LIVE NUDE GIRLS, UNITE!

Produced by Julia Query Directed by Julia Query and Vicki Funari Edited by Vicki Funari Have you heard the one about the strippers who wanted to unionize? Me neither, but the premise writes its own punchline. Hell, it writes a few.

I guess anyone can unionize if they choose, but the concept of strippers doing so baffles me to know end. Every strip club I've ever patronized split tips with the girls and survived off the bar. The girls were not employees, but independent contractors renting stage time.

According to producer/director/dancer Julia Query, that's illegal. Not on the part of the dancers, but the club owners who are incorrectly categorizing their work force to avoid the hassles that come with payroll and human resources departments.

Query, and partner Vicki Funari, document the struggles faced by the workers of San Francisco's The Lusty Lady, where they also worked, went union and set a trend that many strip clubs across the country soon followed.

Unfortunately, you never get a feel for many of the girls. One or two are zeroed in on, but you get a feeling that these were the only dancers who had something worth saying. Even then, we don't get a sense for the people involved, never learning anything more than their stage names, and ultimately never fully sympathizing with their plight.

Julia Query, on the other hand, we learn inside and out. She's the daughter of sex trade advocate and AIDS activist Dr. Joyce Wallace, whom you might have seen on 20/20 at one time or another. Julia is a filmmaker, comedian, grad school graduate, lesbian, and a dancer who has never confided in her mother that she works in the sex industry. There's an entire documentary to be had just in Julia's coming out as a dancer, which ultimately climaxes the documentary.

The sexual frankness of the dancers makes for an interesting contradiction to Julia's closeted nature surrounding her profession. While never stated directly in the movie, Dr. Wallace seems aware of her daughters sexual orientation. Raised by her mother to be her own woman, Julia is still ultimately her mother's daughter and can't bring herself to admit to anything that might could bring her shame in her mother's eyes. Julia perceives her mother as being able to accept the lesbianism since that's just Julia being true to herself, but not being able to handle Julia being a dancer as that violates Julia's upbringing that hard work and intelligence will bring life's rewards. The irony is that dancers can pull in some serious bank.

Where in Julia ultimately comes out on time with her bid to unionize, her relationship with her mother crumbles. I'm not sure LIVE NUDE GIRLS, UNITE! would be as effective a documentary had everything ended on a high note. There wouldn't have been anything worth talking about other than a punchline or two. What tension is lacked during the dancer's bid to unionize is more than made up through Julia's relationship with her mother.

You can find this documentary screening late nights on the Sundance Channel fairly regularly, and it's definitely worth staying up late to try and catch.

Live Nude Girls, Unite!