Interesteg What makes it different from others?

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Gordon-11 This documentary tells the journey of Charles Busch, the legendary drag performer who makes it onto the mainstream Broadway shows through his incredible talent and hard work.I have not heard of Charles Busch before, but this documentary gives me a pretty good sense of his work through the generous use of footages of his theater productions. His quick rise to fame is chronicled in detail, and it's a very interesting story. The transition from the rest village, gradually moving up and onto big things is lifted right out of an inspirational film, and I found myself very moved by his journey. It's unusual that a documentary can move me to the point of tears. Not only that, it also makes me very interested to watch Charles Bush's work.

jm10701 For those unfamiliar with Charles Busch, he is an actor who almost always plays highly dramatic female characters, inspired by the great Hollywood stars of the 1920s through the 1950s, in plays or movies he writes himself. He first found success in the early 1980s on the far fringes of New York's East Village; from there he moved gradually to more mainstream theatrical venues, movies and television.Although he's often called one, he's not actually a drag queen. He's an actor who happens to play female characters, but his makeup and costumes are never any more outlandish than those of the great female stars who inspire him. Although he's also often called "camp", he really is a serious actor and writer. There is nobody else like him.This movie is a documentary of his life up to about 2004. A typical online review of it says, "You will laugh and you will cry as you follow Charles Busch's path to the bright lights on Broadway!" Well... no. I did enjoy this movie, though; and I guess it's not surprising that his fans would gush like that about him. It fits.I wasn't a Charles Busch fan before I watched this movie, and I'm still not a fan, but I'm very glad there are people like him in the world. I'm also glad he has found productive venues for his eccentric talents.I greatly admire anybody - and he is a PERFECT example - who fits nowhere in the world and so makes a place just for himself where nobody was before. Good for him. And everybody who knows him evidently truly loves him (even his own family!), which is remarkable for anybody in any field. Although I neither laughed nor cried a single tear, I'm very glad I watched this movie.I actually liked the silent-movie short included on the DVD (Her Royal Escape to Love, filmed in and around Central Park's wonderful Belvedere Castle after a snowstorm) better than any of his speaking performances. His acting style, which is far too hammy for me, is absolutely perfect for silent movies. He is a terrific silent-movie actor, and if he did more such movies I would become a big fan fast.

TooShortforThatGesture A not terribly interesting documentary about a modestly successful performer/writer whose work -- at least as it is shown in the movie -- comes across as fairly "one-note" and hilariously amusing only to those who participated in making it.You have to be a little suspicious of the need for a documentary about someone's life when 80% of the interviews are with his family, his lover and a single member of his old theater company whose insistence on the "importance" of the work she did with him in the late 1980's seems geared just as much toward her own importance as it might be to explaining why we should spend all this time learning about Busch. Perhaps the filmmakers had a hard time finding anyone outside their subject's immediate circle who felt a need to say anything about him. There's no way to know whether that's the fault of the subject matter or the fault of the documentarians.Maybe you had to be there. But a good documentary should give you the sense that you were.

Daniel Humphrey (saltsan) I saw this film at the ImageOut film festival last weekend, and found it a highlight of my film going year so far. The directors take a fascinating person's career and make it even more interesting with a series of great interview subjects (including Kathleen Turner, B.D. Wong, and Rosie O'Donnell), hysterical video footage of Busch's past live performances, and clips from his film work. Busch himself is a wonderful interview subject and the life and career he's had is an inspiration for anyone who feels a little different and still wants to succeed in mainstream society. I would hope this film gets shown to every gay--or even just "different"--young person to show them they can succeed to the level of their wildest dreams, even if they have to make their own opportunities. If you're not a Charels Busch fan yet, you will be after you see this very entertaining and heart-warming film.