Wigstock - The Movie

Outrageous, outlandish and totally out of the closet, Wigstock: The Movie is a heavily mascaraed look at New York's most extravagant celebration of drag! "Colorful, flamboyant [and] extremely funny" (Blockbuster Entertainment Guide), this uninhibited look at the annual Wigstock Festival takes you behind the scenesand into the dressing roomsfor an uproarious play-by-play of theself-proclaimed "Super Bowl of drag"! A "glitzy, lively, lovingly made show" (The Hollywood Reporter), Wigstock: The Movie features inspired music, daring performance art and apeek at the stars' endless quests to be fabulouswearing size 14 heels! With RuPaul, Lypsinka, Crystal Waters, The "Lady" Bunny, Deee-Lite, Alexis Arquette, Jackie Beat, John Kelly, Debbie Harry and the Dueling (Tallulah) Bankheads (!), Wigstock: The Movie is a dazzling musical celebrationof life, love and lipstick!

The king, or maybe that should be queen, of all drag shows, New York City's 10th annual Wigstock festival, provides the setting for this lively and frequently funny documentary. Some 30,000 fans showed up, many of them suitably adorned with impossibly huge wigs, and roving cameras did a fine job of capturing the celebratory atmosphere. It goes without saying that those who find men performing as women fascinating will revel in what the camera captured. Several drag performers prepping for their star turns on the Wigstock stage are profiled, and some of them speak about what possesses them to admittedly make spectacles of themselves. There are also quirky interviews with construction workers building the festival's stage, jaded neighbors in the East Village, and even some encounters with bemused New York City cops. The film features very professionally shot performance footage of such characters as RuPaul, Deee-Lite, Crystal Waters, and even a pair of dueling Tallulah Bankhead impersonators performing "Born to Be Wild," but the real star of the production is the hip sense of humor the filmmakers brought to the project. At times the interviews with people attending the shows and passersby in New York who simply shrug it all off come close to upstaging the guys in size 14 heels singing and dancing their hearts out onstage. --Robert J. McNamara