MY FAVORITE MOVIE: PIE IN THE SKY: THE BRIGID BERLIN STORY

«This, my friends, is the motherlode. Whatever Shelly Dunn Fremont’s and Vincent Fremont’s look at Brigid Berlin lacks in visual style or concise editing it more than makes up for in motormouth monologue power, courtesy of its subject, the woman from whom Warhol stole many of his best ideas. He profited off her use of Polaroids as art, though her one-copy book of cock self-portraits by famous men must be worth mega-millions. He ran with her obsessive use of the tape recorder, though nothing he did is as brilliant as her play Brigid Polk Strikes!, where she used a phone – broadcast over theater loudspeakers – to call friends of her rich right-wing parents (her dad was the boss of Patty Hearst's dad) to ask for abortion money, left during intermission in a taxi to collect the money, and then returned for the climactic final act: a phone argument with her mother (sample quote: “If you weren’t on drugs that night I’ll eat my hat!”). Whether imitating her mother and eternal sparring partner’s rants, wondering whether her maid is tall enough to dust the top shelves of her closet, or carefully weighing and talking incessantly about food – especially the title dessert -- Brigid Berlin is H-I-L-A-R-I-O-U-S. In this movie, the monster lurking around the corner and waiting to pounce on the heroine is a key lime pie at the corner deli. And once that pie attacks, look out!»

Reviewed by The San Francisco Bay Guardian.