Drive-Away Dolls Ending Explained: A Most Extraordinary Case
This article contains major spoilers for "Drive-Away Dolls."
Genre movies have a well-earned reputation for being exploitative. Since the dawn of the "B" movie (so named for the way such features would play as the second half of a double bill, following up the classier "A" picture), genre films have been marketed with their exploitation elements up front, the better to entice people to stay in the theater or attend in the first place.
The more genre movies have been reappraised, studied, and eventually raised to the level of revered classics themselves, the more audiences and academics have realized that these films serve numerous important causes within the culture. They often provide the discussion of and investigation into thorny social and political issues that a straightforward drama would have trouble dealing with. They also can be utilized as a powerfully rich tool for normalization, where the marginalized can be the protagonists without having to justify or apologize for themselves, thereby bringing that group closer to the majority.
It's in that spirit that Tricia Cooke and Ethan Coen conceived "Drive-Away Dolls," a crime noir romp about two out-and-proud gay women who, through farcical shenanigans, find themselves on the run from some shady figures. As Cooke states in the film's official press kit, "So many movies about lesbians are deep, they're serious, and they're often very dramatic. It was important to me to tell a story with highly visible queer characters, without having their sexuality be the whole point of the film."
Indeed, while "Drive-Away Dolls" not only always keeps its protagonists' sexuality visible, it's through their confident acceptance of themselves that Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) are able to stay one step ahead of the neurotic, repressive, murderous dopes chasing them across the country. The film then acts as both a great homage to exploitation films of the past as well as a great example of one all by itself.
Let's go, lesbians!
One dark night in the city of Philadelphia circa late 1999, brotherly love is nowhere to be found as Santos, aka The Collector (Pedro Pascal) waits anxiously to meet his contact to whom he's supposed to deliver the contents of a mysterious silver briefcase. Sadly for him, he's double crossed, and finds himself brutally decapitated in an alleyway.
Elsewhere, friends Jamie and Marian are finding themselves unlucky in love. In Jamie's case, her freewheeling, free love outlook on life (which includes offering herself up for body shots at the local lesbian bar Sugar 'n' Spice) has caused her girlfriend, an anger-prone police officer named Sukie (Beanie Feldstein), to break up with her and kick her out of their apartment. In Marian's case, she keeps finding herself hit on by clueless guys at her office job while not really pursuing any girls, as she's still hung up on a failed relationship that ended years earlier.
As the duo commiserate over their lousy lots in life, Marian resolves to go visit her Aunt Ellis (Connie Jackson) in Tallahassee with the use of a rental car from a drive-away service. Leaping at the opportunity, Jamie not only invites herself along, but pitches the idea that they should make a ribald road trip out of the journey. Like so many wing-people in numerous sex comedies, Jamie resolves to get the unintentionally celibate Marian laid — yet she doesn't quite register the way that Marian looks at her.
The legend of Curlie's gold
At the local drive-away agency, proprietor Curlie (Bill Camp) is contacted via phone by a mysterious man known only as The Chief (Colman Domingo), who informs Curlie that some associates of his will be arriving soon in order to take a specific car to Tallahassee, and that these people are to be given the car, no questions asked. Seconds after the call has ended, Jamie and Marian walk in, asking for a car to Tallahassee, and poor, obedient Curlie (a man who's very keen on proper manners), hands them the keys to a Dodge Aries.
Jamie decides to begin the revelry of the road trip right away, spray painting the trunk (which the girls do not investigate before piling their luggage in) with the phrase "Love is a Sleigh Ride to Hell" and convincing Marian that they should make a pit stop in a rural town, rent a cheap motel room (with separate beds), and head out to a local lesbian dive named the Butter Churn. Marian, however, simply wishes to curl up with her copy of Henry James' 1878 novel "The Europeans." It turns out that James acts as the perfect demarcation point between the two women: while the author's dry prose fascinates the curious Marian, Jamie decided to eschew book reading altogether after being assigned "The Portrait of a Lady" in school. As further illustration of the odd couple's differences, Jamie ends up bringing a hookup from the Butter Churn back to the hotel, making Marian sequester herself with her book in the lobby, sitting next to the literally-on-life-support proprietor.
Back at Curlie's drive-away agency, The Chief arrives with his henchmen, Arliss (Joey Slotnick) and Flint (C.J. Wilson), and they're none too happy to hear that Curlie has already sent their car away. After Arliss and Flint rough Curlie up, The Chief notices that the girls' rental form includes the name and address of a required emergency contact: Sukie.
