Genre
Synopsis
We open with Cat, a 90s ha-been, learning her tour has been canceled and she now has to open for rising star Luke McCall. Cat refuses the offer until she realizes it's her only chance to pay her bills. Luke surprises Cat with genuine bids for her friendship and a shockingly intimate knowledge of her repertoire.
One night, Luke stands up for Cat to a redneck heckler, and she finally decides to give him a chance. They go to a gay bar together and have a blast. Despite seeming a little uncomfortable (we assume because he’s a masculine straight guy) Luke has a great time. After Cat goes home with a lesbian fan, Luke surprises us by going home with the trans woman bartender. Cat and Luke slowly grow closer together, until one night in a small town, Cat takes Luke down to the ballroom of the hotel where a wedding has been set up for the following night. Cat and Luke drink and have a confessional fun night playing music and imagining what their lives would be if they had never pursued these dreams and instead just lived in a small town and played in a wedding band. To Cat’s surprise they have sex. She jokes that any time that’s happened in the past, it’s been a rock bottom moment for her. This lands on Luke and he excuses himself. Cat feels terrible. Did she just ruin her new friendship?She goes to Luke’s door and knocks… Luke opens the door to reveal the cowboy we’ve known as Luke wearing a dress. This is Lucy. It turns out that Luke is a closeted trans woman. To Lucy’s surprise, Cat is delighted by this. After all, that means that their night together was a beautiful story of her finally sleeping with the woman she was falling for. The two of them fall in love in delightful off stage scenes, but onstage Cat's professional success grows while Lucy (still going by Luke), grows more miserable and disillusioned. Lucy decides she must come out. Cat thinks Lucy should wait until after tour. But the next night on tour, Lucy shocks everyone by coming out publicly. As venues pull out, the label removes Lucy in favor of an ascendant Cat. This leads to a massive fight that tears apart our two lovebirds. Lucy goes home to LA. Cat headlines in her stead.
Cat blames Lucy for not standing by her success. Lucy is self-destructive at home. Then Cat plays a song that used to be a duet for the two of them and realizes what an ass she’s being. She runs off stage and drives across country to go get her girl back.
Cat shows up outside Lucy’s window and sings one of Lucy’s songs to her. It’s lovely and romantic and our two heroes kiss. The two of them perform together- Cat now comfortable having a small but diehard crowd of people who truly love her music while Lucy’s crowd is growing again. We end with, as all good endings do, the beginning of something new.
Bio
A 2022 Sundance Fellow and MacArthur grantee, Drew Denny directs narrative, documentary and commercials. Harper’s Bazaar called her one woman show turned Academy Award nominated podcast Asking For It “a Fleabag fix in a post-Fleabag world,” and Marta Kaufman’s shingle OK Goodnight is producing a narrative television series based on her documentary Queer Habits—following drag queen nuns who save a rural homophobic community from ruin.
Her first feature won Best Feature, Best First Feature and Best Cinematography in its 50-festival run, earning her a spot in The Advocate’s “40 Under 40” list, where she was named “an auteur to watch.” Her most recent narrative film Momster, starring Amanda Plummer and Brianna Hildebrand, premiered in Competition at the Tribeca Film Festival where it was selected for their debut Pride program and called “Tarantino and Nicolas Refn’s queer feminist love child.”
In over a dozen documentaries, she has secured unprecedented access to subjects as diverse as drag queen nuns in California, abortion clinics in Texas, climate change refugees in the Maldives, NASA scientists in Greenland and sex changing fish in the Pacific Ocean.
