under the south street stars
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The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert Wednesday, July 15 • 9:00 • Jamaican Jerk Hut Australia 1994, 104 min
Extraordinary, essential and brilliant, Priscilla is an over-the-top drag musical that has spawned imitations, but has never been matched. It must have sounded strange on paper – it’s a wonder that Priscilla was made at all. Let’s picture the pitch meeting. We’d like to cast legendary British actor Terence Stamp as a stoic transsexual on a road trip with younger drag queens Guy Pearce and Hugo Weaving. Have them travel on a pink bus from Sydney across Australia to a gig in Alice Springs. Oh, then let’s use some Abba songs on the soundtrack and get them costumes so outrageous that Christian Lacroix would blush. Now seen as a classic, this drag extravaganza mixed just the right amount of pathos with comedy and music to create a film that’s on most queer people’s all-time top ten film lists. Bernadette (Terence Stamp) teams up with Felicia (Guy Pearce) and Mitzi (Hugo Weaving) to buy an old bus, gay it up some and trek across the Outback blaring disco music. Along the way the “ladies” encounter a bad drug trip, a crazed mail-order bride, bad and good hair days and new family. Felicia sums it all up here, “A desert holiday, let’s pack the drag away. You take the lunch and tea, I’ll take the ecstasy. Fuck off you silly queer, I’m getting out of here. A desert holiday, hip hip hip hip hooray!” —Scott Cranin Director: Stephan Elliott Cast: Hugo Weaving, Guy Pearce, Terence Stamp Screenwriter: Stephan Elliott Producers: Al Clark, Michael Hamlyn Cinematographer: Brian J Breheny Editor: Sue Blainey Print Source: Swank Films
Stephan Elliott’s Filmography: Easy Virtue (2008); Eye of the Beholder (1999); Welcome to Woop Woop (1997); Frauds (1993)
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Myra Breckinridge Thursday, July 16 • 9:00 • Jamaican Jerk Hut USA 1970, 94 min
An epic failure in 1970 has become a camp classic nearly 40 years later. Raquel Welch camps it up as the sexually ravounous Myra (previously the nebbish Myron) who creates sex toys out of utility room objects and Mae West is glorious. What was in some 20th Century Fox exec’s head when he green-lit this outrageous project – an X-rated version of Vidal’s “scandalously” satiric transsexual novel (he also co-wrote the screenplay — and later disowned the screen version) that would feature Rex Reed and Raquel Welch as the male and female embodiment of the same person and some acting oddities (Mae West, John Huston, Farrah Fawcett and a mustache-less Tom Selleck); have a talentless Michael Sarne direct and imbue it with a slap-dash ’60s mentality. The result was, predictably, an epic disaster, sending critics running to their thesauruses looking for words stronger than “repugnant” and “atrocious” and audiences (however small) running to the exits. But was it so bad? YES! But in a campy, smirky, hipper-than-fag sort of way. Just watching Raquel — on a male ego-deflating rampage — rape a strapping stud of a cowboy (Roger Herren) with objects that should remain in utility closets is enough to nominate this deliciously vulgar comedy with Russ Meyer’s Beyond the Valley of the Dolls as one of the best films of 1970! —Raymond Murray “About as funny as a child-molester.” —Time (Really?) Director: Michael Sarne Cast: Mae West, John Huston, Raquel Welch, Rex Reed, Farrah Fawcett, Roger C. Carmel, Jim Backus, John Carradine, Andy Devine, Kathleen Freeman, Tom Selleck Screenwriters: David Giler, Michael Sarne (based on the novel by Gore Vidal) Producers: Robert Fryer, David Giler Cinematographer: Richard Moore Editor: Danford B. Greene Print Source: Criterion Pictures USA, Inc.
Michael Sarne’s Filmography: Glastonbury the Movie (1995); The Punk (1994); Joanna (1968); Road to St. Tropez (1966)
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