Of the six people joining Buddy Giovinazzo’s urban drug-addiction drama Life Is Hot in Cracktown, Shannyn Sossamon and Lara Flynn Boyle are really the only known names. Of course some of you may have heard Vondie Curtis-Hall‘s name as the writer/director of Waist Deep but beyond that do you know Thomas Ian Nicholas, Mark Webber and Tony Plana? Didn’t think so.
Anyway, Life is Hot in Cracktown finds Sossamon playing a woman faced with the challenges of raising her sick child and supporting a husband (Victor Rasuk) who runs a drug-infested tenement building. Boyle plays Betty McBain, a cruel whore who leads a man off to find a missing girl.
Nicholas plays a rookie cop who relies on a street-toughened vet (Curtis-Hall) to show him the ropes. Webber plays a transvestite prostitute, and Kerry Washington plays a transgender co-worker.
Plana (best known as the father on “Ugly Betty”) plays an alcoholic, and Edoardo Ballerini also appears as an abusive boyfriend in a neighborhood that has been ravaged by crack and crime.
The film is based on Giovinazzo’s 1993 collection of short stories.
