At two coast-to-coast screenings this year, director Darren Stein’s debut—Sparkler—played in revival houses as a “lost queer gem of the 1990s.” Stein himself is the real lost gem: an auteur with only three movies, he lacks the loyal cult following of John Waters, whose grotesque masterpieces still sell out revivals here in Baltimore and around the world. Stein also hasn’t had consistent critical accolades like Gus Van Sant, either. Regardless, Stein ensouled himself as an LGBTQ icon with his second feature: Jawbreaker (1999), a high-school black comedy led by a particularly evil Rose McGowan, rivals Heathers and Mean Girls.
But with a theatrical release date a month before Sparkler, Jawbreaker eclipsed any attention Stein might’ve gotten for a film which took five years to make. Jawbreaker played Sundance in 1999, yet Sparkler was rejected by the festival two years earlier. Stein later reflected in an IndieWire interview that Sparkler has much more merit as a film than Jawbreaker; Sparkler might’ve broken out at Sundance, whereas the festival was inconsequential for Jawbreaker, which already had a distributor.
But even Jawbreaker’s moderate success didn’t come from the box office—the home video market sustained the film’s relevancy in the world of sleepovers. Although not much information about Sparkler's release to physical media is available online, it’s safe to assume it was just as rocky as its road to a limited theatrical release in the shadow of Jawbreaker.
Sparkler is finally having its moment with Strand Releasing’s 2K restoration and re-release in 2K, a company with alumni such as Gregg Araki, Claire Denis, and notable re-releases by Russ Meyer and Jean-Luc Godard. Stein fits in well.
Like all of Stein’s films, Sparkler is about the interplay of sexuality and class. It’s noticeably more serious than the campy, candy-colored Jawbreaker, but the tone is far from a drab and dreary drama—Sparkler has the same charm and sensitivities as a Douglas Sirk melodrama, but knotted around a seedy and absurd John Waters narrative.
Sparkler brings us into a novel slice of the world— a trailer park between Los Angeles and the Nevada state line. The protagonist’s husband, who’s just some guy in the opening shot of the trailer interior, takes off his jacket to reveal a graphic tee: “Where the hell is Hesperia?”—i.e., Hesperia, California.
Hesperia being 35 miles North of San Bernardino means nothing to me. So I turned to Google and came across an old internet forum for AR-15’s with a thread discussing Hesperia: “It’s never been a nice area. It's high desert, about 3000 plus feet above sea level…If there are any trees they grow at a slant from the constant wind. Trash blows everywhere only beaten by tumble weeds that get caught on the enormous amount of chain link fence around vacant lots.” Another user wrote, “Hesperia in the 1980's was a fun place… Not really a town so much as a section of main street with a few businesses. In the late 70's it didn't even have a stop light, you could ride cross country for miles and miles in any direction. We used to ride our dirt bikes into 'town' to get pizza.”
This is the world Melba (Park Overall) exists in—having the nicest trailer in the park with her cheating high school sweetheart husband, Flint (Don Harvey). “People don’t make a point of stopping here unless they had to,” Melba informs the three young men from LA with a flat tire.
Melba’s in her late-30s, wearing her mom’s (Grace Zabriskie) gown at the local bar when she asks the men from Los Angeles to dance. She left her husband the other night—after picking out a cute lighter at the mini mart, she came home to find him fucking her friend. Melba moves in with her mom and sits out under the trailer’s awning, smoking a cigarette when she hears one of those three guys she’ll meet later, Frank (Jamie Kennedy) cry out from the expressway. He’s hanging out of the sunroof screaming while Brad (Freddie Prinze Jr.) says the first sentence we hear from these three, “You’re such a fag!” The shot’s filled with dark negative space left of the car—the side they passed Melba on. From this point on, Melba is in every moment, even if she’s not on screen or in the scene.
“You can feel the vibes from all the people who have cruised the I-15 to Vegas,” Frank says after he slips back into the car. Frank, Brad, and Joel (Jack Wallace) are on their way to Vegas to try and win their rent money, before they pop a tire and get stranded in Hesperia.
When Melba runs into these twentysomethings face-to-face at the bar, they personify the restless young spirit she feels now that she’s single, the same thing she felt awaken in her earlier that night when she heard Frank scream.
As Frank and Melba’s souls rekindle on the dancefloor, Brad murmurs to Joel, “Pure white trash, 35-40, living in a trailer… small life, big dreams, going nowhere.” This is how the world sees Melba. But that’s not how Melba sees herself—at least not anymore. “What’s the occasion, sugar?” a man at the bar asks her about her gown, “My freedom,” she replies. You can’t help but love her. Melba is the Cinderella of Hesperia: instead of glass slippers, the young men return to her an earring on the state line. And instead of true love, they leave her with some lucky chips on the blackjack table.
Melba makes her way out of Hesperia. In Vegas, she looks for Dottie (Veronica Cartwright), a high school friend. This brings Melba to The Crack, a strip club run by the gender-flexible lesbian, Ed, played by Sandy Martin of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia fame. “She does everything like a man,” Dottie raves, after the clueless Melba inquires about their relationship.
In her odyssey to freedom, Melba accepts and adapts to the environments around her without compromising her goals. She accepts Dottie and Ed once she understands, shares dinner with them, and makes them a flambé. Ed, in her tank reading “Pussywhipped and proud of it!” kisses Dottie’s singed brow from the flambé—tender butch love.
On her scent, Flint hunts Melba down, bulldozing his way through worlds he’s not welcomed in, nor wants to be. Assaulting ladies getting perms, a stripper in Star Trek cosplay, and eventually, Ed. Flint, after his brawl at The Crack: “Why is the only way to get information out of a woman to grab her hair?”
Whether it’s the politics of an LA high school or the economic and emotional turmoil of a housewife in a desert trailer park, Darren Stein has the ability to spotlight the feminine spirit rising through patriarchal constraints. Every one of his three films is a gift, even GBF (2013). While Jawbreaker put his name in our mouths, Sparkler is Stein’s swan song, and a beneficiary of streaming. Sparkler is still a poignant queer film that was only overlooked by circumstance and, like so many movies, bad luck.