Friday, May 17, 2024

My Weekend (Redux) Crush

You know a few weeks ago when I said how I couldn’t wait to see the new Indigo Girls documentary? Well, this past weekend I saw “It’s Only Life After All” in theaters and you should absolutely go see the Indigo Girls documentary in the theater if only to remember how great it feels to watch something everyone there loves in a dark room together. Like, if you can’t get to a concert or haven’t been to one of their shows in a while this will be a balm on your tired soul.

Not only does the film explore the community The Girls have built over the last nearly 37 years, but it also gives us more of a glimpse into their private lives and personal passions – not to mention their insecurities and evolution. We see (briefly, so briefly) their partners and kids. We see rare footage from their early days. For a longtime fan like myself, it’s a voyeuristic peek at what we never see once the curtain goes down. But you feel okay about the snooping because The Girls themselves have given the documentarian Alexandria Bombach full reign over the project and their video archives. Can you imagine watching nearly 40 years of Indigo Girls tour footage? If there’s a lesbian heaven, yeah, that’s at least once of the activity rooms.

In the end, the film is a reminder that the artists we idolize are, always, just people. And those people, like most people, have rich internal lives that the world almost never sees. So I sincerely thank Amy and Emily for allowing us a look at the women behind The Girls. We all know the magic that happens when they music together. But the alchemy of their lives together is something even more rare to behold. Happy weekend, all.

p.s. In case you missed them, they were on Late Night with Seth Meyers recently which is also worth a watch. Just like everything involving Indigo Girls is worth a watch. Period. p.p.s. Which song is did Emily changed the cringey lyrics? I don’t think I heard her give her little disclaimer at any of the shows I’ve seen recently. Seth, you need to ask these critical follow-up questions!

2 comments:

Carmen San Diego said...

LA Lesbian bar The Rubyfruit has an Indigo Girls themed bathroom. Whenever I go there I think “Dorothy Snarker would get a kick out of this”

Anonymous said...

Really really loved this. (You can rent/stream if the theater isn’t for you.)