Dragumentary | Sweetie’s ‘Charmed Life’

INTERVIEW | Last night the New York International Film Festival screened “Charmed Life”, a documentary by Kat Delaney about Drag (yes honey, with a capital D), at Cinema Village yesterday.

Centered on the life of Sweetie, a staple warm-hearted mother-figure in the drag community, the film shows the dark and light side of this lifestyle that seeks to entertain, transcend gender and ultimately be a living and breathing sculpture.

The film contains interviews and clips of a whole slew of now-legendary drag and gender-bending performers—Mother Flawless Sabrina, Lavinia Co-Op, Sherry Vine, Linda Simpson, Flotilla De Barge, The Mistress Formika, Gusty Winds, Rose Royalle—and discusses both the glamour and the melancholy of drag life.

Sweetie, who calls herself a “Big Titted Honky Soul Momma,” has been on the scene for years is famous for her perfect lipsync (she’s won best in New York for the past decade), and is a successful and established actor both in and out of drag. She spoke to HN about the making of the film and its importance.

How did this film get started?
It was made four years ago and was first shown three weeks ago at the Atlanta Film Festival, with a great response. And it’s all steamrolling at once, the NY International Film Festival picked it up and we’ve had some interest from TLA video and LOGO.

At the time I was doing this party with Daniel Nardicio called High Life Low Life, it coincided with this filmmaker approaching me about doing a doc about New York drag. They kind of went hand and hand so well. The film circles my life as  Sweetie  but touches with the people I was working with and employing at the time, doing big drag shows every Saturday night.

What is it that makes “Charmed Life” unique from other dragumentaries, or old Wigstock viewings
It shows the incredible, incredible human beings underneath the beautiful painted faces . It’s very candid: there are moments of big bombastic explosion, but the mood is much different than that, it’s very confessional.

There’s three generations, and people like Rose Royalle, who has been a staple on the scene since Jackie 60 and was the original waitress for VIP room.  I believe she’s 68 years old now. I used her for all of my parties- – does she move to quick? No! Does she get every drink order right? No! But does she dress up a room? Absolutely! She goes back to the Warhol factory days — she was so viable — pretty major in her own right in her youth—kind of the old guard.

Or there’s Charity—people don’t know her unless you’ve been to Fire Island, she’s been staple there since the late 50s. The year that Flawless hosted Ms. Fire Island pageant was the year that Charity won!

Also you’ve got more genderfuck, androgenous people like Jimmy James or T-Boy—stilettos, panties and garters, but not tits or wigs. There was  a lot of those hard, old school queens who were affronted to their being a part of a drag documentary.

So this is not just about feathers and lipsync?
Really it’s about people who can transcend gender. The one thing that drag does is question sexuality and gender and, one of the things I talk about in film is that drag for me is so incredibly liberating, not as a gay man, but as a man of certain size. It really liberated my body.

Gay life can be very unforgiving as a big boy. When you’re in drag people revel in your size, you can show skin and tits and leg. I would never walk down the street as Daniel in short shorts and a tank top. But packaged differently I would wear much less than that in drag! You can pull and push things into place…

So how did you get your start? You’re known for coming up at Pyramid Club, for example.
I came to NY to act and just gotten off doing a year and half long national tour of a play. I landed in the the Lower East Side, and my roommate at the time was going to Pyramid Club. I had always been a fan of drag, I started sneaking off to gay bars when I was 16 years old.

Drag was always this beautiful thing to witness but at that time of my life I never envisioned myself doing it—I had this preconceived notion that it was kind of low-rent.

Anyway, Linda Simspon did a weekly drag night called Channel 69 at Pyramid. My roommate was like, “we should get pumped for the show.” So we did a sister act, Faux Pas and Sweetie—honest to god, in our first performance we were given five minutes and it ended up being 22. We lit fireworks and did cartwheels onstage.

Pyramid immersed me in drag and I really started evolving into myself and performing solo, eventually getting to Boy Bar with Matthew Kasten [note: Kasten moved to LA and became a top celebrity hairstylist, but Sweetie was excited because he is back and New York and was doing her hair for the movie viewing and afterparty]. Boy Bar was a drag factory—you got groomed there. It’s where the top drag stars were, and you kind of got your chops. There was someone to do your hair, and if you didn’t have something to wear someone either had it, or stole it or lent it to you.

I had a great run—Boy Bar is when “Too Wong Foo” happened for me. They wrote a character in the movie for me, being the MC of the drag pageant.

So Matthew Kasten was integral towards your drag career?
He is legendary in the drag scene for creating Varla Jean Merman, Candis Cayne and Lady Bunny, among others. I ended up doing Jackie 60 in tandem with Boy Bar— I just love theater so much and and I love drag so much. I really found this incredible respect for drag,  because I could bring my kind of theater and performance.

What is some of the darker sides of the life that you discuss in the film?
How hard it is to date and be a queen. Because, it’s said so many times—gay boys love to tip you and hoot and hollar and open doors and run with you, but they’re not gonna take you home at night. There is some sort of a questioning of masculinity or guilt by association.

At the end of the day drag is as far left as you can go. Gay boys strive to land somewhere in the middle the idea of dating a drag queen is way too challenging for a lot of gay boys.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, some other ones are perfectly happy with us as long as we are in drag and don’t break the façade — the first sign of stubble and they’re out the door. As much as you can be adored and worshipped on stage, it can be a double edged sword because the compromise is very great. I say in the film, “to all the gay boys, I just want to assure them that I would never meet their parents in sequins.”

So you don’t sit around the house in a silk kimono?
Well, on occasion. Ha! But when I first started there was a time I spent days in drag, with only time to shower and shave. It’s a wonderful life except that your face isn’t going to hold up for that long. Drag rot is not pretty—your skin starts to look…ugh.

So how do you guys plan to get this message out, whatever the message is?
It’s a beautiful life and there are its darkest corners. Fuck convention. Live on the edge and on your own terms—it’s a great message if you’re in the South or Midwest or somewhere, trying to find your way in a world where you’re a square peg.

When we made the film it was when Bush was in office, so the political climate was sick. There was a lot of talk in the film about the nature of our country at the time. But these are still dangerous days, you’ve got the right moving in on us, and the film covers a lot of what we’re trying to say.

So we’re hitting up film festivals but also college towns with good queer studies departments. I really do think that this movie—it’s got a lot of soul to it and heart to it—it’s not all about the flash and the glitter. It’s about what lies beneath it  and what drives it.

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