BEFORE: OK, I've done some work on blocking out the rest of the year. I'm still in a place where I don't know how many slots I'll need for September, so I'm still thinking that whenever I can skip a day in August, that's only going to help. My second job kicks back in on August 22 with some VERY long shifts coming up, so I'm thinking I'll need to skip at least two days in the next two weeks, that just leaves more slots to play with in November and December.
If September's the same way, where it's better or easier for me to watch 6 movies in a week instead of 7, that's all good, too, more slots in December that will (theoretically, at least) make it easier to link to Christmas movies. So the "Divergent" movies are now being pushed from August to September, again, all good as long as I can get from there to horror films in maybe 20 to 25 steps. That could be the tricky part.
I mapped out all the films that are two steps away from the "Divergent" trilogy, and also labelled all of the films that are two steps away from where I would like start October, so really I just need to find a chain that goes in-between and connects the dots. However, there are over 100 movies on my list that are qualify as being two steps away from something, so that just makes it harder to choose. I'm just going to have to pick another goal, maybe more back-to-school movies, and just run with it.
That being said, I'm adding a movie tonight because I like Guy Pearce and I want him to make it to the year-end countdown, and for that he needs three films. So I scrolled through his filmography and found this one, it's been on the back-burner for a long time, like I was in no rush to get to it, but it does kind of qualify as a significant movie, so it's coming off the list tonight as Guy Pearce carries over from "The Last Vermeer".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Kinky Boots" (Movie #4,711)
THE PLOT: Two drag performers and a transgender woman travel across the desert to perform their unique style of cabaret.
AFTER: Sure, there were other Guy Pearce movies that I could have dropped in here to make a triptych, but only one was on my list - way down on my list, but still on the list. In the someday/maybe section, but that still counts as getting me one step closer to my never-ending goal, and this can only be regarded as a mistake if I come up one slot short at the end of the year - until then, it's a brilliant happy accident. But there was an incident yesterday that signalled this was the right film to drop in - I saw three trans people on the subway, not together but separately, and one transphobic person who came into the subway car, yelling at full volume about how he JUST saw a "tranny" doing something horrible to indoctrinate a child. Now, this was a potentially deranged individual, and someone full of hatred, so I don't take what he said at face value, plus he was getting right up in some peoples faces while yelling at full volume about this incident he witnessed that probably never happened. The only thing I could do was not make eye contact, however when I saw the second trans person and they were VISIBLY upset over something, I can only imagine what this yelling person must have put them through because of just some raging phobia, or perhaps just blind ignorance. OK, so for the trans people on the subway who have to deal with screaming nutcases just for being who they are and living their truth, tonight's film goes out to you in solidarity.
I'm going to try to keep my comments short, though, partially because the air conditioner in the office, where my computer lives, is busted and only putting out hot air, not cold. So I'm sweating the whole time I'm typing this, perhaps appropriate considering the movie is mostly set in the Australian desert. It's about three drag queens, two of them gay and one transgender, who set out in a bus named Priscilla to go do their lip-synching routines on tour. The toughest part is apparently getting from Sydney to Alice Springs, without knowing anything about Australian geography I'm guessing that's a long distance to go by bus, which then gives them ample time to encounter bigotry in various backwater towns, yet they persist in wearing drag and doing drag shows where bigots live, now again I'm not an expert but I must ask, why do they want to perform drag shows for people who don't want to see them? Wouldn't it make more sense to wait until they get to the booked cities, where the people WANT to see drag shows? Call me crazy, though, but I think maybe I cracked the code here, do the shows for the audience that wants to see them. No need to thank me, but you're welcome.
This story might have been groundbreaking in 1994, but it's thirty years later now, and drag shows are still around, still upsetting the Republicans who won't even let drag queens read stories to their children, and me, I'm not even sure why that's a thing. But from a narrative standpoint, things were much simpler back in 1994, these men were gay, they do drag shows, because that's what gay men do, right? They all want to dress like women and lip-synch to disco songs. It's a very narrow view of what it means to be gay, that's all I'm saying, but again, I'm not an expert. And most people then were really for this sort of thing, or very very against it, there's really no middle ground, is there? All the characters here are either very queer or very bigoted, but somehow I think this is a bit too simplistic, what about the millions of people who are neither for nor against drag queens, they're not bigoted or intolerant, but also it's not really their thing, they're just sort of passively non-committed or it's just not a topic that they focus on at all?
Anyway, the really shocking thing is that one of the gay drag queens (and yes, I know that not all drag queens are gay and not all gay men are drag queens, but somehow this film conflates the two things) has a wife, and later we learn that he also has a son. Shocking! But again, this is seen through a 1994 lens when someone was either one thing or the other and nobody realized that it's possible to be many things, or different things at different points in life. Everything these days is more complicated because society now frowns on phrases like "sexual preference" or "sexual orientation", because those imply that queerness is a choice, and many don't believe that it is. But now we have "gender identity" and there are more points on the spectrum and more colors on the flag, and people can use whatever pronouns they want and whatever bathrooms they want, and if you watch certain news channels that all adds up to the end of the world as we know it, but it's clearly not.
NITPICK POINT: If it's really THAT much trouble to get from Sydney to Alice Springs by bus, why didn't they just fly there? Because it was too expensive? Adam bought the bus for $10,000, surely three plane tickets couldn't have cost more than THAT? This makes no sense, though of course they kind of HAD to go by bus or it wouldn't have been a road-trip movie, plus Tick had that dream of climbing Kings Canyon in drag, sure. But the finances don't make any sense, why didn't they take the $10,000 and NOT buy a bus, instead buy three first-class plane tickets and pocket the difference?
This wasn't planned, but I still kind of get the last laugh tonight because this movie is on that list of "1,001 Movies to See Before You Die", which hasn't been updated since 2021, and I'm not quite sure why there wasn't a 2023 edition, but I don't think there was. Anyway watching this raises my score to 439 seen, which I think isn't bad at all, and I may make it to 450 with a little more effort, but there are SO many films on the list that I don't care about. I've realized that I'm just never, ever going to watch "Amarcord" or "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie", and if I can just keep moving forward with watching the films on my list, and occasionally crossing another film of that 1001 Movies list, I'm OK with that.
There are Australian jokes in this film, and more American jokes too, I didn't do so well on getting the Aussie jokes, like the kid plays charades and acts out "Lindy Chamberlain" and I had to look up who that was. It also took me way too long to get the punny meaning of Adam's drag name, Felicia Jollygoodfellow. I must be slipping.
Also starring Hugo Weaving (last seen in "Mortal Engines"), Terence Stamp (last seen in "Last Night in Soho"), Bill Hunter (last seen in "Muriel's Wedding"), Sarah Chadwick, Mark Holmes, Julia Cortez, Ken Radley (last seen in "The Power of the Dog"), Daniel Kellie, Leighton Picken, Margaret Pomeranz, Stephan Elliott (last seen in "Easy Virtue"), Rebel Penfold-Russell (ditto), June Marie Bennett, Murray Davies, Maria Kmet, Joseph Kmet, Hannah Corbett, Trevor Barrie, Andrew Saw, John Casey, Frank Cornelius, Alan Dargin.
RATING: 4 out of 10 ping pong balls
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