Episode 8: "Varratapedia" (w/ Michael Varrati!)

*This week, the queers reach across the podcast aisle and are joined by Michael Varrati (Dead for Filth) to talk the drag queen sci-fi cult fave VEGAS IN SPACE. We spend way more time talking about the history of the film than the film itself, but with such an interesting history, who could blame us? Michael leads the queerwolves through the film’s bizarre and fascinating tale that winds through the Reagan era, the AIDS crisis, Rodney King, and USA Up All Night. Plus, son’t miss everyone’s drag names and Michael Kennedy’s surprisingly stellar impression skills.   Plus, in Tea Time we sip on FOREVER, CHANNEL ZERO, REVENGE, THE VICTIM, and THE FLY.* [1]

### Trivia

This episode was "recorded" in Nay's hometown gay bar. It's where she saw her first drag show and thought it would be appropriate for tonight. It's called Chester Street, in Champaign-Urbana Illinois. 'The cover was $3 and the drag shows on Sunday night "was poppin'" The really, really special guest is Michael Varrati, host of Dead for Filth. Mark is hangry and punchy throughout, kicking off the episode by introducing himself as Michael. Mark adds Cher to his roster of impressions. Brennan clarifies that you can spoil movies in Shady Summaries, just not in Tea Time. Michael does a great impression of Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa.

Topics brought up during the episode:
Maya Rudolph's Prince cover band, Princess. NBC's Monday Night Movie, TV movies in the 90s, *Cabin by the Lake* and its sequel, *Buried Alive* w. Tim Matheson, Lifetime movies, *Chasing the Dragon* with Markie Post, Nancy McKeon, Tori Spelling TV movie trilogy (*Death of a Cheerleader,* *Mother May I Sleep with Danger?*, *Co-ed Call Girl*) Sharon Lawrence sleeping with Brian Austin Green, YouTube for 90s tv movies, Ivan Sergei of *The Opposite of Sex* fame, Nay's dog Kennedy. "Honey" from Robyn, *The Toxic Avenger,* Troma, Lloyd Kaufman. 20th anniversary *Vegas in Space* oral history.

### **Tea time**

**Michael:** *Channel Zero: Candle Cove*

**Michael:** There's a person just covered in teeth, which is terrifying because teeth freak me the hell out

**Varrati:** But it's good to have them

**Michael:** I'm glad I have all thirty-two teeth, I'm happy about that

**Mark:** That's a lot of Whitestrips

**Varrati:** It's sort of essentially Canadian Horror Story, because it's an anthologized show where each season it's a brand new story and it's a Canadian production, so

**Mark:** And now you have my attention

**Michael:** And I'm always a big fan of anything set in Ohio. And season one is set in Ohio.

**Mark:** No it's not, it's set in Canada. Listen to (Varrati), listen to our guest

**Michael:** They call it Iron Hills, Ohio in the town, but it's clearly not shot in Ohio.

**Varrati:** No, it's shot in Manitoba

**Mark:** Yeah. See? See?

**Brennan:** It's the Ohio of Canada

**Mark:** Halfway through *Forever* season one, *Jane Fonda in Five Acts*

**Varrati:** I was just hoping you were going to be like, 'The Jane Fonda workout tape,' and I'd be like, "Yes! Every day since 1986."

**Mark:** Those head rolls. Mmmm.

**Varrati:** "I'm protesting more and getting abs of steel."

**Mark:** I would absolutely watch the hell out of that workout tape.

**Varrati:** *The Victim*

**Nay:** binged *American Horror Story: Cult,* *Revenge (2017)*

**Michael:** (to Varrati) Were you thinking of the Madeline Stowe TV show?

**Varrati:** I mean, the Madeline Stowe television series

**Nay:** You're like, "You're weird."

**Varrati:** I was in, I was ready to slide in and be like, "Let me tell you about the work Madeline did on that TV show." But no, the *Revenge* thriller, also awesome.

**Nay:** I also love how, I don't know that woman's name, the main star.

**Brennan:** Matilda Ingrid Lutz

**Nay:** So every other movie, I feel like, if it had this revenge vibe to it, you're like, "But I still don't understand why this woman is wearing that in the middle of the desert. Like, why is she dressed like that? Why is this her asskicking outfit?" But this movie it actually makes sense

**Michael:** And directed by a female. I think that's, when you look at that film in the context of who directed it, everything just falls into place because it has a purpose as opposed to being gratuitous. And right now, I hope everyone who hasn't seen *Revenge*, go fucking watch it. You'll feel so good when you do. And I'm not a huge rape-revenge viewer, like, I'm not, I don't usually flock to those movies. But I'm really glad I saw this. And I saw it in a theater. It was amazing.

**Mark:** *Revenge*, *I Spit on Your Grave*, it feels like a big mood for today. For anyone turning in...

**Michael:** For context, yeah

**Mark:** Today was the Kavanaugh hearings, which, yeah.

**Nay:** (Sarah Paulson) was amazing (in *American Horror Story: Cult*). She plays a lesbian, as a lesbian. Plays a lesbian as a lesbian.

**Brennan:** The dream

**Nay:** Lesbians playing lesbians

**Nay:** I love cults. I love, like, anything cult-y, because you know, I kinda grew up in one. Or i feel like i did.

**Michael:** Cult-adjacent

**Mark:** Really? Evangelical christianity is a cult? I had no, I would never think of it that way, wow. Especially not after today, no.

**Brennan:** *The Fly* (1958), Cher's "S.O.S." music video (about a hundred times)

**Brennan:** (Cher) is not in it, because she has better things to do than be in her own music videos.

**Michael:** God, I just want her to never stop tweeting

**Brennan:** It's a lot of famous and semi-famous women lip-synching to her cover of "S.O.S." …it's basically just them hugging in front of a sunset and I feel so empowered by it at the same time. I love it a lot.

