Just out., August 01, 2008, Page 40, Image 40

«ijustout AUGUST 1, 2008
Summer Camp
Infamous drag troupe exits in style
with film parody, documentary
by Brett Glass
MH® he defunct drag troupe Sissyboy will go
®
out with a bang Aug. 7 with a fitting
final tribute: the world premiere of its
last—and, in some respects, first—film,
What Ever Happened to Fannie Mae!
A parody of What Ever Happened to Baby
Jane!— the 1962 camp classic starring Bette Davis
and Joan Crawford—the 50-minute film will be
screened alongside a much-anticipated documen­
tary about Sissyboy, which called it quits last year
after three years of revolutionary performance art.
Fannie Mae! exploits the talents of four of the
group’s members to the max and comments on the
real (or real-onstage) relationships between them.
“Splendora and Fannie Mae in drag,” says
Devan McGrath, the film’s director and co-writ­
er, “have a certain mythology to their relation­
ship—highly competitive, jealous, really bitchy,
out to get one another.”
PrtxJucer and co-writer Mark “Zebra” Thomas
agrees: “When they put on their drag, their per­
sonalities skyrocket. Splendora gets mean, and
Fannie gets hurt...in a funny way!”
From this dynamic sprung an infamous Sissyboy
short, Splendora Dearest, based on the 1981 Craw­
ford biopic Mommie Dearest. True to their domi­
nant-submissive dynamic, Splendora got to beat
What Ever Happened to Fannie Mee? twists the
dominant-submissive dynamic between Fannie
Mae Darling (left) and Splendora Gabor.
Fannie with a wire hanger, douse her in Comet
and strangle her.
What Ever Happened to Fannie Mae! twists that
relationship, reversing the roles somewhat.
“The fight scene is my favorite,” says Jeffrey
Darling, aka Fannie Mae Darling. “In Sissyboy,
when Splendora was drunk, she’d hit me in the
face, by accident or on purpose. In this movie, I get
to beat the shit out of her. Fannie gets revenge!”
Thomas expands on this sentiment: “Fannie
gets to be something that she never really gets to
be. In some ways 1 think it was empowering. But
he still got to play this weird victim role because
he got to play a junkie.. .which is a victim role.”
During the writing process, McGrath and
Thomas decided to replace Baby Jane’s booze
with Fannie Mae’s crystal meth, a reference to
Darling’s real-life conflict with the drug.
“I struggled with the idea of smoking fake
meth onscreen,” Darling says. “I wasn’t sure if it
was a gtxxl idea. In the end, it was very empower­
ing to fake it in front of the people who feared me
smoking it the most. It was liberating and painful
at the same time.”
Lee Kyle, aka Splendora Gabor, himself sober
for several months, says: “I say the line ‘I think I
understand her,’ which is in the original. But when
you step back from the tongue-in-cheek
aspect of that line...it’s true. 1 understand
the nature of addiction, the false sense of
comfort you get from it.”
As much as the film plays with the real
and stage relationships between the prin­
cipals, at heart it’s a very funny comedy.
“It’s a totally classic drag movie in
many respects,” Thomas says. “Our fi­
nancial limitations became our strengths.
In the fight scene, Devan wanted sugar
glass for Fannie to break over Splendora’s
head. It was really expensive, so we came
up with the idea of slamming her head
in the refrigerator over and over. And I
think that’s way funnier than just break­
ing glass over her head.”