Unofficially Girls Town

Updated on 4-11-00

Girls Town won the Filmmakers trophy and a special award for collaboration at Sundance. It is now out on video.

Update- Jim McKay's new film Our Song was shown in the dramatic competition at Sundance. Variety describes it as "a low-budget, verite-style look at the relationships of three Puerto Rican girls in New York." There is an interview with Jim, Miguel Arteta and Maggie Greenwald on Indiewire. Variety has a review. John Pierson interviewed Jim during an online chat. Jim took questions by email. IndieWire has a few of the questions and answers are online

Our Song will be shown at the San Francisco Film Festival on April 21, 22 and 24th. Jim McKay is scheduled to be there for the screenings.

Our Song was shown at the New Directors/New Films festival in New York on April 5th & 6th. IndieWire ran an interview (4-5-00) with Jim about Our Song. The New York Times ran a glowing review (4-5-00). Jim talks about the impact of the review and the reception at ND/NF in this IndieWire piece (4-10-00) and says he expects Our Song will be released this fall.

Since Girls Town, McKay co-produced American Movie which won the top documentary prize at Sundance in 1999 and is still playing in some theaters. It will be out in May on Video and DVD. He co-produced Tom Gilroy's Spring Forward - part of the film was shot during each season of the year. Gilroy played Richard Helms in Girls Town. Spring Forward is being shown in the American Spectrum section of Sundance 2000. McKay was executive producer of Backward Looks, Far Corners, which stars Jacqueline Bisset and Martha Plimpton and was writen and directed by Christopher Munch (The Hours and Times). It was shown at the 1998 IFFM.

• Jim McKay was interviewed in Hotwired's Pop Talk on October 8, 1996. There is a page hotwired put together with links and quotes and you used to be able to listen to the interview in real audio.
• There is a six part ILine series on Girls Town.
• Note: Despite the fact that Girls Town is available on video and could still benefit from a web site, October Films (which was bought by Universal and then USA Films which no longer uses the October name) no longer has the site up. All of the message board posts and Jim McKay's responses to them are gone too. I'll leave the rest of this intact even though none of the links work. Girls Town web site from October Films. Jim says the a main focus of the site will be a message board where the film can be discussed which just opened. He has posted to the message board and says he will check in and answer any questions about once a week. There is info on the story, cast & crew, you can listen to the 45 second samples from every song on the soundtrack from Mercury records in real audio 28.8, there is a section on the collaboration that created the film and links to sites dealing with issues in the film.
• It's a Girl Thing - review of Girls Town and Foxfire by Laura Miller from Salon 8-26-96
• Brief Review at the filmscouts site.
• Review from New York Times, 8-21-96 You need a free (but annoying) password to read this.
• Interview with Lili Taylor from San Jose Metro
• Interview with Lili Taylor (in real audio) from hollywood.com
• A German page on the film (but it is mostly images and has the poster with the tag line in German) and a page in German.
• Lighthearted Nation, a documentary by McKay on the zine Duplex Planet and the residents of the Duplex Nursing Home who contribute to it. Lost & Found sound recently did a piece on one of the residents, Jack Mudurian.
• Direct Effect - a site with a few PSAs (in QuickTime) from the Direct Effect series Jim worked on. I have one of articles I wrote about Direct Impact up now.
• On August 8, 1996, I interviewed Jim McKay, the director, and Anna Grace who is in the film and collaborated on the screenplay (someday, I'll put the interview up in realaudio or video).
• Haiku Year, a book of haikus from Softskull Press. The foreward by Gilroy and the first 30 haikus are online. Fringeware Review describes it: "Perhaps the best recommendation for this book is that these haiku were not written with the intention of publishing them in this, or any collection. Rather, seven friends-- Tom Gilroy, Anna Grace, Jim McKay, Douglas A. Martin, Grant Lee Phillips, Rick Roth, and Michael Stipe-- committed to each write one haiku a day for the duration of a year, and mail them to one another. Generally, that fact could also make one extremely wary when approaching these small poems, but in this instance the results are well worthwhile. Elegant, simple, and resoundingly sincere, these observations on daily existence lack melodrama as much as they express a desire on the part of their writers to observe and parse themselves with the best intentions. (120 pp)"

Reviews

• Joan of Arc Rule review of Girls Town and Spitfire Grill from HotWired's Pop section.
• Engaging `Girls Town' Transcends Small Flaws SF Chronicle 8-30-96
• Boxoffice Magazine short review .
• Review from Deep Focus by Bryant Frazer
• Review from San Jose Metro
• Review from Rough Cut
• Review from Syracuse New Times
• Review from Mr. Showbiz

Articles not available online

• The Movies Discover the Teenage Girl, Sunday NYT Arts & Leisure 8-11-96 - this had a nice picture from Girls Town on the front page, but the article gives away too much of the plot in the section on GT towards the end.
• Team Players a glowing review by Amy Taubin in the 8-20 Village Voice.

Related links

• Mary Jane's Not A Virgin Anymore - a film by Sarah Jacobson which premiered at the Chicago Underground Film Festival and will show Sept. 8 in San Francisco at the Victoria theater.
• Emily, a junior in high school, was featured in the Teen Age Diaries series which airs the first Monday of the month on All Things Considered. She used to have a website. There is a transcript of the segment on her.
• Yo!, a magazine and radio show produced by teens.
• NPR School series - Ira Glass a year at a middle school and at a high school in Chicago. Unfortunately, NPR no longer has the pages Ira did on the series up. Fortunately, you can hear Ira on This American Life.
• Sexual Assault Information page
• Media and Rape op-ed
• Family Violence Prevention Fund. October of every year is Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
• Bitch was one of the most interesting web zines with daily media items which strike a raw nerve, weekly rants, features and a chat area. The original website is gone, but some of the people who worked on it do Maxi and Bitch is still in print (plus they now have a new website). Info on how to get it is in the story I wrote.
• RIP Sassy includes some articles from the original Sassy and the entire issue that was killed when the evil Peterson company bought Sassy, fired the staff and moved it to LA.
• Marjorie Ingall wrote some of the best stuff in Sassy.
• Rebecca's Revenge features an ongoing diary, Read Me
• Farai Chideya, a writer and commentator for CNN has a site called Pop&Politics. She is also on the board of Third Wave which benefited from the NYC premiere of Girls Town on August 14.
• Brillo
• Bust
• Girls On Film has tons of articles.
• Gurl