**Varrati:** Do we think Cher saw it?

**Brennan:** No. Cher doesn't even know she has an album out

**Mark:** She's like, (as Cher) "Is that video done? Oh, wow. I'll get to it."

**Michael:** And then she goes, "Whose song is this?"

**Varrati:** She tweeted some very loving things about the members of ABBA this week, so

**Michael:** She's loving her life right now and she's loving the fact that, as she said, she had a thirty second cameo in *Mamma Mia! 2*

**Nay:** Oh lord

**Mark:** (as Cher) "That's the best kind of party, little girl."

### **Shady summaries**

Slipped in at the very end during social media plugs

**Michael:** Mine would just be "Girls just wanna have fuckin' fun."

**Nay:** Yeah. I'm like, "The place I want to move to."

**Mark:** "When in Clitoris…"

**Michael:** "Let's stay…"

### **Pride Float**

**Brennan:** I have a really good, really easy question for all of you: Does this movie get a Pride float?

**Mark:** (sarcastically) Well, no. No.

**Michael:** It gets seven

**Mark:** i mean, it *is* a Pride float. It like, *invented* Pride parades

**Michael:** Clearly (*Vegas in Space*) gets one then and now… (Varrati), what would your Pride float for this movie look like?

**Varrati:** I mean, it's gotta be the cityscape of Vegas in Space.

**Michael:** Yes! I was just thinking that!

**Varrati:** It's gotta be that model cityscape that they used in the movie where like the little UFOs are on strings overhead

**Michael:** I love it so much. Friggin' lipsticks and like, the makeup as buildings

**Mark:** With drag queens and like, guys in things with like, fishing rods flying ships over the cityscape

**Varrati:** I would love to see a *Vegas in Space* cityscape Pride float. I will say that the movie, it still has an audience and it's still finding an audience, which is kind of amazing. And I mentioned this before we went on air, and I do think it's fun to point out the serendipity. She had no idea that I was coming to talk about this movie, but I was on set today and I had to rush over here to make sure I made it on time. And in-between I received a message from Miss X, and Miss X plays Queen Veneer in the movie and Miss X now lives in Arizona  and I had posted something about *Vegas* awhile ago and X had just seen it and she said, you know, "Oh my god, this made my day." It was really cool and I told her that I was coming to do this and she was just like, so excited. And she told me, "Well you know," she's like, "They're screening it somewhere near here soon and I'm gonna go and introduce the movie and I get to talk about it," and she said, she was like, "I feel like this movie, even though we couldn't have never guessed, that it did exactly what Doris and Phillip and I hoped it would do, which is it found its people and continues to find its people." And one of the things that I'm very happy about in celebrating this movie is that I've gotten to know Miss X and I know Phillip very well, and I've said this in other interviews, but I really really value both of them and I value my friendships and conversations with them, because not only are they amazing artists and like, crazily, "crazily". I write for a living. But, you know, crazy talented and I just think trailblazers, but they also share this history that's *their* history. I sit and soak it in like, "This is queer history." And they're like, "This is our lives." And I just value that. They're amazing. And as long as they're in the world, they're the Pride float, too.

### **Quotes**

**Varrati:** It's like the queer podcast Avengers, bringing it together

**Mark:** We're a Voltron of queerness

**Michael:** Are we a DC or Marvel?

**Varrati:** I mean, I have thoughts on that

**Michael:** Queer-vel?

**Varrati:** DC handles LGBTQ characters better.

**Mark:** Fair. Whereas Marvel...

**Michael:** Doesn't handle them at all

**Mark:** Keep waiting for a Midnighter movie. When's that gonna happen? Twelfth of never.

**Varrati:** He's aggressive, though.

**Mark:** He is

**Varrati:** My kind of guy.

**Michael:** He's dom?

**Varrati:** He is

**Mark:** There's nothing wrong when a guy knows what he wants in a good way.

**Nay:** Nothing wrong with that

**Michael:** As long as he's not hurting anybody

**Mark:** Exactly

**Brennan:** I think Nay and I have the exact same blank stare on our faces right now.

**Michael:** I'm pretending

**Nay:** I thought I was hiding that

**Mark:** (*Co-ed Call Girl*), I don't know

**Varrati:** I mean, everything you need to know is in the title. "She had to pay for college, and she found a way: *Co-ed Call Girl*."

**Brennan**: Do you want to hear my impression of Mark? "Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm."

**Michael:** (stage whisper) Mark's hangry, remember, Brennan.

**Nay:** Yeah, tread lightly, honestly

**Mark:** I'm not hangry!

**Brennan:** No, I love it

**Mark:** I feel like Joan Cusack at the end of *Addams Family Values* and she goes, "I am ador-- I am loveable," whatever the line is. She's like, "I am Malibu Barbie."

**Michael:** You are so loveable. You are one of my favorite people

**Brennan:** No, I and i do love that. Like even your passive listening is kinda sassy. Like, "Mmmm-hmm."

**Mark:** I'm really getting to know myself on this podcast. I had no idea.

**Varrati:** (Robyn) disappears and then it's like that scene in the second *Lord of the Rings* movie, whatever it was called, where they're just like, "Look to the east as the sun rises and I'll be there," and fucking Robyn. Just when I think we have hit our darkest moment, (explosion sound), Sweeten. I'm just ready for her to save us.

**Michael:** I could really use a new Carly Rae Jepson song right about now, thank you

**Mark:** Well maybe if you were nicer to people from Canada like Carly Rae…

**Michael:** When was I mean? Someone get Mark some cake!

**Michael:** You're our Varratipedia. I just thought of that.

**Varrati:** Thank you. I'm gonna buy that domain name

**Mark:** I feel that it's like, "I'm sorry Michael, it's Varratipedia." "'Oh, God!"

**Varrati:** (*Vegas in Space*) is sort of a singularity in queer cinema history, because it's a genre movie that is entirely comprised of drag queens, that was made in the 80s, was released in 1991 and when I first saw it, it was on *USA Up All Night,* it was hosted by Rhonda Shear.

