Sordid Lives
2000 film by Del Shores
Sordid Lives is a 2000 American black comedy film written and directed by Del Shores, in his directorial debut. It is based on his 1996 play -- inspired by Shore's own coming out experience -- about a Texas family coming together in the aftermath of the matriarch's death. Produced independently, filming took place in Los Angeles on a $500,000 budget in late 1999. It was shot digitally that was later transferred to 35mm film.
It premiered at the Palm Beach International Film Festival on February 4, 2000. It was given a limited eight-theater release in the United States on May 11, 2001, that ran until April 2003 and grossed $1.1 million. Reviews from critics were negative, but was described as later gaining cult status.
It was followed by a television series, Sordid Lives: The Series (2008), and a film, A Very Sordid Wedding (2017).
Premise
A family from a small Texas town must come to grips with the accidental death of the elderly family matriarch during a clandestine meeting in a motel room with her much younger married neighbor. The woman's family must deal with their own demons while preparing for what could be an embarrassing funeral.
“Sordid Lives” enters the record as 2000 film by Del Shores. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Sordid, Lives and film can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1250966. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2000, 1996, 1999 and 2001.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sordid Lives” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.