Sandra Bernhard: I'm Still Here...Damn It! (2000) Reviews

Actress/comedian Sandra Bernhard is known to millions as a frequent guest star on TV series such as Roseanne and Ally McBeal, but I'm Still Here Dammit! provides a document of her most enduring work: her one-woman shows. Although the piece originally ran on Broadway and was the basis of a comedy CD, the version here was recorded live at the San Francisco club Slim's for an HBO broadcast and bolstered by an additional 30 minutes of footage on video. Clad in a diaphanous peach frock that reveals both her underwear and her very visibly pregnant belly, Bernhard practices her wit on topics such as cell phones and the Internet, faux spirituality, the Lilith Fair, America's obsession with anti-bacterial products, her Latino house-painter and her lone, unpleasant experience taking hashish at an Amsterdam bar. Although the show features fewer songs than her previous outings, Bernhard is backed by longtime collaborator Mitch Kaplan on such tunes as "On the Runway," a mock-tribute to slain fashion designer Gianni Versace, which Berhnard imagines as a collaboration between Sting, Elton John, and Naomi Campbell, with proceeds to benefit "fashion victims everywhere." Other celebrity monologues chart Fleetwood Mac singer Christine McVie's fantastical transformation into a greasy-spoon waitress and Bernhard's possibly imaginary friendship with grunge diva-turned-actress Courtney Love. I'm Still Here Dammit was directed by Pee-Wee Herman Show vet Marty Callner. Award-winning Hollywood cinematographer Haskell Wexler also participated. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi