Life Is Hot in Cracktown

A disturbing collection of vignettes about life on the edge. It's a world of drug addicts, pimps, prostitutes, transsexuals, low-life criminals and the homeless, all caught in the deadly orbit of crack. In "Miss Lonely Has a Date Tonight," a call girl's night on the town includes giving sexual favors to a brutal chauffeur in exchange for a few hits of crack, a client with a penchant for handcuffs and "that look in his eye," and a final drop-off, not on her doorstep, but in the Hudson River. "School's Out" tells the story of ten-year-old Willy, living in a drug-infested hotel, begging for money for food, learning to smoke crack, being introduced to sex by a much older woman, and falling in love with Melody, a twelve-year-old prostitute who disappears. And in "Homos off Houston," Marybeth, a transsexual, achieves a kind of grace through her commitment to her crack-addicted husband, Benny, who may or may not have AIDS.