their dream trip to Paris, buying a plane ticket from a very creepy travel agent.
For Halloween, Holiday goes out as Billie Holiday and his friend Blue is Marie Antoinette. The Thunderbird breaks down and Holiday ends up on a sidewalk with a cell phone the size of a brick in one hand and a phone book in the other. Whoops! Good thing you kept that phone book in the trunk for emergencies.
A little girl runs out of an apartment and screaming. Who does she run up to and grab by the hand for help? Holiday, duh. Inside, a man is beating her mother, Wanda, and Holiday steps in and punches the guy back, brandishing a knife when the guy won’t back off. Holiday takes Wanda and Nikki home, back to the empty duplex across the hall from his, and tells them they’ll figure things out in the morning. Nikki is very excited to have her own room even if there was no bed at the moment.
Over the next several weeks, the three of them start to bond, celebrating birthdays, sharing meals, surprising Nikki with a cute painted bedroom, participating in her school life, and by New Years Eve, they’ve formed a little family. Holiday cancels his Paris trip to stay with them. It’s really sweet, which means it’s all going to fall apart very soon.
Wanda has a history of drug problems and bad relationships (“Men are her weakness,” says her own daughter). She really wants to be a writer and like all people who want to be writers, Wanda tells everyone about this until their eyes glaze over. She works on her writing, click-clacking slowly on a typewriter and going out of her mind, like all people who want to be writers. Trust me on that one.
While out at one of Holiday’s drag shows, Wanda catches the eye of Silas, a limo driver-drug dealer. Silas quickly bonds with Nikki and drives a wedge between Holiday and Wanda. I can’t do justice describing their confrontation. It must be seen:
After another drag show, Silas threatens Holiday and gives him a wad of cash for rent, telling Holiday to leave them alone. Part of me is like, Holiday, you’re their landlord, kick them out already, but Holiday just wants a family to love, even as that family literally replaces him, taking another family picture like the above on the movie poster with Silas in the middle.
Even when they’re mean to him, he can’t help himself. Holiday goes to Nikki’s school talent show, sneaking in the back and leaving before Wanda can see him. Back at home, he acts all nonchalant, like, oh yeah, how was that talent show? Oh, Holiday. Now that he’s alone again, Holiday rebooks that trip to Paris, for real this time, performing one last goodbye show.
Silas has to go away on a “business” trip and that’s when things really start to fall apart. Wanda is using again and she runs off with a van full of people with drugs. Nikki tearfully admits to Holiday that her mom is gone and apologizes for avoiding him. He becomes her only guardian and takes care of her, baptizing her in his church.
The passage of time is unclear here, but a good bit goes by and now it’s Nikki’s grade school graduation. She won a poetry writing contest and gets to read it out loud at graduation. Wanda sneaks in and hears some of it. She gets upset and has a breakdown in the street before leaving in the van again. Holiday takes Nikki to a fancy celebration dinner and they briefly run into Wanda at home, stealing the answering machine before leaving again.
When Silas comes back, it’s like he’s an entirely different character. The tension between him and Holiday melts away over a game of Donkey Kong 64 (!) and the two of them start dropping off Nikki at school, eating meals together, and now it’s a little three person family with him, Holiday, and Nikki.
Silas has to do a drug run after picking up Nikki from school one day and the dude is like, okay, let’s drop you off at home… unless you don’t mind coming along? MY DUDE. She leaves the limo while he’s gone and Nikki wanders the streets until she finds Wanda in a run-down house.
Woof, Wanda. She’s in rough shape.
Nikki begs her to go home, but she’s in too deep. The guy starts eyeing up Nikki (UGH) and Wanda throws her under the bus. Nikki kicks him in the nuts and runs off, but instead he takes it out on poor Wanda. :(
It’s a tough time. Nikki is caught making out with a boy in the duplex and Holiday loses it, but she’s just acting out because she been through enough trauma to fill a dump truck. They have a good long hug and cry.
For Christmas (here we go!), Holiday wants to buy a bike for Nikki to make up for the one Wanda sold years earlier for drugs. He calls around and gets a bike with the same tassels on the handlebars. He shows up at The Penthouse to pick it up. Who is running her hands through those tassels? Wanda, duh. She swears she wants to get clean this time and Holidays says he’ll help her.
Wanda wheels the bike to the back of the building. The drug van is back there and instead of going with those men, she’s breaking free. A couple of the guys attack Holiday, but he easily beats them off. Still, he can’t stop what happens next…
Everything moves in super slow motion as the drug dealer’s car runs in top speed… right at Wanda.
Cut to black, and then a voiceover from Nikki. She’s telling her mom all about the things she’s missed and how much they love her while a slideshow of photos plays on the screen until we’re finally shown the Wanda’s gravestone with the inscription, “She wrote her own story.”
Silas meets Holiday and Nikki at the graveside. He hugs Nikki and says there’s a surprise waiting for them. The three of them walk away from the graveyard as it fades to a photo of Holiday and Nikki in front of the Eiffel Tower, smiling in their berets. We never find out Silas’ surprise but that’s probably for the best. THE END.
Highs
Look, it’s got a lot of heart. Tears too.
Alfre Woodward was nominated for a Golden Globe.
So much ancient technology: pay phones, pagers, cell phones the size of bricks, phone books, typewriters, answering machines, Nintendo 64 (I completely forgot those existed). It’s almost as if 2000 was twenty years ago???
Holiday’s friend Blue is a cute side character.
Unrelated fun fact: Irving Rhames is called Ving Rhames because of his college roommate, our beloved Stanley Tucci.
Lows
Look, is it subtle? Of course not.
Alfre Woodard’s wigs!! How could they do this to her???
The young teen who played Nikki was not a strong actress.
There is a lot to be said about how much the drag discourse has changed in twenty years. It would be another nine years before the premier of Drag Race (on the smaller Logo channel, not VH1, by the by). This movie has way more in common with To Wong Foo or Priscilla or even The Birdcage (big, burly straight actors playing drag queens) than anything that came after it. The lack of contour is wild! And why so many convertibles? I need to look into this.
Final Verdict
If only it had a bigger budget and a cinematic release. Plus, better wigs for Alfre.
Thanks for coming along for a ride in my cherry red Thunderbird! Apologies for any typos, weird spacing, or grammar mistakes, hope you can forgive me. Links to my social and website can be found below. You can buy me a cup of coffee here or here, if you wish. Any questions or comments, feel free to send them along.