Part 9
Then there's The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982, dir. Colin Higgins, 114 min), where she plays Miss Mona, a brothel owner who outsmarts a hypocritical TV preacher (Dom DeLuise) and a sheriff (Burt Reynolds). Rhinestone (1984, dir. Bob Clark, 111 min) has her teaching Sylvester Stallone to sing country — a joke she's in on from frame one. Steel Magnolias (1989, dir. Herbert Ross, 117 min) lets her balance grief and gossip with Sally Field, Julia Roberts, and Shirley MacLaine. Straight Talk (1992, dir. Barnet Kellman, 91 min) casts her as a radio host who pretends to be a psychologist. Joyful Noise (2012, dir. Todd Graff, 118 min) pairs her with Queen Latifah and Keke Palmer in a gospel choir showdown, streaming on Max. And Dumplin' (2018, dir. Anne Fletcher, 110 min, on Netflix) has her playing a version of herself who helps a plus-size teen (Danielle Macdonald) enter a beauty pageant. She also executive produced and starred in the Netflix anthology Dolly Parton's Heartstrings (2019), and wrote and appeared in Christmas on the Square (2020, dir. Debbie Allen, 98 min), also on Netflix. Every role asks the same question: who gets to define you? Dolly's answer is always the same. She does. In Straight Talk, she literally plays a character who tells people what to do with their lives. In Joyful Noise, she battles Queen Latifah for control of a choir and wins by letting someone else shine. That's the trick. She's always the one holding the microphone, even when she's handing it over.
That's why the question we started with was wrong. We asked whether Dolly can be serious. She asked whether we can keep up. The transcript is full of moments where she turns the interview into a sketch — 'They're always talking about my boobs,' she says. 'They're not that big. It's just that I'm little and they're big in comparison.' Then she pauses. 'Well, they're all okay, they're big.' The laugh is hers. The timing is hers. The microphone is hers. She even jokes that her boobs are miked: 'You talk into the left one and I'll talk into the right.' She's not dodging the joke. She's directing it. That's the same instinct that made her initially decline the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022, then accept it and release a rock album, Rockstar (2023), that topped the charts. She doesn't just pivot. She rewrites the script.
By the end of that same interview, she's telling the story of her mother marrying at 14 and having 12 kids by 35, then deadpanning, 'I think that's why people in the country have so many kids. You don't want to hire help.' She jokes about Jolene losing her looks: 'She used to wear a D cup, now she's wearing D pants.' She lets an impersonator tell her she does a better Dolly than Dolly, and she plays along: 'I think that my accent's better.' She is not in on the joke. She wrote it, directed it, starred in it, and sold the merch. The rest of us are catching up. The interviewer laughs. The audience laughs. Dolly laughs last, because she knew the punchline before anyone else in the room.
Next up: the Dolly Parton filmography, from 9 to 5 to Joyful Noise, and what her movie roles reveal about the same question of self-authorship. Because if you think the joke was ever on her, you haven't been paying attention. She's been holding the pen the whole time.