Chasing the Amys
Realizing that bringing back her hook-up hurt Marian's feelings, Jamie apologizes and promises to make it up to her by taking her to what she describes as a lesbian's version of a sure thing: a local Uncle Gino's pizzeria in rural Georgia, at which an entire girls' soccer team is partying after their game. Jamie tells Marian that she knows one of the girls, and that an invite to their secret makeout basement party is as good as theirs, which ends up being true.
At the party, Marian finds herself one of the girls rotating through partners while Jamie is one of the girls who remains stationary, meaning that the two suddenly find themselves paired up. Though Jamie treats their making out as not a big deal, Marian flashes back to when she was a young girl, using her trampoline to catch glimpses of the older woman bathing nude next door. Freaking out as she's realizing her feelings for Jamie, Marian leaves the party abruptly, attempting to walk back to the hotel alone and getting arrested by a nosy, obnoxious cop. Jamie, about to hook up with another girl from the party, decides to go back to the hotel alone, tracking down Marian's whereabouts and picking her up in the morning, the two taking off for Florida.
Meanwhile, a spurned Sukie happily tells Arliss that Jamie and Marian were headed to Tallahassee, though not before she gives the brutish Flint a beating. Turns out that Arliss and Flint are an odd couple themselves, a fact that Arliss is more than happy to opine on, bragging that his penchant for social coercion is far superior to Flint's fists-first methodology. When the henchmen track the girls from Marian's arrest to the basement party, Arliss is proud to get their destination from the soccer team. However, as Arliss and Flint spend an endless, sleepless night asking around rural juke joints, it becomes clear that the dopes have been had in true Coen style.
Whatever the case may be
As the girls roll into Florida, they begin to notice billboards for the re-election of Senator Gary Channel (Matt Damon), whose ads vociferously preach the loaded (and coded) concept of "family values." As if on cue, the Dodge suffers a blowout, and when the duo pull over to look in the truck for a spare tire, they find the case, as well as the preserved severed head of poor Santos. Finding that the combination lock to the case is conveniently already punched in, they open the case, yet in true "Kiss Me Deadly," "Pulp Fiction" fashion, we don't get to see what's inside ... yet.
Absconding to a swanky hotel, Marian checks herself and Jamie into a room, while Jamie calls up Sukie, informing her that there's a murder case that's fallen right into her lap should she wish to pursue it by investigating Curlie's drive-away. Sukie is still miffed over her breakup, spitefully informing Jamie about the henchmen looking for her and Marian. Jamie promises that, if Sukie will investigate, she'll take their dog, Alice, off of Sukie's hands. Alice is named as a reference to the avant-garde lesbian icon, Alice B. Toklas, and by extension is an allusion to the 1968 psychedelic rom-com "I Love You, Alice B. Toklas" starring Peter Sellers.
Speaking of rom-coms, Jamie takes Marian on a date to the hotel's upscale restaurant under the pretense that Marian needs to finally get some action, and that Jamie understands she needs to be wined and dined instead of given a quick shag. Not only does Marian respond favorably to this, but as the night continues, the two reveal their feelings for each other. Marian ends up being so content with Jamie's gift of oral pleasure that she falls asleep right after.
Jamie, being the practical girl she is, takes matters into her own hands, with a little help from the contents of that case. As Marian awakes to find Jamie masturbating, it's revealed that she's using one of the dildos from the case found in their trunk. Yep: the MacGuffin of "Drive-Away Dolls" is a briefcase full of danguses, and before that revelation can fully sink in, Arliss and Flint burst into the room and take the girls hostage.
Dong of the dead
That dildo reveal doesn't come out of nowhere, however. At certain points during the film, Coen and Cooke cut to a surrealistic scene that's heavily tinged with '60s psychedelia, moments reminiscent of B-movies of that era like Roger Corman's "The Trip." As it turns out, these moments are actually flashbacks to the young Gary Channel and his encounter with a woman by the name of Tiffany Plaster Caster (Miley Cyrus). She's based on the real-life counter-culture figure Cynthia Plaster Caster, and they share the same hobby: making molds of guys' phalluses. It seems that, back in the late '60s, Tiffany made a mold of Gary's dong, and the grown-up Gary, hoping to fully sanitize his public image to better pander to his right-wing demographic, has enlisted the help of The Chief and company to collect all the existing Channel dildos from collectors like Santos and erase them from existence.
