This year’s most charming family film has pasty-clad breasts, head-thumping bouncers and a wide enough variety of booze and drugs to subdue even the rowdiest motorcycle gang—it’s called Red Dog and, in case you couldn’t guess, it’s all about the legendary house of ill repute located at 6417 N.W. 10th in Oklahoma City.
As I sat down to watch the flick—which recently had its premiere at South By Southwest earlier this spring—I was fully expecting a tribute to nothing but titties and tassels but, instead, got something far more heart-wrenching, as Dick put his own heart—and his mother’s heart—on screen for everyone to see, as they recounted their numerous highs and even more lows growing up in the neon light of the notorious strip club.
“It’s obvious that I have a personal connection to the Red Dog and my mom and our relationship to it… it’s kind of a weird origin story,” Dick said. “But I was truly just interested in my mom as a compelling human. The fact that there was this notorious regional setting, like a titty bar there, was interesting ground for a family-oriented documentary.”
The “craziness” of his mother’s anecdotes drew Dick to the story initially, but over the course of listening to these raucous stories of the Red Dog’s heyday, he started to notice a theme developing, not only with his mom but everyone else that agreed to sit down in front of the camera: family dynamics and the universal aspect of family dysfunction. By the middle of production, Dick had found his angle.