‘Welcome to Chippendales’ is an engrossing trip back in time to seedy 1980s L.A. and the wild times of the 1970s—and a lot of the story is actually happening right now.
‘Welcome to Chippendales’ is an engrossing trip back in time to seedy 1980s L.A. and the wild times of the 1970s—and a lot of the story is actually happening right now.
Welcome to Chippendales (Netflix, 2017)
“It’s a love story between two women, but it’s also a story of sexual politics in L.A. back in the day, and that’s what’s so fascinating to me,” says the director, who spent time on the Chippendales set filming the “I’ll Show You” segment last month and knows a thing or two about what can happen when women go head-to-head with men.
It’s not that you haven’t seen this story before: Plenty of other movies and TV shows have portrayed female lust as equal to, or even more important to, that of men; most were written by men. And when women in particular enter the “crotch shot,” the Chippendales gangsters, men treat them as equals, and vice versa.
Welcome to Chippendales is a love story between two women, but it’s also a story of sexual politics in L.A. back in the day, and that’s what’s so fascinating to me.
Welcome to Chippendales (Netflix, 2017)
Enter Lauren Sails, portrayed by Kelly LeBeau in the first episode of “Welcome to Chippendales.” Just recently fired from her job at a department store, she and her best friend, Tina (Alexa Vega), are the only people who can afford the extravagant tuxedo, which they’re eager to wear. It’s only after they get down to business that it strikes them how much the outfit really cost—or would have cost, had the Chippendales owner, Tom (Dylan Walsh), not decided to use it as a bribe. They figure Tina can probably find a more respectable job, so they ask her to return some of the money.
“If you can
