Lost in the Pershing Point Hotel

The dimunitive comic Leslie Jordan is very familiar to many of you as the drag queen "brother boy" in Sordid Lives. But here is a very different side to Mr. Jordan -- his own very intense story! Sometime in the early '70s, Jordan moved from his rural hometown to the gay epicenter of the south, Atlanta. He landed at a seedy, skid-row hotel where he spent three years living among the junkies, hustlers and drag queens sharing a room with a mess of a drag-queen, Miss Make-Do (Chandler). Jordan, while acting scared of the seedy goings-on around him, took a bad drug trip, a short stay in jail and then onto the street as a hustler. Somehow he landed found someone he thought was a savior -- a junkie named Tripper (Pellegrino) But of course, heroin is not exactly a solution to one's problems and the film takes us on a crazy, twisted love rollercoaster.

Based on Jordan's play, Lost in the Pershing Point Hotel, this is a film that sneaks up on you. It's humor and pathos are very real and quite squalid. The drag-&-drug humor is disarming. The glitter-rock nostalgia is bittersweet. The cameos (John Ritter, Michelle Phillips, Kathy Kinney, Marilu Henner) are certainly a thrill -- all credits to Jordan's TV career. There is magic in this dark tale, stick it out!

Scott Cranin