Girl 6 (1996)

This Spike Lee film examines the life of an aspiring actress in New York. She is upset by the treatment of women in the movie industry during one of her screen tests with 'QT'. Out of work ... See full summary »

Director:

Spike Lee

Writer:

Suzan-Lori Parks

Stars:

Theresa Randle, Isaiah Washington, Spike Lee

1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Theresa Randle	...	Girl 6
Isaiah Washington	...	Shoplifter
Spike Lee	...	Jimmy
Jenifer Lewis	...	Boss #1 - Lil
Debi Mazar	...	Girl #39
Peter Berg	...	Caller #1 - Bob
Michael Imperioli	...	Scary Caller #30
Dina Pearlman	...	Girl #19
Maggie Rush	...	Girl #42
Desi Moreno	...	Girl #4
Kristen Wilson	...	Salesgirl #1
K Funk	...	Salesgirl #2 (as k funk)
Debra Wilson	...	Salesgirl #3
Naomi Campbell	...	Girl #75
Gretchen Mol	...	Girl #12

Storyline

This Spike Lee film examines the life of an aspiring actress in New York. She is upset by the treatment of women in the movie industry during one of her screen tests with 'QT'. Out of work and desperate for money, she decides to take a job as a phone-sex operator. Here, unlike her previous dealings with potential employers, her (female) boss is kind, caring, and sensitive. Later, she begins to get too engrossed in her work and starts to lose touch with reality, represented by her friend and neighbor, Jimmy.

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Plot Keywords:

phone sex | actress | neighbor | black cast | african american | 

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Taglines:

She's The Only Thing Better Than Being There

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Genres:

Comedy | Drama

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for explicit sexual dialogue and some nudity

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

22 March 1996 (USA)

Also Known As:

A Rapariga: Código 6

Filming Locations:

Los Angeles, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$12,000,000 (estimated)

Gross:

$4,903,000 (USA)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Fox Searchlight Pictures, 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks

Technical Specs

Runtime:

108 min

Sound Mix:

DTS Dolby Digital

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The monologue that Lovely reads and the camera angles in the scene where Lovely and Jimmy are in his apartment talking about acting are taken from She's Gotta Have It, also directed by Spike Lee.

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Quotes

Judy, aka Girl 6: Baby, let me tell you something. You can continue to live in your little fantasy world with your baseball cards and the autographed bullshit or whatever the fuck is it you do, but me, I got to eat and pay the rent. Phone sex is acting, and if you don't like it, you can step.
Jimmy: Fuck you, you know, at least I got Willie Mays and Hank Aaron's autograph on a baseball card, you know, they're in the hall of fame.

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Crazy Credits

In the last scene, when the girl crosses the street, it reads "The End" on the Chinese Theatre marquee on the other side.

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Connections

Spoofs The Jeffersons (1975)

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Soundtracks

"17 Days"
Produced, Arranged, Composed, and Performed by Prince & The Revolution
Used by permission of Controversy Music/WB Music Corp. (ASCAP)
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Records/Paisley Park
By Arrangement with Warner Special Products

User Reviews

A magnificent film

I can't help but to be amused by the other comments/reviews on this movie. They (even the positive ones) completely enforce exactly what this movie is actively trying to point out about our society.

Several people noted that the narrative was weak or nonexistent, that the film didn't "go" anywhere, and/or that there was too much extra "stuff" that distracted the story from the "real" plot line. I'm here to tell you that this is the whole point of Spike Lee's brilliant Girl 6. It's not a flaw in the movie, it is part of it's very construction.

Every time an extradiegetic scene was placed within the overall plot (such as the Dorothy Dandridge, Foxy Brown, Jeffersons scenes as well as the recurring image of the elevator shaft) the audience is pulled away from the narrative of the film and forced to see it as such: a movie! And fictional movies have no basis in reality; the people and actions depicted are not real. This disrupts our normal expectations about what we expect to see in a film.

The movie is also scattered with touches of reflexivity. For example, Naomi Campbell, wearing a shirt that says "Models Suck" and Quentin Tarantino, acting very ironically in a way he has been accused of. At the end, the movie theater in L.A. is showing a movie entitled "Girl 6" and a billboard proclaims that it's "The End." Absolutely all of this is purposeful and calculated. It does exactly what so many people were disappointed not to see, by subverting our expectations and implicitely pointing out that this is NOT a movie you can just "fall into" and become a passive spectator, that it actively engages the audience and breaks down our concepts of the master narrative by giving us an ending we did not expect.

Girl 6 is not a movie about phone sex, as so many of you seem to believe. It is a feminist (if you know anything about Suzan-Lori Parks, you know she would never condone something sexist, let alone write it) film that deliberately references itself in order to subvert our expectations about films, society, and women.

It's really a shame that so many people are, in fact, so hooked on "traditional" forms of narrative (taught by a sexist society) that they fail to see the value of this film.