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Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
A girl born with enormous thumbs in the repressive era of the 1950s learns to turn her quirks into assets.
1994 · Directed by Gus Van Sant · 96 min · Comedy · Drama · Romance · Western · Screenplay in the scene database · 6 frames
Tagline
There have been many great drivers but only one great passenger.
Plot
Sissy Hankshaw is a woman born with a mutation (she would not call it a defect) giving her enormously large thumbs. Sissy makes the most of her thumbs by becoming a hitchhiker. Her travels eventually take her to New York City, where she becomes a model for a homosexual feminine hygiene products mogul, known as "The Countess". A few years later, he introduces her to his "beauty ranch", the Rubber Rose Ranch. The main plot revolves around the cowgirls who work at the ranch after they violently take over and drug the endangered whooping cranes that nest along the lake on their land, making the once migratory birds stay. The cowgirls end up in a showdown with government agencies because the cranes will not leave the ranch and the cowgirls refuse to allow the men on the ranch to take the cranes. Sissy and the ranch leader, Bonanza Jellybean, have a brief love affair. After a fatal shootout between the cowgirls and the various agencies, the cranes leave, and Sissy takes over running the ranch.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Written by: Gus Van Sant
- Cinematography: John J. Campbell, Eric Alan Edwards
- Edited by: Curtiss Clayton, Gus Van Sant
- Music: K.D. Lang, Ben Mink
- Production design: Missy Stewart
- Produced by: Laurie Parker, Lucy Phillips
Cast
- Uma Thurman as Sissy Hankshaw
- Lorraine Bracco as Delores Del Ruby
- Pat Morita as The Chink
- Angie Dickinson as Miss Adrian
- Keanu Reeves as Julian Gitche
- John Hurt as The Countess
- Rain Phoenix as Bonanza Jellybean
- Ed Begley Jr. as Rupert
- Carol Kane as Carla
- Sean Young as Marie Barth
Production
- Country: United States of America
- Language: English, German
- Studios: Fourth Vision, New Line Cinema, Fine Line Features
- Budget: $8,000,000
- Themes: transvestism, cowgirl, lgbt, hitchhiking
More by Gus Van Sant
On this film
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