As the film begins, Sissy Hickey (Beth Grant) is awaiting the funeral of her sister Peggy Ingram (Gloria LeRoy), who recently died in a motel room after tripping over the detached wooden legs of her adulterous lover G.W. Nethercott (Beau Bridges) and smashed her head against the bathroom porcelain. As if Sissy doesn't have problems enough in the wake of five failed marriages, she's struggling to quit smoking, popping Valium like candy, and having to cope with a dysfunctional family. Niece Latrelle Williamson (Bonnie Bedelia), whose husband is off with Jimmy Carter building homes for the poor, is in denial over the homosexuality of son Ty (Kirk Geiger), an aspiring actor in LA, and contesting the decision of her sister LaVonda DuPree (Ann Walker) to clothe Mom in her favorite mink stole for the burial in 110-degree Texas heat. Latrelle thinks her brother should be released from the institution and has a perfect right to attend their mother's funeral. Meanwhile, Peggy's son Earl "Brother Boy" Ingram (Leslie Jordan), a homosexual transvestite, has been confined to a mental institution for the past 23 years. In LA, Ty is suffering a sexual identity crisis, and is on his twenty-seventh therapist. Striving hard to accept his homosexuality, he realizes that there is no way he can return home for his grandmother's funeral without coming out to his mother.
This mixture of white-trash comedy and coming-out melodrama starts out as a farce, then midway the emphasis shifts to a drag queen unfairly held in a mental institution and the dead woman's grandson, an actor in Los Angeles who hasn't come out to his mother. The tone shifts wildly, and the humor depends on the viewers' taste for the white-trash genre. This politically correct film espousing gay rights won't appeal to everyone, but several of the performances are surprisingly good. Jordan is great as Earl, who spends his life dressed up as county singer Tammy Wynette, and has a permanent gig entertaining his fellow inmates in the asylum. Sometimes the movie's humor becomes shrill and a little forced. The film is followed by the 2008 TV series "Sordid Lives: The Series". George S. Clinton composed the original music, and Del Shores wrote the script from his own stage play and directed.
