Were the Cockettes simply a long-running, theatrically tinged party or were they serious artists -- or a little of both?

A little of both -- or rather, a lot of both.

Their New York debut was something of a disaster, wasn't it?

Yes, that was quite a fiasco. It all got started because there was a performance here in San Francisco that was attended by Rex Reed and Truman Capote. Reed wrote a wildly raving article about the Cockettes being the greatest thing that was happening in the world culturally. That started a big stir in New York and the Cockettes got very excited about going to New York and performing. What wound up happening was an incredible culture clash that was a disaster for the group. You see, the Cockettes really existed in the reality of the Palace Theater and that reality encompassed the audience and San Francisco.

The expectations of the San Francisco audience were completely different from those of New York audiences. The New Yorkers expected a high degree of professionalism and sophistication. The Cockettes just weren't thinking in those terms, so you had a clash of East Coast and West Coast cultures. To some extent it brought out all the contradictions of what the Cockettes were. They were basically a ragtag group of hippies acting out their imaginations on stage.

They'd taken street theater indoors, but in New York they were seen as just amateurs?

Yes. The New York disaster was primarily opening night, which, of course, is the worst night to have a disaster in the theater. But there were a lot of reasons why opening night went wrong that probably could have been avoided. They took two different shows to New York and opening night they did the much weaker, less interesting, less original of the two -- "Tinsel Tarts in a Hot Coma." And they also didn't have time to rehearse, really.

And expectations were very high.

The Cockettes were wined and dined and partied all over town by people like Robert Rauschenberg, Diana Vreeland and the Warhol folks. They were treated like royalty at the same time that they were being put up in this roach-infested hotel and not being paid anything really. So they were running around getting free food at parties, along with lots and lots of drugs. Consequently, when it came time to perform, they were a mess. They were tired from partying too much. The sound was bad in the New York theater, and their sets for the Palace Theater, which they brought with them, were just cardboard. The stage in the New York theater was more than twice as big as the Palace's, so their sets looked like little rinky-dink things. There was just not a lot of advance thought put into bringing the show from San Francisco to New York.

The Cockettes apparently felt, "Well, we've done these shows 50 times. We know the material; we're not big on rehearsing anyway, because our whole thing is about spontaneity, freshness and whatever happens, happens." I think it says a lot about the Cockettes story: People had very grand delusions that often produced good results, but New York wound up being a big disaster.

They came back to San Francisco and continued for some time, but the luster was gone. In New York they hit both the top and the bottom.

Yes.

You see their impact on pop culture as being quite broad. How were the Cockettes influential?

It's hard to differentiate the Zeitgeist from specific performers. Clearly, a lot of the glitter-rock stuff came very shortly after the Cockettes. Also there were Bette Midler's big extravaganzas -- she was performing at the Continental Baths in New York at the time the Cockettes performed in the city, and I know she went to see them. And Elton John's glitter phase came very shortly after the Cockettes. Did the Cockettes make glitter rock happen? It's hard to say. But they unquestionably created quite a stir in terms of their gender-bending, their campy, glittery presentation and just in terms of the drag. Drag had not received anywhere near that degree of visibility, particularly in a cultural context, outside of the gay community prior to the Cockettes.

I think it is impossible to deny that their influence was enormous. They were featured in Paris Match. They were in Rolling Stone all the time. Their whole presence was completely new and garnered a lot of attention. People loved photographing them. And when Diana Vreeland met them in New York, she was completely wowed by their costumes which were 50-cent thrift-store clothes. I think that their influence was significant in that they created a whole new genre of performance and visual presentation.

When will the film premiere?

I hope to have it done by the beginning of 2001.

You'll be able to do that?

I think we will. It depends on fundraising -- always a slow process. Documentaries raise their money through contributions from foundations, government and individuals. Because of the subject matter, we're not going to get any NEA money for "The Cockettes." We have received a number of foundation grants and we're working to get individual donors. But this is an unusual project. It's not a sober, social-issue documentary about the Holocaust, poverty in Latin America, abortion or something of that nature. The people who donate to documentaries based on specific social issues are not likely to fund a film about the Cockettes. On the other hand, this is going to be an extremely fun movie and I believe that it has an important, historical and social story to tell, but in a very entertaining context. I think that will work in our favor over the long run. It will give the movie more visibility than most documentaries get because it's a very wild story.

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