The Uniform of the Day: a Dress

Robin Williams has perpetuated one of the biggest jokes of the movie season. Audiences find his silly antics, parading around in women’s clothes and speaking with a falsetto British accent in “Mrs. Doubtfire” pretty funny--as $122.4 million in box-office receipts (and counting) proves.

So naturally Hollywood can be expected to follow suit in a big way--except that the collection of upcoming cross-dressing films push the “Doubtfire” concept much further: The cross-dressers flouncing upon the screen over the next couple of years won’t be heterosexual males trapped in the bodice of a woman, but bona fide transvestites--and gay.

Actor-playwright Harvey Fierstein, who in fact played Williams’ makeup-artist brother in “Mrs. Doubtfire,” has penned a script for Dolly Parton’s Sandollar Productions titled “Plucked,” which follows the trials of a drag queen forced to play surrogate father to his sister’s children after she abandons them.

“The time has come to explore gay issues in the movies,” said Carol Baum, production president for Sandollar. “It’s the one area that hasn’t been tackled from every angle yet.”

Independent producer Howard Rosenman (“Father of the Bride”) has acquired the rights to drag queen Holly Woodlawn’s 1991 autobiography, “A Low Life in High Heels.” Woodlawn, a former Andy Warhol superstar and one of the subjects Lou Reed sang about in “Walk on the Wild Side,” went from the celebrity-studded Studio 54 drugs-and-alcohol lifestyle during the ‘70s to studying party dress design at Los Angeles’ Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (and otherwise living a much quieter, sober existence).

And Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment recently conducted drag queen auditions for New York playwright Doug Beane’s screenplay of “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar,” the story of three drag queens--one of whom worships TV’s Catwoman, Julie Newmar--and their escapades through the South. The movie’s title refers to an inscription made to a Chinese restaurant owner on a photo, in the possession of one of the queens who places it on the car dashboard as a talisman.

Then there’s the finished Australian comedy acquired by Polygram, “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,” awaiting a domestic theatrical release. Starring Terence Stamp, Hugo Weaving and Guy Pearce, the picture is described as a road movie about three drag queens who travel the outback in a beat-up bus called Priscilla.