I had the opportunity to see the motion picture "Dogtown" which appeared as an entry in The Denver International Film Festival on Sunday, October 26, 1997. The director, George Hickenlooper, was supposed to be present for the screening, but owing to the horrendous snowstorm suffered by Colorado over the weekend, he was still on a plane enroute when the film was screened. His cousin was there instead, to field questions and offer information about the film.

Audience reaction was good, if not overwhelmingly positive. They asked for a show of hands asking which people, on a scale of 1 to 5, rated it a 5 (two or three people raised their hands), a 4 (most people raised their hands), a 3 (a few people) a 2 (one or two people), 1 (no one raised their hand).

Disappointingly, Maureen's role is very small (perhaps some of her scenes wound up on the cutting room floor). The actors are listed alphabetically, so she is about the seventh or eight actor billed. She has three scenes. She and Mary Stuart Masterson and Shawnee Smith are three women who run a beauty shop. All are various stages of, shall we say, scuzzy? (As is just about everyone in this film). Lots of swearing, lots of cigarette smoking, lots of beer drinking. She does her usual polished job with limited dialogue and screen time. Her first scene occurs outside a Dairy Queen-type spot where most of the people in the film hang out a lot. She emerges from a Volkswagon bug with Mary and Shawnee and they interact with several guys for a few minutes (Maureen's character, Didi, helps one guy unload a keg of beer). Her second scene is in the beauty shop with Shawnee Smith, when the lead guy comes looking for Mary Stuart Masterson. She has a couple of lines of dialogue as she sits in one of the beauty shop chairs, reading a magazine. Her third scene is at a funeral with several other people. She has no dialogue. And she looks about as old as I've ever seen her look in ANYTHING in that scene (I'm sure that was the intention). The film definitely has "art house" written all over it. It won't be a big box office success, I'm relatively certain. The picture, as of Sunday, didn't yet have a distributor, but John Hickenlooper told us that his cousin George had been on the phone with someone that morning and that they are very close to having a national distribution deal. The film was shot entirely within a four week period for less than a million dollars. It is definitely worth a look, but it is grim and unremitting in its tone. These are a lot of people stuck in dead-end jobs in a small town with no future.

Note : Although this review is primarily about Maureen McCormick, Scott has offered the following additional information

Shawnee, by the way, has a substantially bigger role in "Dogtown" than does Maureen, and she does an outstanding job of playing a world-weary woman who has burnt out early in life, and demonstrates an unwavering loyalty to her friends, most especially Mary Stuart Masterson. She also plays pregnant throughout the film, although, as I recall, there is never any mention made of her condition. It surprised me, because her character drinks and smokes heavily throughout, yet she is clearly pregnant.