Beanie Feldstein came to Tattooed Mom to promote her new film on the golden age of lesbian bars

One recent Friday afternoon, Beanie Feldstein, Margaret Qualley, and Australian actor Geraldine Viswanathan stopped by Tattooed Mom on South Street to promote their new film, Drive-Away Dolls.

“This bar is really cool, I heard it’s kind of infamous,” said Feldstein, who has family friends in the area. All three actors agreed that Tattooed Mom looked similar to the lesbian bars featured in the movie.

In the film, opening in theaters on Friday, Qualley plays Jamie, a reckless heartbreaker; Viswanathan is her uptight friend Marian; and Feldstein is Sukie, Jamie’s bitter ex — and a Philadelphia police officer. The zany road-trip rom-com set in the 1990s is the brainchild of husband-and-wife duo Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke.

Jamie and Sukie live in Philadelphia, but after the breakup Jamie joins Marian to leave everything behind and drive to Tallahassee, Fla. They rent a car going one way and chart a route to stop at lesbian bars with names like the Butter Churn and She Shed along the way.

The only snag: The rental car wasn’t meant for them. A valuable briefcase in the trunk was meant for “the Chief,” played by West Philly native Colman Domingo, and his goons. An interstate chase ensues and the goofiness escalates with hilarious cameos from Pedro Pascal, Matt Damon, and Miley Cyrus. (What’s worth all that trouble? A hint: The film pulled inspiration from the work of real-life groupie and artist Cynthia Albritton, a.k.a. Cynthia Plaster Caster, who created casts of rock stars’ penises, including Jimi Hendrix. She also inspired Philly songwriter Jim Croce’s song Five Short Minutes.)

Cooke, who is queer, cowrote the script with Coen as a trashy B-movie and a love letter to lesbian bars, which were at their peak in the ‘90s; today there are fewer than 30 left in the country, and none in Philly.

Feldstein lives in Chelsea with her wife, Bonnie Chance Roberts, near the popular lesbian bar Cubbyhole. These bars, she said, have been important to her and “they deserve to be celebrated and acknowledged and saved.”

In this trippy, winding journey, the city of Philadelphia’s role is small and fleeting — with a requisite shot of the William Penn statue. The movie was filmed entirely in and around Pittsburgh.

“I feel like we cheated on Philly with Pittsburgh, that’s kind of the vibe I’m getting,” joked Feldstein.

For the role of Sukie, Coen and Cooke told her to hold nothing back. “It was such a joy to just lay it all on the table and go for it, especially when you get to do like fighting and stunts and more action-y stuff. Whenever I put the [cop] costume on in my trailer, I was just like, it’s so funny, a true kind of Coen character.”

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated where Beanie Feldstein lives and the location of the Cubbyhole. Feldstein lives in Chelsea and Cubbyhole is in the West Village