**Michael:** Was it really?

**Varrati:** Yeah, it screened on *USA Up All Night*

**Michael:** That is so great. How did I miss that?

**Varrati:** One thing I always say about how significant this movie is, even if it's sort of like an underground moment for people, or like, lesser seen, is that if you were a queer kid in 1992 and you're flipping through the channels and all of a sudden you land on this bizarre fucking film of drag queens in space. I mean, here's the deal. We laugh at it, but there were not drag queens on television in 1992. There weren't queer people on television in 1992. So for ninety glorious minutes on one Friday night, they put the gayest movie at a time when drag was not even in vogue because they put this out even before *Priscilla, Queen of the Desert*.

**Mark:** This was back when gay men thought that drag gave the community a bad name

**Varrati:** Yeah. And so, it was sort of like, there is a culture behind this movie for people who saw it. And Peaches Christ, who I mentioned, has been very involved in preserving the history as well. She saw that airing as well, and it was one of the motivating factors when she moved there was to know that this culture of underground punk rock drag existed. And it's just the fact that it is a genre film, there is horror influence in it that comes from Phillip R. Ford, who is the filmmaker. But the movie itself has kind of a very fascinating trajectory. But the fact that the movie came out in 1991, but they started making it eight years previous. And so, when you look at the history of the movie, there is this whole art scene that exists in San Francisco, that is wild and unruly and people are just creating characters and they got away from the oppressive homes they lived in and they got to re-invent themselves. This hustler from Australia, becomes Doris Fish, the most glamorous woman in the world. There was this whole circle of people, and it's just, y'know, everything happened: drugs, AIDS. There was a serial killer at one point. Like, their lives were so crazy that this movie is just sort of like the yearbook that captures that moment. And it's a moment in queer culture that I think a lot of younger LGBTQ people, even though we still have so much more to do, don't know about.

**Michael:** While watching it, you get a sense, like based off what you just said, while I was watching it, I now get a sense that for them to make this movie, it was like, really, probably the only time at that time that they had a safe space to go to at all times. You know what I mean? Like, the cast and the crew, everybody there was either a drag queen, probably queer, ally, one or the, you know what I mean? So looking at it more than just a film, these people are going to play in a playground they can finally play in as their own. Without prejudice, without rejection. Without being judged. And like, I just got the chills because when I'm watching the movie I didn't think about any of this shit.

**Mark:** Well, speaking of playground, what's astonishing is at this time, the world of drag specifically and certainly queer culture was looked at not only by, you know, our own community but the human community, the straight community as being sort of degenerate and what have you. And over the course of eight years, this group of actors is devoting themselves to what is essentially a children's theatre. It is absolutely a children's movie for edgy gay people

**Michael:** It's very PBS

**Varrati:** And yeah, there are certainly buttons that are pushed that like, maybe by today's lens are problematic, but I think it's the same way that we watch Divine in John Waters. Like we know there's a drag humor of the era that was pushing buttons, and Mark really hit the nail on the head. There was a moment, especially during the Reagan era, where the queer community was so desperately vying for equality that we just wanted...

**Michael:** Just to live

**Varrati:** Yeah, just to live. That we just wanted middle America to be like, "Hey! We're just like you." And we wanted to sell the idea that we want the same things that you want. We want the house, we want the picket fence, we want the dog…

**Michael:** We have our own store

**Varrati:** Yeah. And living out loud now, and having our own identities, like we want equality, we just don't necessarily want *those* things. We just want to be able to do things our way. But in that moment, drag was looked down upon, because it represented this queerness that the mainstream gay community was trying so hard to sell, they were trying to sell this image to middle America that drag didn't fit into.

**Mark:** Or that homosexuality did not equal effeminiacy.

**Varrati:** Yes. I mean, there's baseline misogyny to the whole thing

**Mark:** Top to bottom. No pun intended.

**Nay:** That article that (Varrati) wrote, I feel like that is the content I've been craving my whole life.

**Michael:** Before you finish, is it okay if we post that? Because I feel like it's something people should read.

**Varrati:** Yeah, I mean, I know that that article specifically has actually been taught in some LGBTQ film classes. And it originally was created for peacheschrist.com, because Peaches and I have a long partnership and friendship and she had asked me to create articles for her site and that was one of the first ones that I really wanted to do. And it did, you know, I'm so proud of it because it did preserve that history.

**Michael:** And Nay, you felt that it's the content you're craving now?

**Nay:** Yeah, absolutely. I feel, you know, I'm always struck by how us sitting here, our contributing to history, of course

**Michael:** That's a really cool way to look at it

**Nay:** We are. But then you read that article and I'm like thinking about, you know, the queer punk rock drag scene here in L.A.. which is gorgeous and amazing. And I'm a big fan, and I don't know. I think about all of us making community and fighting for whatever it is that we're fighting for now, but I wouldn't have inserted myself into like, this historical narrative. I wouldn't have thought of like, you know until I read (the article) and thought, "Oh, you know, this is what we do. Like this is what queer folks do."

**Varrati:** They were literally just making something that they thought was fun, that represented themselves, but they were just trying to live their lives. What's really great about what you said about the queer punk rock scene of L.A., and just, "This is what we do," when I say the history of this movie is so rich, one of the moments that's very key to the movie happened after the movie came out. There was a very famous venue here in Los Angeles called Dragstrip 66, and it was an underground kind of phenomenon that many people would go to, it was once a month. And it was curated by a drag queen named Gina Lotrimin who is now Mister Dan, who runs the theatre in the basement of a Mexican restaurant here in Los Angeles, but he has kind of has his own little stake in queer history. But when *Vegas in Space* came to screen in Los Angeles, it was right after the L.A. riots and the circumstances with Rodney King happened. And so they, and by "they" I mean the Man, the authorities were worried that other minority groups were going to cause trouble and riot.

**Michael:** For the screening?

**Varrati:**No, just in general. So Giorgio's, which was hosting Dragstrip 66 at the time, for the first time in the party's history got busted up by the police. They were so like, "This isn't fire code," and they pushed all the LGBTQ people out on the street. That was the night they were hosting a premiere party for *Vegas in Space*. So there's actually, as the police are pushing people out into the street, there are pictures of Phillip Ford and Miss X in the kitchen of that place, surrounded by like, LAPD and firefighters. *And* that same night, Mister Dan in full drag gets up on the roof of a car with a bullhorn and is like, "We're not fucking going anywhere! Get back in the club!" And he talked everybody to go back into the club. And the police were just like, "All right, we're gonna go." But that was a moment tied to this film that is part of queer history, so.

