Michael Musto
in The Village Voice
October 20, 1992
Jabbering a mile a minute in colorfully detailed prose about
"toothless, inbred motherfuckers" and such, Jeffrey
Strouth was the kind of person every party cried out for.
There were no silences around this man, unless he was momentarily
sucking on a cigarette before vigorously launching into
his next tale of the dark side of white trash. His mouth
raced to keep up with his mind, and sometimes surpassed
it, as he carried on about 400-pound drag queens in leisure
suits and a waitress pal who "looked like a dressed
guinea hen hanging in a butcher shop window," seizing
one's attention with the viselike grip of his flowery, persuasive
persistence.
American Fabulous- the film Reno Dakota decided to make
when he learned that his friend Strouth had HIV- looks so
effortless that it should be a lesson to those preparing
other painstakingly overdone clunkers on the order of 1492
or Far and Away. Shot in Hi-8 video, then transferred to
film, the movie merely puts its subject in the back of a
Cadillac and drives him around his hometown of Columbus,
Ohio, letting the generic landscape subliminally spark an
endless array of funny/disturbing memories. Strouth has
already done the real work of living his life- that of a
perpetual outsider harassed and beaten down by oppressors,
but rising back up twice as campily. Describing it- and
perhaps embellishing it just a tiny bit- obviously comes
as easily to him as it is for Dakota to merely point the
camera and listen up.
As Strouth's face moves in and out of the shadows, he reminisces
about his drunken dad, whom he fantasized killing; his brother,
to whom he'd scream, "Don't beat me up, I'm pregnant";
his sister, who killed herself, leading him on a sincere
quest for the best embalming in town. With breathless equanimity,
he makes a nun's hat out of a McDonald's bag, reads the
shades off a color selector in William Burroughs's voice,
and tells us about his drag queen friend who "never
has spoken to me since I burned her house down. I didn't
mean to"- all while driving, driving, driving us mad
with his racy wit.
As with all raconteurs, some of Strouth's stories are more
compelling than others, but there are always little anecdotal
gems to hang on to. As he weaves through stories of hustling
and heroin and hard luck with peppy abandon, the result
transcends its details to paint a larger, more universal
picture of survival against the odds. Strouth died in Columbus
on Gay Pride Day this year. American Fabulous is a fabulous
American testament to his refusal to take his own advice
to a friend: "You've got to learn to shut up."
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