When first reported earlier this year, NBC’s development deal with Dolly Parton was said to be for “uplifting” TV movies “the whole family” could enjoy. The first project they announced, an adaptation of “Coat of Many Colors,” seemed to fit that description. Like much of Parton’s earlier music, it’s an autobiographical story about a god-fearing family who manages to do just fine with very little money and a whole lot of love.
But NBC has just revealed its next project under the development deal, and it’s decidedly less wholesome. The network will base its next TV movie on “Jolene,” a song about some floozy who once tried to steal Dolly’s man. The nerve!
She once shared the story behind the song with NPR:
[Parton] got the story for her song from another redhead in her life at the time — a bank teller who was giving [her] new husband a little more interest than he had coming.
“She got this terrible crush on my husband,” Parton says. “And he just loved going to the bank because she paid him so much attention. It was kinda like a running joke between us — when I was saying, ‘Hell, you’re spending a lot of time at the bank. I don’t believe we’ve got that kind of money.’
Gather round the television, children! Let’s all enjoy this dramatized account of a bank teller who uses her powerful position in the world of small-town finance to seduce married men!
Contact the author at bobby@jezebel.com.