The Chief (who, like Marian, also seems to be a Henry James fan) explains this to a bound and gagged Marian and Jamie while Arliss and Flint argue with each other about their prowess in the background. Things go south quickly, and Flint decides to simply assert his dominance by shooting Arliss and The Chief to death. Fortunately, before he can do away with the girls, his gun runs out of bullets. Being a consummate buffoon, he runs away.
After managing to free themselves, Marian and Jamie head back to their room with the case, and Jamie, ever the mastermind, calls up Channel's office to set a meeting with the Senator himself and be paid for returning the case to him. As is appropriate, the friends-turned-lovers celebrate with some shower sex, featuring the phallus of Mr. Channel.
Meanwhile, Sukie takes a look at Curlie's drive-away, but she can't see anything in the dark, locked office. Frustrated anew, she resolves to head down to Florida herself with Alice in tow. As she leaves, Curlie lies helpless and bleeding on the ground behind the desk, lamenting aloud that no one is coming to save him. Like many a sap in the Coen's filmography, he's on his own.
The turn of the screwed
In a sequence deliberately echoing the opening of the film, Marian and Jamie meet Gary at their appointed location: a lesbian bar in Miami called the She Shed. Gary hands over the money the girls asked for and the ladies hand over the case full of dildos. Of course, this isn't quite enough for Gary — seething at being made to wait inside a lesbian bar while in disguise, he laments about he and the other public figures (see: rich white men) were supposedly duped by Tiffany in their youth into getting their penises molded, the first in a long line of grievances the Senator has against the youths and women, believing them all to be not proper enough to his liking.
Now that they have a caseload of money, Jamie and Marian attempt to leave the bar, but run into Sukie instead, who's tracked them from the Tallahassee hotel to the She Shed. As Sukie reads Jamie the riot act while Jamie and Marian attempt to explain the events of the last couple days to her, Gary can't simply walk away with his briefcase full of dongs. At its core, "Drive-Away Dolls" is a "lovers on the run" movie, and a good number of these films — "Bonnie & Clyde," "Badlands," "Natural Born Killers," and a close cousin to "Dolls," "Thelma & Louise" — climax with the lovers meeting a deadly fate. As Gary approaches Jamie and Marian, gun in hand, it seems that they may be in this type of trouble.
Fortunately, Sukie is there to ensure that doesn't happen, taking note of the approaching Senator with murder in his eyes and dispatching him quickly and non-lethally. Caught outside a lesbian bar holding a briefcase full of dildos, Channel's name is seen in a newspaper headline about the incident the next day, next to his feeble statement of "I Can Explain."
Drive-away dong
Marian and Jamie celebrate their victory and survival at another swanky restaurant, incredulous at their adventure. After Marian laments that they had to give up the case full of famous dildos, Jamie reveals what the secret project she'd been working on in the background was: getting a couple more copies of Gary's shaft made for themselves.
As it happens, the dildos may mean more than just a thoughtful gift on Jamie's part: the two are now acting like a fully-fledged couple, something Aunt Ellis picks up on when she finally arrives to give the girls a ride. Confirming her suspicions, Jamie mentions how she and Marian should head to Massachusetts next, inferring that marriage is the next stop on their road trip. Sadly, their prenuptial gift is accidentally left behind with the restaurant's parking attendant, as he bafflingly looks at the bag of dual dildos.
A final title card reveals the true name of the film as a car flies by it: "Drive-Away Dykes." While releasing the film under that title in 2024 wasn't a possibility (and, considering the country's still-problematic issues with words that can be used as slurs, probably appropriate), it's not only a title that recalls the far more salacious names of the exploitation movies that the film was inspired by, but one that acts as a sort of victory lap for Coen and Cooke, who first tried to make this movie in the less progressive days of the turn of the century. While the film is certainly unique in its silliness and ribald sexuality, it happily joins a culture where LGBTQIA+ folks are seen on more movie screens in dumb genre flicks as much as in serious dramas. If you can't respect that, then Coen and Cooke sweeten the pot, adding a "Henry James'" prefix to the final title. Here's hoping Cooke and Coen get to make their lesbian film trilogy.
Love is love, sex is human, and a good genre flick is a good genre flick, no matter who's behind the wheel.