Cast: Rachel Amodeo, Richard Edson, Richard Hell, Dee Dee Ramone, Johnny Thunders, Nick Zedd, Rockets Redglare, Judy Carne. Screenplay: Rachel Amodeo. Cinematography: Mark Brady. Film editing: Esther Regelson.
The uncompromising What About Me is one of the landmarks of low-budget independent filmmaking. It inspired writer-directors such as Jim Jarmusch, who have taken its gritty idiosyncrasy to heart and gone on to commercial success. Basically, it’s the off-beat story of Lisa, a young woman who dies in the opening of the movie and is reincarnated as a resident of New York’s Lower East Side. After the aunt with whom she shares an apartment dies, she is evicted – but not before being raped by the landlord – and forced to wander the streets, penniless and homeless, forming relationships with various men (and a couple of women). There’s no plot to speak of, only Lisa’s sporadic attempts to make contact with her brother, who lives in New Orleans, and her somewhat inept effort to stay alive. Rachel Amodeo, who wrote and directed, plays Lisa almost as a reincarnation of the kind of waifs that Lillian Gish played for D.W. Griffith. Much of the cast is made up of musicians from the punk rock scene, with Judy Carne, who had become famous on Laugh-In, in her last screen appearance as “Woman of the Streets.”
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