To Wong Foo, Thanks For Bottoms

This week I saw two films as part of Scene Festival, a queer film festival that's run alongside Manchester Pride. The first was an outdoor screening of To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything! Julie Newmar, the other classic mainstream 90s drag film that isn't Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Me and cosmolinguist hadn't seen it before. It was an outdoor screening, which was great pandemic-wise; we got there just after the screening started, and most of the deck chairs facing the screen were occupied, but we grabbed a picnic table behind them which was better for holding the pints we grabbed from the bar at Home.

The film's plot is reasonably simple - three drag queens are driving across country from New York to LA, and their car breaks down in a small town. They must stay until a spare part arrives, facing hostility from some of the locals, including a murderous sheriff. It includes threatened and actual sexual assault and domestic violence. But it's a light-hearted comedy, and a fantasy - it doesn't try to be realistic or gritty, and is based around how the locals are inspired and have their lives turned around by the queens. Despite for being a comedy, the girls themselves are never the butt of any queer-phobic jokes. And it's actually really well shot, and acted - Wesley Snipes and Patrick Swayze were known as an action hero and a romantic lead at the time, but they play their parts well. John Leguizamo was a bit more experienced in drag through his stand up comedy at the time and that shows.

There's a description of the difference between cross-dressers, transvestites, transsexuals and drag queens which doesn't stand up well, but was not a bad explanation for mainstream audiences in the mid-1990s. It's definitely a period piece in other ways too - the cops can be the butt of jokes and manage to be a threat without being too dangerous or over-militarised, and there's no mobile phones for a break down or sat nav for the road trip. Definitely worth watching though, with enough camp and kitschy moments to spice it up.

The night after, me and P went to Cultplex to see Bottoms, a high school sex comedy with several twists. The first of which is the queerness - our protagonists are two lesbian virgins, about to graduate high school and both crushing on popular cheerleaders. As they make clear, people don't hate them because they're gay, they hate them because they're "gay, ugly and untalented". They live in a small town where high school football is worshipped to a ridiculously over the top and camp degree, including the football team having a one-sided table at one end of the school cafeteria where they sit like The Last Supper.

After an incident at the start of term, bolstered by some runaway rumours, our girls set up a women's self defence class at the school, run like Fight Club, with the ultimate goal of getting laid. The club takes off in an unexpected direction and the girls ride their success for a while before it comes crashing down, right before the Homecoming Game. Can they get the gang back together, save the football team and get the girls?

This was a "party screening" where audience participation was encouraged, which meant people whooping whenever people beat each other up or girls made out. I was sad to have missed this film in cinemas but seeing it for the first time among a group of noisy queers was actually brilliant fun. It's not a subtle film - the girls' teacher asks on the blackboard "who invented feminism? Gloria Steinem, some other woman, or a man?" and there are lots of snarky inside jokes for queers and feminists alike. I can't recommend it enough if you want silly, over the top and surprisingly gory fun.