Crossover Hopes: Can ‘Fish’ and ‘Priscilla’ Find the Mainstream?

Is the mainstream moviegoing audience ready to cross over and support films about lesbians and drag queens? We’ll find out this summer with the release of “Go Fish” and “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,” two offbeat independent films that got such high marks at this year’s spate of film festivals that they landed major distribution deals.

“Go Fish,” a romantic comedy set among a group of hip young lesbians in Chicago, opened July 1. The film marks the directorial debut of Rose Troche, who financed 65% of this extremely low-budget ($250,000) film, along with co-producer and actress Guinevere Turner, by working a full-time job at the University of Illinois library. (Turner came up with her part of the kitty at a job where “she typed documents all day,” Troche says.)

Australian director Stephan Elliott’s “Priscilla,” a musical road picture about two drag queens and a transsexual (played by ‘60s heartthrob Terence Stamp), opens Aug. 10. It features a series of elaborately choreographed and costumed disco numbers performed in the dirt of the Australian outback. “The movie is essentially a battle between frocks and landscape,” Elliott quips.

The received wisdom of the day has it that the success of Jonathan Demme’s “Philadelphia” will make it easier for such adventurous gay and lesbian films to thrive in the marketplace, but Troche and Elliott say that remains to be seen.

“The studios have realized these films can make money, but their attempts to cash in on this market have been pathetic,” says Troche, speaking by phone from Australia, where she is presenting her film at festivals in Sydney and Melbourne. “Take the film ‘Three of Hearts,’ which is fairly typical--it’s always a threesome where heterosexual desire has the final word. These films have an implied disclaimer on homosexuality and they leave me feeling used.

“People say ‘Philadelphia’ opened doors for gay films, but ‘Philadelphia’ is not a gay film--it’s a very tidy representation of gays, but that doesn’t make it a gay film,” says the 30-year-old director. “It was a safe film straights could embrace because everyone knows Tom Hanks is straight. There’s no way that film would’ve done what it did if they’d cast a gay man in the lead--and why didn’t they? There are hundreds of gay actors!

“I’m often asked what makes a lesbian film, and I don’t think that question is answerable yet. Obviously a film written, directed and edited by a lesbian (as “Go Fish” is) will probably be a lesbian film, but that’s not necessarily true. It’s not a matter of content, either--it has more to do with sensibility. I don’t plan to only make films about lesbians--my commitment is to make films with strong women leads and female characters women can identify with. Sexual preference isn’t the primary thing.”

In addition to making films with strong female leads, Troche also hopes to subvert some of the cinematic cliches about lesbians that have dominated the medium.

“One of the biggest cliches about lesbians is that they’re always really attractive women who are passable as straight,” Troche says. “Then there’s the cliche that lesbians hate men, which is absolutely not true, and the cliche that lesbians are always going after straight women who usually concede at some point in the film.

“ ‘Go Fish’ offers an alternative to those things by staying within a lesbian community where people have healthy relationships and aren’t obsessed with their place in the straight world. I have to say that I’m aware ‘Go Fish’ doesn’t speak to every lesbian,” Troche adds, “and is specific to a particular urban lesbian experience.”

Sexual orientation is almost beside the point in “Priscilla,” which has a different agenda.

“I wanted to make a film about drag because I was looking for a way to bring back the musical,” says Elliott, also on the phone from Australia. “I’m a big lover of musicals, and all the late-’70s post-’Grease’ failures, combined with the arrival of music videos, which sucked up all the music, led the studios to stop making musicals. I think this is a market that can go through the roof again, and I was looking for a way to revive it when I realized here was the answer--drag queens wear glitzy costumes and burst into song. They’re walking, talking musicals!”

“Priscilla” conforms to the structure for movie musicals hammered out by Hollywood studios in the ‘30s and ‘40s but is markedly foreign in that it showcases a style of drag unique to Australia.

“Eight years ago, a drag queen named Strykermeyer (who did “Priscilla’s” makeup) started a drag group called the Scary Fairies, who did really unusual stuff,” Elliott says. “They stopped trying to impersonate women and developed an extreme form of cabaret involving incredibly bizarre costumes and headdresses, and this is the kind of drag in the film. You’ll notice it’s not too often these characters dress as women.

“This kind of drag began as a subculture, but it’s gone mainstream in Sydney, which is an extremely free-thinking city,” he adds. “If you got a guy in dress on a stage doing Streisand, nobody would pay any attention to him--you’ve got to work hard to get people’s attention here.”

Elliott says he made his film “knowing I was pushing the envelope and expecting to get crucified,” but in fact “Priscilla” has a better-than-average chance of crossing over. “Torch Song Trilogy,” which is set in the world of drag, did well at the box office, and the French film “La Cage aux Folles,” also about drag, was one of the most successful movies of 1978.

Asked why the mainstream audience seems to prefer gay men in drag rather than out of it, Elliott replies: “Because it’s an excuse to laugh at them, and this is something I tried to exploit in the way I structured the film. I knew if I tried to make a sympathetic film about drag queens from the first frame, I’d lose three-quarters of the crossover audience. So in the first third of the film the characters come off as pretty trashy, and the audience is invited to laugh at them. Very slowly this begins to turn in the middle act, and in the last third of the film you laugh with them rather than at them.”

One criticism that has been leveled at “Priscilla” is that the film’s attitude toward its two female characters is flagrantly sexist.

“Yes, it’s absolutely sexist,” Elliott says cheerfully. “I didn’t set out to make a sexist film, but truth be known, many drag queens are incredibly sexist. Lots of queers basically can’t relate to women, and many of the guys I know who do drag are having a go at women. This is the bloody truth--why shouldn’t I put it in my film?”

That attitude won’t get Elliott too far in Hollywood, but at this point the studios are beginning to circle around him with interest.

“I recently passed through L.A., where I saw everybody, and the studios offered me just about everything. It was flattering, but I’ve got to be careful because I don’t know if they can handle me,” he says. “There’d be no point in them employing me to make a film they’ll hate, and everything I was offered was very safe. No matter what I do next, it will be risky.”*