For Pride Month Team Experience is looking at queer and queer-adjacent moments in Oscar history...
It was the night of the 67th Academy Awards when a Vera Wang-clad Sharon Stone stepped on stage to present the Best Costume Design Oscar, the second category in an evening most remembered for its Forrest Gump lovefest. And yet, amid celebrating that epic of political passivity and proto conservatism, the Academy found time to tip its metaphorical hat at two classics of 1990s queer cinema. The second such picture, Trevor, would have its moment later when the Live-Action Short race resolved itself in a shocking tie. For now, slotted after a resplendent Dianne Wiest accepted the Supporting Actress trophy, it was time to honor The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert…
A watershed moment for Australian commercial cinema abroad, the comedy was represented at the Oscars by its two costume designers, Tim Chappel and Lizzy Gardiner. Fittingly, they were dressed in memorable fashion, if not necessarily to impress a snobby media apparatus with no taste for camp. He wore a skirt with his traditional tuxedo top. She wore an unused cast-off from the movie's wardrobe, a dress made of two-hundred-plus expired American Express Gold Cards. Kitschy and brilliant, the ensemble inspired nasty jokes left and right, decried as the worst look in Oscar history by some fun-hating folk.
No facile jab by a flopping David Letterman could dull the pair's shine. Indeed, nowadays, Gardiner's conversation starter of an outfit has a Wikipedia page all its own where you'll be able to discover, among other things, that it was later auctioned, with all proceeds going to The Foundation for AIDS Research. For some sobering perspective, consider that in 1995, the year Priscilla won its Oscar, around 50,000 people died from AIDS-related causes in the USA alone. In this context, it's hard to overstate how incredible the picture's victory was, a spark of queer joy in the darkest times.
As the cherry on top, consider what Chappel said backstage regarding his newly-won Oscar: "I can't wait to get out that Malibu Barbie set to dress it up in."
But did they deserve the award? Short answer – yes. For the long answer, one must go back to the wondrous movie that won them the Oscar. It all starts, as all good things do, in the pits of a cheap-looking gay club with a drag queen twirling a twink dressed in priestly attire. In an ideal world, the sweltering reek of the Sidney joint, a hot mess, would be made bearable by the press of hot bodies, desires met, and the glamour of a queen. In the opening salvos of Stephan Elliott's seminal flick, however, nobody's paying attention to the lipsync chanteuse melting under the spotlight. To be fair to the patrons, Hugo Weaving's Mitzi Del Bra could do better than a puerile pailletted party dress.
As Felicia Jollygoodfellow, Guy Pearce strikes a better picture, all dolled up in cascading pearls swinging teasingly over a meaty tuck. Of course, stubborn bulges are a matter for another time, as there are beer cans to the head to contend with and memories to invoke. No need for witchery in this summoning, a phone call is enough to make a flashback explode all over the screen. It pulls us back to the birth of Mitzi's son, when the father cum diva was dragged in drag to the delivery ward. You'll find many great jokes in Priscilla, but the best one might be the simple cut from medium to wide, exposing an alien chandelier getup complete with blinking lights.
With such setpiece garments "wasted" on a quick lark, it's hard to figure out how Gardiner and Chappel managed to keep things on budget. Famously, they only had 12,000 Australian dollars to come up with the entire wardrobe, so paltry a sum most costumes couldn't afford to be lined. You can't tell from what's on screen, which soon transitions from dressing room reveries to a funeral party for Bernadette's departed lover. The transgender widow, played by Terrence Stamp, is our last heroine, completing the drag trio that will set out into the Australian outback in a cross-country pilgrimage to Alice Springs, where Mitzi's estranged wife has secured them a gig.
Unlike Hollywood's To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything Julie Newmar, this down-under dream mostly resists the temptation of full fantasy. The queens don't spend their entire time made up, their out-of-drag personas dominating the narrative sprawl while the bursts of glamour act as provocation, spectacle, climax. To design the mundanity of everyday life is critical to the viewer's understanding of the characters, quotidian fashion a paradox of concealment and revelation with a joke or two thrown in there. For all the fabulousness, Priscilla is delicate, willing to weave matters of bigotry and grief, acid regret and mellow melancholia, into a tapestry of gender-bending farce.
Notice how each person negotiates the porous membrane separating their role on stage from their role in life. Divested of all she had been like one might trash a piece of old drag past its prime, Bernadette is all lady-like modesty when she's not libated in the paying public's attention. Mitzi goes back and forth between straight-passing boy drag and the kitsch euphoria of a curled-up hard-front and flip-flop minidress. Felicia, though - that girl knows how to party and dazzle like the best of them. She's the cock in a frock on a rock, performing for no one but herself on top of the trio's queenly ride, a caravan of sequins and silver lamé sailing a mercury wave over the landscape.
The journey isn't without its troubles, breaking-down engines a walk in the park when a gay bashing's just around the corner. Still, they persevere, flower blossoms of bright plumage on the barren wasteland in more ways than one. In that regard, drag becomes a multi-purpose miracle – everything is made better with a shot of sparkle. Even as their spirits ground down to nothing, the dream persists a glitter rainbow without end, costumes as ornament but also as tools for survival, understanding, and a reason to keep on living, resisting irreverently. Whether dancing to Gloria Gaynor by the fire or pulling off the grand tour of Australia to the sound of CeCe Peniston, the queens of Priscilla are a wonder beyond words, their drag an Oscar-worthy triumph.
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Hoopla, Tubi, Kanopy, and Pluto TV. You can also find it on the big platforms, available to rent or purchase.