**Michael:** That's really cool. I've never heard that story, I'm really glad you just told it.

**Varrati:** But this is why I picked this movie.

**Michael:** I'm finding that the really cool thing about this movie is it brings up history, our lives, the lives of those in our community and how a movie can make you talk about more than a movie. You know? Because we really haven't talked about the movie.

**Varrati:** Not yet

**Michael:** But talking about what a movie can do to push the community forward and think about the past. Because I think a lot of people today, especially younger folks, I feel like have a tendency to forget where we came from. And like, how hard the struggle has been. And even our age group, we haven't seen the shit some people have seen.

**Varrati:** Yeah. And all of these things happened. Because I wasn't there, there will be minor details that I get incorrect. So Miss X, or Phillip, if you're listening, please correct me if you're out there. But I do know by and large the major beats of this movie and the fact that these things happened; and it's just the idea that like, the police came, to be like, "No, no, too many gays. You'll all have to go."

**Michael:** "You're having too much fun"

**Varrati:** "For what? For a drag movie. *Really. Well, all right."*

**Brennan:** Is (*Vegas in Space*) spoil-able at all? In general?

**Mark:** I don't know. I'm trying to be respectful of the filmmakers

**Michael:** Yeah, the audience that may not have seen it

**Varrati:** I know that Troma has been hit over the years for various questions of like, political correctness. But when this movie came out, Lloyd and Troma came in at the tail end of it. The movie was pretty much completed and they picked it up for distribution when nobody else would, because he saw this sort of ragtag group of artists and he knew that no one was going to distribute queer cinema, and they decided to take this on. And they took it to Sundance. And they took it to Cannes, so it's like….

**Mark:** How responsible would you say is *Vegas in Space* for the birth of the new queer cinema movement of the early Nineties?

**Varrati:** Well, the crucial year of the new queer cinema movement was 1991. That's the year that *Poison* comes out, that's the year...

**Mark:** *Go Fish*?

**Varrati:** It's around there. I mean, it's like '91, '92, there's this big glut. Tom Kalin's *Swoon,* but *Vegas in Space* was at Cannes and Sundance with *Poison*, *Swoon*, Derek Jarman's *Edward II.* It was just like a boom, boom, boom. But they were the drag movie.

**Michael:** How was it received?

**Mark:** And they were still marginalized as a result of being the drag queens.

**Varrati:** Mm-hmm. And there were queer filmmakers at that festival who tried to distance themselves from the filmmakers of *Vegas in Space* because at the time, they were still trying to be like, "We're making serious art. And you made this silliness." But as we know with cult cinema, it finds its place. And it sometimes is a better thumbprint of a moment in time than like, the pretentious art is.

**Michael:** You can see, through that film, you can see the evolution of drag in the last thirty years

**Varrati:** I watch *RuPaul's Drag Race* and see looks that I'm like, this was wholesale borrowed from *Paris is Burning*, *Vegas in Space,* The Cockettes

**Mark:** I feel like Nueva Gabor's green look was absolutely...

**Nay:** Dr. Seuss

**Mark:** I mean, Dr. Seuss fantasy

**Nay:** I can't take credit for that. I was watching it with someone and they were like, "I think Dr. Seuss was inspired."

**Mark:** They were like, "Cringe, but *make it fashion.*"

**Varrati:** I've never said this when discussing the movie at all, but whenever I see Tippi, who played Princess Angel, I always think that there is some definite inspiration for the Gaga to come. I can see some Gaga looks straight out of that.

**Michael:** Absolutely. And I think inspiration's a great thing. It's only when people don't embrace that they were inspired by something that it becomes problematic. But why wouldn't you watch that movie and go, "holy shit, this is amazing. I want that. I want to look like that." I mean, some of the looks on there, absolutely Mark, you've seen them repeated on *Drag Race* over and over and over again. I mean, every other person that walked by (in the movie), I was like, "Is that Willam? Is that Willam?" Then you're just like, "Oh wait, it was 1985."

**Michael:** So it took eight years to make. Was that including, I know the shoot was over a course of eighteen months I think I read. So was the other six and a half years spent trying to raise funds for the film?

**Varrati:** Yeah, I think there was the situation of raising funds for the film. Most of the principal photography took place over a shorter amount of time. But then, most of them were not working normal jobs, so they had to bring in money when they could to finish the movie. Phillip Ford, the director, famously talks about how Doris Fish was...

**Michael:** Great name

**Nay:** Amazing

**Varrati:** Yeah, Doris is definitely legendary in drag circles. And Doris came up with a lot of the ideas for this movie. She came to Phillip like, "We're gonna do this." And Doris worked many different jobs over the course of the making of the movie. And one of the stories that Phillip talks about is that she was a very handsome man out of drag, and she would go and turn tricks. And so, she would answer the phone like, (deep voice) "Hello? Yeah. Five dollars. Ten inches."(Normal voice) and go out and here's some more money for the movie. And y'know, at the time, they didn't think anything of it, because they wanted to make this fucking movie and they were going to do anything that they could. Doris also had a very popular moment in time where she modeled for greeting cards that were distributed nationwide.

**Nay:** Ugh, wish I had some!

**Varrati:** I do!

**Michael:** 'Course you do

**Mark:** Maybe you'll be so kind as to share some of them

**Varrati:** I have a crate of them, and they're from the Christmas season and every once in awhile I'll break them out and send one or two cards during the holiday season.

