Here at CHUD we’re always looking to break a story wide open, so when I got an email from reader Dale Dennis, I sprung immediately into investigative reporter mode.
Dale’s email:
Subject: JoBlo “Drive-Away Dykes” Story
Body: I don’t see how this can be legit. Not only is the site completely primitive, with no company name attached, but check out those storyboards…
What Dale is talking about is a JoBlo story called “Greatest Movie Ever?”, which links to a website purporting to be that for a movie called Drive-Away Dykes, co-written Ethan Coen. The site, which you can see here, is indeed primitive, and those storyboards are, indeed, hilariously bad.
I taped an X in my kitchen window and moved the potted begonias on the front stoop, alerting my inside source, known to me only as “The LA Times,” that I needed to meet and get some information. “The LA Times” appeared right on schedule, and it turns out that Drive-Away Dykes is completely real, and so is the site, which is registered to Tricia Cooke – the co-writer of the film and Ethan Coen’s wife.
“The LA Times” had more information for me – a synopsis!: “When Marion, a skirt-chasing party girl, gets kicked out after her cop girlfriend finds her in bed with another woman, she convinces her buttoned-down friend Jamie to let her come along on a get-away-for-a-few-days drive-away car assignment from Philadelphia to Miami. Packed along for the ride are Jamie’s crush on Marion, Marion’s unrelenting desire to cruise every lesbian bar on the eastern seaboard, and — since this is Coen territory — a severed head in a hatbox, a mystery briefcase full of plaster phalluses, a mélange of angry pursuers, an evil senator, a bitter ex-girlfriend and loads of hot boyless sex.”
Coen says that the film is inspired by the sexploitation films of the 70s, but with Gas Food Lodging director Allison Anders helming, you can bet that it won’t be a misogynistic romp like some of those were. Coen also says that the tone of the script is “exploitive but innocent.”
Anders is hoping to get the film into production this year, and Selma Blair has been attached to the Marion role in the past. More updates on these cruisin’ carpetmunchers when we get them… or when “The LA Times” delivers yet another cryptic message to me.