Drag in Cinema: 2004 and More

We are now caught up to the middle of the first decade of the 21st century. While films such as 2004’s Bad Education (Spanish: La mala educación, meaning “bad manners”) by Pedro Almodóvar features a drag queen as part of a movie within a movie. The “queen” is a transgender woman drag performer. Drag in Cinema makes note of films that feature transgender themes or characters but the main thrust of this column is films that have characters doing drag. The first of today’s films has that in that the stars are two women hiding out as drag performers.

Connie and Carla 2004

Connie and Carla.

Two woman whose passion is musical theater witness a mob hit in Chicago and go on the run.  They hide in Los Angeles where they adopt drag queen personas and perform at a drag club called The Handlebar. That’s more than a bit like Some Like It Hot where two male musicians witness a mob massacre in Chicago and take jobs as female musicians in an all girl band that’s on its way south to a booking in Miami. While the two main drag queens are women disguised as drag queens there are several male performers who do drag. Included are Stephen Spinella as Peaches. Alec Mapa as N’Cream, and Christopher Logan as Brianna. No stranger to donning drag, David Duchovny, appears as the straight brother of one of the queens. The two faux queens make the show so much better that they convince the owner of the bar to turn it into a full blown dinner theater and the shows become very popular. Popularity is not what you’re looking for if you’re trying to hide from the mob. But we won’t spoil the ending for you. If it’s laughs you’re after and don’t mind a few details being ignored in service of the plot you might want to watch Connie and Carla.

The queens in the show.

Stage Beauty 2004

Billy Crudup as the perfect stage beauty.

Return with us now to the seventeenth century when female roles in theater were portrayed by males. The specific period of time is near the end of the male actress and the switch to women playing women’s roles. A female theatre dresser in Shakespeare’s time creates a stir and sparks a revolution in seventeenth century London theatre by playing Desdemona in Othello. But what will become of the male actor she once worked for and eventually replaced? He is reduced to performing bawdy songs in drag in music halls while the dresser turned actress becomes a star and is called upon to do a command performance for the king. Billy Crudup plays the stage beauty Ned Kynaston and Claire Danes is Maria, the ambitious dresser. If you watch the film note that the elaborate dress of the time looks as if it could be uncomfortable. England was having a heat wave and under the cinema lighting the temperature went up to 115 F. But they carried on.

Crudup as Ned Kynaston portraying Desdemona.

Kinky Boots 2005

Charlie Price is attempting to save the family shoe factory, located in the north of England, which has been floundering since his father died. While on a business trip to London to sell off the company’s extra stock, Charlie encounters a woman being harassed by drunken hoodlums and intervenes to his detriment. He wakes up backstage, in the dressing room of Lola, a drag queen performer and alter ego of Simon. Charlie, as a shoe person, is appalled that the hight heels worn by the drag performers are so poorly made that the heels often break off with semi-hard use. When he gets back to his business he begins thinking about how to make a better high heel. One of his employees shares her idea that Charlie should find a niche market which fits perfectly with his idea to create a better high heel. Thus the idea for manufacturing kinky boots comes about. Lola is brought on as a consultant. There is stress, failure and success and much drama and laughter before the ending of the film. In addition to the drag scenes with Lola there is a posse of queens featured in the big finish. The film is based on a real life North Hampton shoe factory that was looking at bankruptcy till they began to cater to the fetish shoes for men market

Big Momma’s House 2 2006

2006 sees the arrival of Big Momma’s House 2. Martin Lawrence is back in the fat suit as FBI agent Malcolm Turner disguised as Big Momma. The film is set 6 years after the events of the first and Turner has been assigned to a desk job where his master of disguise skills languish. He is now happily married and has a baby girl. Meanwhile nefarious deeds are being conducted and after the killing of a friend of his, an undercover agent, Turner learns that a hacker has built back doors into government database software and that the FBI is planning on sending another undercover agent to the hacker’s home as a nanny. Turner arrives at the family’s home first disguised as Big Momma and takes the job. Hilarity ensues as Big Momma is taken into the family. Big Momma’s House 2 was panned by critics, many of which felt it was not necessary. But stay tuned. Martin Lawrence will be back in the fat suit in the third installment of the Big Momma trilogy. We’ll take a look at that in a future edition of Drag in Cinema.

Norbit 2007

Eddie Murphy as Rasputia and Norbit.

Did we not just write about a man in a fat suit? Norbit, starring Eddie Murphy, is another and more complete submersion of Murphy under layers of foam and latex. Murphy plays Norbit, an orphan who has ended up married to a domineering, arrogant and tyrannical severely over weight woman played by, Eddie Murphy. Her name is Rasputia and she makes Norbit’s life a living hell. There are many plot details and several opportunities for Rasputia to show off her pulchritude. Critics did not think much of the film. Rotten Tomatoes said of the film “Norbit, a cruel, crass, stereotype-filled comedy that’s more depressing than funny.” Enuff said.

Starbooty 2007

RuPaul as Starbooty.

RuPaul is now the queen of television with years of RuPaul’s Drag Race under her waist cincher, but she wasn’t always such a wholesome lady. In 1987, when she was but a recently arrived young princess from Atlanta she starred in a super low, as in no, budget film titled Starbooty I: The Motion Picture which was the first of a trilogy of underground Starbooty films. RuPaul starred and co-produced them all. The overall tone of the three films was raunchy gayness. In the first film her character, Starbooty, is introduced as an ex-model turned secret agent. The films are satires of the secret agent genre and blacksploitation film. Full plot details can be found on Wikipedia. in 2007 RuPaul decided to take advantage of her fame and do a reboot of the Starbooty character in a film that was first titled Starbooty: Reloaded but was released under the title Starbooty. It drew heavily on the plots of the earlier films but incorporated more sexually explicit content and more glamor on the part of RuPaul. The film features Candis Cayne, and Lady Bunny. Starbooty is called upon to go undercover as a hooker to rescue her niece from a body parts broker. Along the way to saving her there is a lot of action, both physical and sexual.

That’s our Drag in Cinema feature for this month. Next time we’ll take a look at the last years of the first decade of the 21st century. See you at the movies!

Tags: drag, featured, film

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