**Michael:** Oh, that's lovely

**Varrati:** But that led to actually Doris actually getting a kind of moment of acclaim where she ended up on a talk show in Pittsburgh, and you can find this on YouTube. It's very fascinating because she's in full drag, and you've got this blue collar steel city audience. I used to live in Pittsburgh and I say this with love, but they grew a lot in the intervening years, where they're just like, "Who is this degenerate? What a freak!" And they're like, you know, "Do you want children to grow up and be like you?" And she's like, "I think all children should do drag." It's just like, watching that in 1980-whatever is so fascinating.

**Michael:** it's fascinating and it's so punk in a lot of ways, too, because just the courage to do something like that.

**Varrati:** What was the question? I was just like, "Doris Fish! Blah blah blah."

**Michael:** Eight years to make the movie?

**Varrati:** And then they were finishing. And obviously so, y'know, they all had kind of their own trajectories. Phillip, I'm sure he wouldn't mind my saying, had a situation where he had substance abuse problems in the years following (*Vegas in Space*) where he lost some of his other films out of a storage unit because he just was out of it and they came and took everything. They had made short films and things that got lost to time, and somebody else eventually found them and returned them to him. He was dealing with that, Doris was making money where they could. They were doing shows to raise money. And then of course, AIDS happened. Not to bring the party down, but by the time the movie premieres in 1991, essentially they had gotten the funds to finish it, they had gotten a festival booking. And Phillip was able to tell Doris that they were going to be playing at a festival, but she died before the film premiered at the Castro. So she never actually saw the completed film, and Tippi died two weeks later.

**Mark:** Because they were like mother-daughter, weren't they?

**Varrati:** Yeah.

**Michael:** There's such a history behind the film, too, in the sense of like, what was going on as they were making it. Like over the course of eight years, a lot of shit went down. That you can look at through the context of the film. Like, "In '87 when we were doing this, this was going on." It's really interesting because usually a lot of films, they're made and they're abandoned, you know? They're made and they're released and you're just making a movie, but really at the end of the day, they were living history as they were making a movie, which is pretty great

**Varrati:** Yeah. And it's rare to have a movie-- I mean, any queer movie made during that era is a moment in history. As you said, it is making history. But there are few films that actually you can chart the history. And i think that's what makes it so singularly important in the queer canon, for many other reasons, but it's just the idea that like, they began almost a decade before and you can look at the trajectory and the sociology and the culture of both the city that kind of was, was the queer escape and a larger kind of gay discussion that was happening. To the fact that they take it to Sundance and no one wanted a drag movie, and a year later an Australian film about drag is celebrated because it was subversive and pushing buttons.

**Mark:** Yeah. I mean, that's really both a fascinating and sad postscript to this movie is the idea that, you know, at Sundance they've got Todd Haynes, Tom Kalin, you know, and all of them sort of turning their nose up at this movie because-- and no disrespect to any, I don't know if they personally actually did. But certainly the independent film movement was not kind to this particular movie. They were much more in favor of movies like *Swoon*, or what was the other one?

**Varrati:** *Poison*, *Edward II*

**Mark:** Yeah, *Poison*. And because those films were overtly sort of more mainstream political, in terms of stating a lot of male sort of point of view, I'm not going to express this very well, but hear me out. Expressing very male kind of pleas for tolerance or for visibility or acceptance, all the while completely ignoring the fact that to spend eight years during the eighties, for a group of drag queens who are facing down, like you said, poverty, disease, and serial killers. The fact that they are devoting all their money and time to try and finish a film that is unabashedly light and joy and frivolous in the best way possible is its own act of revolution.

**Varrati:** I *do* want to put an asterisk on the serial killer thing, because that's a new bit of information that I just learned the last time I saw Phillip Ford. He had mentioned a situation where one of the leads had a significant other who was killed by a famed murderer in San Francisco. It's called the Pink Tarantula murders. You can Google it. I don't know much more beyond that, because it's one of those things where their lives were just crazy that it was just like Phillip was like, "Yeah that happened," and then he started telling me some other story and I was like, that's-- but that's the moment they lived in was just so vibrant and wild and they didn't, I don't think, view it as extreme, because they were just trying to create a new world for themselves in the face of a world that was rejecting them. Which is also why they kept coming up against some of this other stuff. If that makes sense, I don't know.

**Mark:** No, i think it makes perfect sense. And also, sort of gay male misogyny, sort of sidelining this project as sort of, I don't know. It really is, it's humbling to look at the film, just on its own as just this sort of handmade, fingerprints all over the, truly made with love

**Michael:** It reminds me of like *Mister Rogers.*

**Mark:** Oh my god, yeah! No, it's *Mister Rogers* for, you know, drug-addled gay people

**Michael:** For queers

**Varrati:** Yeah. And you know, the funny thing is, Mister Rogers's whole world of imagination existed inside his house. Like when you watch that show, the land of make-believe is inside of his wall. Which by the way, when I was a kid, this is how you knew I was always going to be like, interested in freakish bizarre things. When that trolley went in the wall, like, you're just like, "Oh, the land of make-believe!" And that lady that talks to the puppets, I'm like, "Does Mister Rogers have a lady in his wall?" I remember being real bothered by it. Like, "These puppets sound exactly like him with a higher pitched voice and there's a woman trapped inside the walls."

**Mark:** Yeah, no, there's a lady who's looking at that little cat puppet and she's like, (high pitched voice) "Meow meow meow!" And I'm just like, "Oh, shit."

**Varrati:** Meanwhile, one of the greatest human beings who ever lived-- yeah, like, I still as a kid, was like, 'I'm concerned.'

**Varrati:** Almost the entirety of *Vegas in Space* was shot inside of Doris Fish's apartment, inside of her place. I have physically gone to see the building, just because I had to know. And I work in San Francisco enough that one day I was in the neighborhood and was like, "Oh yeah! The cross-streets are here." It's just like if we decided to make *Star Wars* in this room, that we're recording in. This gay club that you saw your first drag show at.

**Nay:** Yes

**Varrati:** Here in Champaign, Illinois

**Brennan:** Champaign-Urbana

**Mark:** Beautiful Champaign-Urbana.

**Michael:** It's a lot like the Blumhouse conference room

**Mark:** Birthplace of Roger Ebert, too

**Nay:** It's true

**Michael:** And Nay

**Mark:** And now, Nay Bevver

**Mark:** I just wanna go on the record and say I rewound and cackled at the line, "And furthermore, blah blah blah blah blah."

