Formed in Oakland in 2012, Tight & Nerdy is a quartet of performers who pride themselves on being the world’s first and only burlesque troop to perform exclusively to the music of “Weird Al” Yankovic. A typical night with Tight & Nerdy might include a sexy canned meat costume to accompany a dance to (of course) “Spam” or obscene butter churning to “Amish Paradise,” and plenty of pasties.
Fresh off a sold-out SF Sketchfest performance last month, the group stars in Tight & Nerdy, a documentary directed by Jeff Nucera and Jonathan Ruane that will have its West Coast premiere Saturday, Feb. 7 at the Roxie as part of SF IndieFest. (The film can be streamed for a limited time through SF IndieFest.)
Comprising a decade’s worth of performance footage at venues like the (since closed) Uptown in Oakland and candid, often vulnerable, explorations of its subjects' lives off the burlesque stage, the film also features Yankovic himself as a talking head.
“I have not seen the show in person,” Yankovic admits on camera. “I’m tempted to go, but I have a feeling if I showed up, people would say ‘Get up on stage and take off your clothes!’ Which is something I would never, never do… without getting a cut at the door.”
The film has been in the works since 2015. “We interviewed Al pretty early on,” Nucera said during a recent Zoom interview. “The week we interviewed him, his daughter had just started high school, and last year, she graduated college. Luckily, Al doesn't age, so he still looks the same as he did 10 years ago.”
One of the the reasons for the project’s lengthy gestation is issues related to clearing the rights for Yankovic’s song parodies. Yankovic strives to share credit on his parodies with the songs’ original artists, making rights clearance a challenge.
But the delays had an upside, making the film deeper and much more interesting, especially as
Tight & Nerdy delves into the lives of the troupe’s members. Cameras follow as Jann Jones, aka Pickles Kintaro, Audra Wolfmann, aka Odessa Lil, Laura Pearl Thomas aka Pearl E. Gates, and Mistress Marla Spanx (who prefers to keep her “daytime” name private) as they deal with aging parents, the loss of a sibling, and the natural fractures that any group of people — even those united in their love for an accordion-playing musical parodist — experience over the course of a decade.
“We were very lucky that these women were very open and honest with us in a human, genuine way,” Nucera said. “These are their stories, but they're also everyone's stories. We've all had those moments where we've felt like outsiders, just as we can all look at Weird Al and say, 'Oh, he's a weirdo and he's okay.'”
Troupe founder and leader Jones acknowledges that she treated the group’s recent Sketchfest appearance at the Great Star Theater on Jackson Street like she does every recent Tight & Nerdy show: like it may be the final one.
“Every time I go on stage, I perform like it's the last time I will do this,” Jones, who has worked as a producer for events like SXSW and Fantastic Fest, told Gazetteer SF during a video call from her home in Seattle. “It's both freeing and so bittersweet because it was such a big part of my life, but now it’s not.”
Between Jones moving from the Bay Area to Seattle, the various demands of day jobs, and the energy required to book, produce, travel to, and perform a Tight & Nerdy show, the future of the group remains in doubt despite members’ deep affection for one another.
The closeness of the troupe can be seen in one sequence in which they make a pilgrimage to Darwin, Minn., home to the biggest ball of twine in the world and the subject of a 1989 deep-cut Yankovic original.
The group spills out of a rental car and dashing through the snow to stare in amazement at the twine encased in protective glass. The scene is as silly as it is profound: Here is a band of weirdos who love another weirdo so much they’ve dedicated a large part of their lives to celebrating him.
“I offered them $500 to let me in, but they are absolutely dead set against me touching that twine ball,” Jones said. “The twine ball holds a very special place in my heart. I just want to be able to hug it. That's it. That's all I want.”
Nucera is also a fan of the ball. “I was so obsessed,” he said.
“I'd actually been to the biggest wall of twine in Minnesota when I moved to LA from Philadelphia in the late '90s,” Nucera said. “I made a special stop. We drove, like, three days out of the way to go to it. My friends were not into it, so when the ladies wanted to go, I was so excited. We were there for hours even though they had a show that night.”
“I don't want [the shows] to just disappear,” Jones said. “But I also don't know if I'm the one to drive the bus anymore. I think there’s a future but I don't know how I’ll be involved. I might be a co-producer. I might be an emcee. I may dust off the g-string and perform. But I think it's too special to fully let it go.”
