Lost in the Pershing Point Hotel

Leslie Jordan writes and stars in this autobiographical account of being gay and drug-addled in 1970s Atlanta. The film opens with the protagonist known only as Storyteller (Jordan) meeting his maker after a drug overdose and trying to explain the sorry state of his former life. Rewind 20 years, when our hero, styling himself as a lilliputian dandy à la Truman Capote, leaves home for Atlanta -- dubbed the "San Francisco of the South." There he meets debutante refugee and drug connoisseur "Miss Make-Do" (Erin Chandler) who introduces him to the wonderful world of chemicals and the film's titular hotel -- a low-rent Chelsea-like dive. After his benefactress kicks him out for taking up with a thuggish coke dealer, the hapless fop protagonist finds another protector in Tripper -- a roughneck junkie, ex-con, and pimp. The two form a weird platonic and dependent relationship that eventually spirals into an opiate oblivion.