**Michael:** I loved all the like, fun TV work, where it was like, I would literally be watching like, "Is that supposed to be a TV? Or is that supposed to be a person just in a box?" It was like, this is amazing. I love not knowing for sure, but I also love the stuff they would time with the actual television, like putting on the makeup and stuff and I was like, "That's pretty brilliant." Because it's not easy to do, and these are untrained actors, right, and they're doing these scenes where they're following a TV and mirroring it. I just thought it was fun.

**Varrati:** Even though I've seen this movie a number of times, I rewatched it just, you know, in honor of coming to talk about it and I always just crack up. There's always just so many great lines. You know, "The crimes of fashion." "Glamour first. Glamour last. Glamour always!" And I just, I don't know. I think it's just, there's something so delicious about it in the way that it does feel like a great midnight movie. It has that subversive edge that *Rocky* does and John Waters; *Rocky Horror*, not Rocky Balboa. Although...

**Mark:** Esteemed gay classic *Rocky*

**Michael:** (groans) Did you see the trailer for *Creed II*?

**Varrati:** I gotta say, if you want to jump right into the world of a camp classic, you can't go wrong with *Rocky IV.*

**Michael:** Oh, yeah. That's pure camp.

**Varrati:** I don't know that people know Sylvester Stallone single-handedly ended the cold war. He traveled to the Soviet Union...

**Michael and Varrati:** (as Rocky Balboa) "If you can change, and I can change. We all can change."

**Nay:** Wow

**Mark:** Oh my God!

**Michael:** Did you not know that?

**Mark:** No!

**Michael:** Did you not expect that from me?

**Mark:** No! And I was not ready for your amazing, amazing delivery by the way.

**Varrati:** And it's so true. And that's exactly how it happens. He's in the UK, delivers this speech...

**Michael:** USSR

**Mark:** USSR, that's right. And all the Russian people are just like, "USA! USA!'' and that was it. Ronald Reagan wishes, is all I'm saying.

**Mark:** Your Republican fave could never

**Nay:** I love how (*Vegas in Space*) was all based on a party.

**Mark:** Nay's like, "Ugh."

**Varrati:** "Based on a party by Ginger Quest," may be in fact one of the greatest credits in the opening sequence of a film ever. I will also throw down in the opening credits, "The Love Theme from *Vegas in Space*" is like one of my favorite lounge jams ever. I just love that song… they frequently had themed parties and I guess there was a Vegas in Space party

**Nay:** After the Vegas in the toilet

**Varrati:** Yes. There was a Vegas in the toilet party. And I guess there was an episode of *Buck Rogers in the 25th Century*, the TV show, that the name of the episode was "Vegas in Space" and Phillp's convinced that Ginger was just like, "I like that title and we're gonna create a party after it." And, I think that's accurate. I remember him talking about it. Yeah, based on a party. And then, you know, eight years later, a movie.

**Mark:** I'm also a fan of, that the credits featured a performer-actor by the name of Jennifer Blowdryer.

**Michael:** That was my favorite

**Mark:** It has a kind of, like an anti-wit? Like "Karen from finance" kind of?

**Michael:** But it's like so genius

**Mark:** It's so… thudding

**Michael:** "Karen in HR"

**Varrati:** If I'm not mistaken, Jennifer Blowdryer is a bio-queen, who had a punk band, this woman who had a punk band

**Mark:** Called The Blowdryers

**Varrati:** Yeah. And she's still out there as far as I know

**Brennan:** I have a question: Does everyone have a drag name?

**Michael:** No

**Mark:** (sadly) No

**Varrati:** Yes

**Michael:** I have my WeHo name

**Brennan:** Is that just your name?

**Nay:** I have a stripper name

**Michael:** You know how in WeHo a lot of guys, a guy named Joe will spell his name "J-e-a-u-x". I know a guy named Matt that changed his spelling to "M-a-h-t." So mine is "Myquelle".

**Nay:** Oh my god. Myquelle Genevieve

**Varrati:** Like NyQuil?

**Michael:** (pronouncing it) Mai-quell

**Brennan:** So anyway. Nay, what's your stripper name?

**Nay:** Big Bang Theory

**Brennan:** I love it. And (Varrati), what's your drag name?

**Varrati:** I do have to set it up a little. In 2010, I went on the road with Peaches Christ when she was touring her movie *All About Evil* and I was writing a travelogue for her while we were doing it. And one of Peaches' things is that everyone who is part of her ensemble has to have a drag name whether you're in drag or not. We had not yet found mine, and we were in New York City and there was this all-night dinner that had, it was like three in the morning and we would always eat after the show and most of the shows began at midnight. And there was this all-night diner

that had like this terrible comic sans font that was like, "***TONIGHT ONLY! WAFFLES EXTRAVAGANZA!***"

**Michael:** Oh my god, please tell me

**Varrati:** And I lost my shit. I was just like, "What the fuck is even...?" And Peaches was just like, "Mmm-hmm."

**Nay:** (as Peaches) "That's ya name."

**Varrati:** (as Peaches) "That's you. Waffles Extravaganza."

**Brennan:** Mark, do you have a drag name? I know you just said no, but have you thought of one?

**Mark:** No, I don't have one. Gasoline Dion?

**Brennan:** You're a genius. Do you want to hear my drag name?

**Mark and Varrati:** Yes

**Brennan:** Gretchen Wieners

**Mark, Michael and Varrati:** Ohhhh.

**Michael:** I get it

**Brennan:** That's exactly the response I was hoping for. "Oh, I get it."

**Mark:** "You *can* sit with us."

**Michael:** Do you have gold hoop earrings?

**Brennan:** Always

**Michael:** Good

**Brennan:** I have them in right now

**Varrati:** No, they're fabulous

**Brennan:** They're just underneath the headphones

**Varrati:** *Vegas in Space* is a strange trip to a planet without men. It's actually the tagline of the film.

**Mark:** Heaven?

**Varrati:** Yes. Or whatever that, Themyscira. There's the crossover that I need (Wonder Woman and *Vegas in Space*). In *Vegas in Space,* what it is, is there's sort of this space force that works for the Empress of Earth and they discover that there is a planet in space, that is a pleasure planet, the planet Clitoris

