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Charles Busch has gone butch. Yes, the femme fatale playwright/drag actor of such off-Broadway hits as Theodora, She-Bitch of Byzantium, The Lady in Question, and Red Scare on Sunset, has shaved off his hair close to his scalp, and he's now sporting that dreamy skinhead look you see in all those imported German porn tapes that are peppered with wrist restraints and large metal funnels. "Butch?" Busch questions. He clearly doesn't see the affect he's having on all those midtown Manhattan office workers. He's too busy getting ready for the Broadway incarnation of his hit show The Tale of the Allergist's Wife starring Linda Lavin and Michelle Lee. Then there are his six episodes of the HBO series Oz to put in the can, and of course the film version of his hit play, Psycho Beach Party, which stars Lauren (Can't Hardly Wait) Ambrose, Thomas (Dharma & Greg) Gibson, and Beth (Sabrina, the Teenage Witch) Broderick. Busch originally played the lead, Chicklet, on stage. But here he's taken on the newly written role of Captain Monica Stark. This police officer is investigating a series of teen murders, each victim having a slight physical oddity, such as a harelip or only one testicle. Inspired, we decided to investigate Busch. PlanetOut: The last time I saw you was when you were walking down the street after your performance in The Maids. Charles Busch: That was a long time ago. PlanetOut: The camera is very kind to you, or you're kind to the camera, in Psycho Beach Party. Accordingly, I think that people who are not plugged into Charles Busch will not be aware that a man's playing Captain Monica Stark. CB: Oh, really. You think they'll think that I am really fortyish character actress? PlanetOut: Absolutely. I don't see how anyone would know. There's no giveaway. CB: How interesting! Well, I think that's nice. I've never really been thinking in terms of total allusion, but I did want a kind of challenge. Personally for me in the movie as an actor, I wanted to see whether I could take my rather at-this-point-Baroque stage persona and see if I could scale it down for the intimacy of the camera and still what do I do. But I did not want to appear grotesque ... not appear like I was playing to the last row of the balcony, and also be able to physically just be able to play scenes with other actors and other women and not seem like "the guy with the wig on." So it was tricky because the movie is a low budget film, and cosmetic beauty is not the top priority of a 21-day shoot. But I thought they did a pretty damn good job. Actually, before we started, I did a very diva thing. I dragged the director and the cinematographer into this room where there was a VCR. I said, "Now boys, I'm going to show you two videos. The first video is me looking absolutely, hideously ugly. It's a performance video where the lighting was stage lighting that was awful and I look completely grotesque. And here's another video where I look absolutely exquisite." I then showed them another tape where I was just flooded with light, and the DP was writing down notes: "I see here you look good, where the light doesn't look as if it's coming from this angle...." Because you know, in a film of this budget, there were no screen tests or makeup tests that you ordinarily would have. I did my own makeup, and I never had really done my makeup for a movie. So it was just a hunch on my part of how little or how much makeup to put on. PlanetOut: I've heard Marlene Dietrich wanted pink lighting coming from the upper left or something like that. CB: Yeah. Yeah. But for the most part, I really thought, Gee, all things considered, I look okay. PlanetOut:; You look fabulous. You know, when I saw a videotape of the late Charles Pierce doing his show, the allusion just wasn't there. CB: [Sounding disheartened] Because the camera was up close. PlanetOut: This is perfect timing for this film to be released because the American public can now seemingly handle gay comic material because of all the gay characters on TV nowadays. Were there any attempts to make this film years ago? CB: Nooooo! Well, maybe, I guess. My manager, Jeff Melnick, has for about eight years been trying to sell it. I thought it was really a kind of a silly idea. I never thought it could be a movie. It was just a theater piece, but you know, who am I to stop someone else's enthusiasm? So he kept pursuing it for eight years, and it kept being turned down by different places, and I couldn't care less. But every once in awhile he would tell me so-and-so passed on it so I guess the climate wasn't right until now. PlanetOut: I may be wrong, but I could swear someone told me they were making a film of your play Vampire Lesbians of Sodom. CB: No. No. Over the years I had a number of different offers but it just didn't really seem right. The other thing was I just felt. ... You see, I have several masters [degrees]; talk about split personalities. Because I'm a writer, I'm an actor, and I'm also this sort of ... I don't know. The word "diva" has been so destroyed now. But whatever that creature is I seem to be it. And so maybe the writer in me would have been flattered to have any movie made from one of my plays but the leading lady in me wanted to act in it. I always thought, well, gee, okay, if Stephen Spielberg says, "Here, I would like to give you 20 million dollars and you'll just give me the rights to your play, and then say good-bye," I would then take it and have a marvelous time with it. But if it's going to be a very low budget movie, I always thought, why can't I be in it then? If you're going to get a big star, you might as well have me do it. And no one in the past was able to absolutely, on paper, contractually promise that I would be in the movie. It was always, "With best intent," or, "We'll try to do our best." The feeling was always that if we get an investor who'll give us all the money ... but they['d] want a real woman in the part or a star or something. So I just always said, "It's not worth it to me. Just to make a movie doesn't mean that much me." I don't have to say yes when I can say no. With Psycho Beach Party, they totally agreed. It was in writing that I had to be in this movie. So therefore I thought, go ahead, boys! Let's do it. * Read the PopcornQ review of Psycho Beach Party! PQ MOVIE NEWS: PQ Video Hot List | Interviews | Advance Guide to Queer Film | Movie News Archive | PQ Video Hot Lists Galore MORE NEWS ON PLANETOUT: PlanetOut News & Politics | PlanetOutRadio | Entertainment
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