Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story

You really have to love queer cinema. Anyway I was watching Far from Heaven last night off and on and I thought it must have been directed by a gay director because of it's rather faithful homage to the Douglas Sirk films of the 50s (Imitation of Life is amazing; you should see it) I knew the director was Todd Haynes so I wikipedied and discovered that he made probably the gayest movie ever, Velvet Goldmine and if you wanna see very attractive men (christian bale, ewan mcgregor and jonathan rhys-meyers) making out, naked and sexing, it is phenomenal, well that and the music is awesome as well. As I was looking further into the movies he had made I was intrigued by her early student film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story and became more intrigued when I discovered it was acted out by Barbie dolls, and even more intrigued when I read that the Carpenter family had sued him for copyright infringement and forced it to be withdrawn from circulation.

Thank god for the internet and the free flow of information, but especially google and google video which had it in its library and I can understand why Richard Carpenter would be pissed; he's not very sympathetic in the film but is rather screamy.I don't know much about the Carpenter's besides some of their music, Close to You being featured on the Simpsons, a joke from Jawbreakers a song by Sonic Youth about Karen and the fact that she died of a heart attack because gaining weight so quickly overworked her heart and so I don't know how accurate it is but the reviewer who first called her chubby must have been a horrible asshole. Poor girl. (She was taking 100 laxative pills a day! how is that possible?)

But the work that had too go into this film, like making barbie sized phones and pianos, I can't even imagine the obsessiveness, though the lighting is rather bad and you can tell it is anexperimental student type work. And I guess people didn't know about anorexia back then because those interludes really kill the flow, but it is still kind of sad but enjoyable. And the music is amazing. Plus it's still better than this. So here is Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story- it'll be something to do on your lunch break, because you really should eat something.

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