**Mark:** I'm sorry, could you repeat that?

**Varrati:** The planet Clitoris

**Mark:** Oh, thank you

**Varrati:** You're welcome

**Michael:** Oh yum yum yum

**Varrati:**And the Empress of Clitoris believes that there are some nefarious deeds going on, including the heisting of her precious gems, the girlinium gems. So the Empress of Earth, as a favor to the Empress of Clitoris sends her space soldiers, but they can't go to the planet unless they change sex. So this is when they become drag queens and they have this sort of madcap *Barbarella* adventure on the surface of Clitoris and its primary city Vegas, which is like, the pleasure center of the universe where people come and just live, you know, glamorous lives.

**Mark:** To be generally amazing

**Nay:** Oh my god, is Vegas the Clitoris of the United states? No, it's not

**Varrati:** It's somewhere that most people...

**Nay and Varrati:** Can't find

**Varrati:** It's like Dubuque, Iowa or somewhere

**Mark:** I like saying "Clitoris" more than "Dubuque", though. And like Dubuque, it's a destination I am never going to go to.

**Michael:** Could you imagine if they were flipped and it was like Clitoris, Iowa and you had a dubuque?

**Nay:** And I had a dubuque?

**Brennan:** Clitoris Dubuque is a good drag name, too.

**Michael:** Dubuque Clitoris

**Mark and Brennan:** No.

**Michael:** Yeah, Clitoris Dubuque. rolls off the tongue

**Brennan:** It's got a poetry to it

**Nay:** (disbelieving) Rolls off the tongue. Off and on

**Michael:** Over and over again?

**Varrati:** You know, I think you have to keep modifying it. I think it would have to be like, Clitora Dubuque, and she's like, Miss Continental.

**Nay:** The Cliterrati. Michael Cliteratti.

**Varrati:** Oh! There it is

**Michael:** Cliteratti Varrati

**Nay:** Oh my God, yes

**Mark:** Everyone looked at me like i just farted into the mic.

**Nay:** Jesus Christ, Mark

**Mark:**What?! You guys looked at me like, (whispering) "Oh my god, I can't believe he said it."

**Michael and Nay:** No

**Nay:** I look at you, I just receive comfort from looking at you and so i looked over to you, and then you're hangry so--

**Mark:** I'm not hangry! I'm not!

**Nay:** (as Mark) "Just look at me!"

**Mark:** I guess maybe I am hangry. But when Nay says things like that, it's hard because I can't hug you from all the way across the table

**Nay:** Aw, schweetie pie

**Michael:** Papa…

**Nay:** Yes! I die when Michael calls Mark "Papa".

**Michael:** Mark started the bit by calling himself "papa". That's when you started laughing, right?

**Mark:** Yeah, because I'm fucking older than all of you

**Michael:** Like a day

**Mark:** One of the things that struck me about the movie actually early on was that I was expecting nothing but drag queens. And then there were some, at least to me, on the surface at least, some cis women performers

**Varrati:** So the genesis of the group of people was...

**Mark:** Sluts A-Go-Go. Weren't they all part of that troupe?

**Varrati:** Yeah, there was this troupe of drag performers called Sluts A-Go-Go that was, I think something that Doris Fish spearheaded, but it was not really necessarily to have performers in drag the way we think of drag as we see it on television today. It was more sort of like, "Come and be the character that you want to be."

**Mark:** Was it a Cockettes-like vibe in a sense where it was like, the line between performance and your day-to-day reality was like kind of blurred a little bit?

**Varrati:** Yeah I think there's definitely a crossover, like from The Cockettes is birthed Sluts A-Go-Go, but with an '80s punk rock sort of vibe. And Phillip Ford, and this is the horror of it all, the horror genre, Phillip was a film student who was making films and he was a big fan of Famous Monsters of Filmland. And you can see a lot of elements of drive-in era in *Vegas in Space.* Even the canted angles, he was inspired by the 1966 *Batman* show to shoot that with the colors. And he had made a few short films, including a short film called *Rollercoaster to Hell*, which plays like a...

**Michael:** I love everything you're saying

**Nay:** Yes, right?

**Varrati:** It's like one of those Christian scare films where like, (deep voice) "Billy gets addicted to drugs" (normal voice) and here's like his downward spiral

**Michael:** (deep voice) "Addicted to roller coasters."

**Varrati:** That's the first time that he worked with Doris on film and Doris plays a beatnik in it. She's like there, she's this like, crazy lady

**Mark:** So they really were like a west coast Dreamland

**Varrati:** Yeah. So they had this whole thing going on

**Michael:** For a long time

**Varrati:** They just found like, people and curated this whole world and essentially Doris wanted to put the world in drag. She wanted people to find their character because it was like the truest version of who they were. And so, yeah. I don't think she was specifically concerned about the fact that, "Oh, you're a gay guy so you're going to be a drag queen." It was like, "You're a fabulous cis woman I think is really cool and you're a musician so pop on this bouffant and let's go!" Which is kind of how I wanna live my life, y'know?

**Nay:** Hell yeah

**Varrati:** I brought bouffants for everyone, hang on… no.

**Michael:** The one woman i loved because she reminded me of Trudy from *Reno 911!* She had that same just, sort of physical presence and movements and stuff. So great.

**Nay:** I actually love that you can't just glance at the characters and assume people's gender. That's so rad

**Varrati:** And there's something so fierce about that

**Nay:** Fuck yeah!

**Varrati:** Especially going back to the notion that again, like on television

**Nay:** In the Eighties

**Michael:** And there's something great, too, about, you don't see very often, you see women in drag as men, you know? Like that was cool in the beginning. They are in drag for sure

**Mark:** What is it going to take for a drag king to make it on to *RuPaul's Drag Race* and why has that not happened yet? Why is like, Murray Hill...

**Varrati:** that's a question for RuPaul Charles. You can tweet him @rupaul

**Mark:** No, (Varrati), you tell me! You tell me! Sorry, I'm just like sort of wondering apropos of nothing, but it is, sometimes I find myself wondering why? Why is that not?

**Varrati:** it's a good question. One of the cool things about my sort of initiation into the world of drag working with the queens and drag performers that I did, and do, was that most of my interaction came via San Francisco, so like later, I started working with people like Peaches and Hecklina and Lady Bear and I remember going to The Stud, which is a bar in San Francisco, and they would have this party, the 'Something' party. And every week it's "Something evil", "Something fun", "Something Eighties", and so you have to fit the theme. And the performers there, they were all, you know, drag performers but they weren't necessarily men doing gender illusion, there were bio-queens and you know, it was just all about, "This is my character. And this is who I am and this is what I'm doing." And so I remember being in Pittsburgh later and asking if there were any faux queens or bio-queens or whatever the term you want. And they were like, "What's that?" And I was like, "Well, it's a cis woman who performs in drag." And they were like, "Well, (clicks tongue) *why*?" And I'm like, "Why the fuck not?"

**Michael:** Well isn't really any performance if you think about it at the end of the day: actors, TV, all of it's drag one way or another. You're doing something that isn't you, like in a way

**Varrati:** Lady Gaga's a drag queen

**Michael:** Right

**Varrati:** Elvira is a drag queen

**Michael:** Absolutely

**Varrati:** Paul Reubens as Pee-Wee Herman is a drag queen. I've said it on my show, I'll say it on yours: Robert Englund… as Freddy Kreuger… is. A. Drag character.

**Mark:** Amen

**Varrati:** Because he's not just wearing makeup, he puts that on and he becomes a *whole other person*.

**Mark:** Preach

**Varrati:** He fuckin' Ethel Mermans his way through Elm Street and...

**Mark:** Puns, puns, puns

**Varrati:** Delish

**Michael:** Yeah, it's like all pun camp wit. Like, *girl*, please

**Varrati:** I mean, "Welcome. To prime time, bitch."

**Michael:** I mean, yeah. He's really giving a *Rupaul's Drag Race* performance.

**Mark:** God bless Mister Englund. May God preserve him.

**Mark:** I think in the end, like, what really I found incredibly moving, I mean just *Vegas in Space* on its own is incredibly diverting and hilarious and just kind of eye-popping in its style choices and costumes and all the care that went into it. But at the same time it really is such a documentary of like, a time and a place that are no longer; Peaches hosted a midnight mass of *Final Girls* a couple of years ago, and y'know, we had a nice turn out and everything was fine. But I remember going to Midnight Mass six, seven, eight years ago for a *Teen Witch* screening and it was crazy, people were dressed up. I mean, they were all dressed up as Robyn Lively or you know, anybody. And for *Final Girls*, Peaches had announced a costume contest. You know, come as your favorite final girl or victim or whatever. And one person showed up, dressed up. And even Peaches had a moment where she put the mic down for a second and then she put it back up and she looked at the audience and said, "Fuck, man. This town's changed." And it was really, I was like, "Oh God, it has." And just like going to San Francisco periodically and seeing, it's not… it's a company town now more than ever and it's um, I'm so grateful you picked *Vegas in Space* to remind us of how inherently punk it is to be who we are.

**Varrati:** Well, I think what you're talking about too is the loss of queer spaces, something that plagues the queer community a lot.

**Mark:** Thank you for saving me from my… this delicious bowl of word salad that I'm serving to all of you

**Varrati:** No, no I think what you said was very poignant and I think that when you talk about the loss of queer space, you're right. Going to San Francisco is not the same as eight years ago

**Michael:** And west Hollywood's the same way

**Varrati:** And west Hollywood. That's just the changing tide. Our community's gonna have to change with it. We can bemoan the past, but. queer space for those of us who celebrate movies and like, find ourselves in movies, which is why this continued discussion of queer identity intersecting with this like, interest in genre films is so important because it proves that queer spaces aren't necessarily physical buildings. They're ideas, and they're things that move. And you know, *Vegas in Space*, we talked about it a little bit at the beginning of the show, there is a really crazy horror movie dream sequence in this movie that falls very into genre, so there is horror in it. But as you mentioned, it's maybe not necessarily traditionally a horror film the way that other people talk about horror films, but it is what we would consider a cult movie. And that term gets thrown around a lot. But at its very foundations, when you talk about a cult movie, whether it's *Rocky Horror,* whether it's *Showgirls*, whether it's *Teen Witch*, whether it's *Vegas in Space*, it's a movie that has created a community. Because a cult is a community in this place and people find each other because of it. And I think that's, *Rocky Horror* proved it more than any, you know, in a time where all the freaks and weirdos and gay kids and theatre kids and you know, anybody who didn't feel like they were part of something, all of a sudden this movie is playing at midnight and it's like, "Did you hear? Down at this place and like, they let us do this and we can do this." "Don't dream it, be it." Yeah, but that can be any fucking movie if you find your people. Because that is our queer space now. That's where it's at. Like buildings go away, but how art affects you, is what you take with you and that moves with you wherever you go.

**Michael:** I went to a midnight screening of *Pink Flamingos* last summer. I remember sitting in the theater being like, "Holy shit, this is our crew." You know, like all seven hundred, one thousand people, whatever… it was at the Vista. And you're sitting there watching this and you're watching the crowd trickle in and you're watching the crowd trickle out and you're just like, "Fuck. I'm home," you know?

**Varrati:** Well that's why Peaches called it Midnight Mass. It's not just the Peaches Christ thing. When you're going to see those movies, you're going to church. Yeah, you are worshipping at the altar of the movie that made you.

**Michael:** You're really smart, (Varrati)

**Mark:** I know. We're pretty lucky to have Michael Varrati join us today.

**Nay:** Seriously