Superstar in a Housedress

While it lacks the polish of the various HBO produced documentaries, Superstar in a Housedress, is a Loving, Fabulously Bitchy portrait of the Warhol factory legend Jackie Curits. Filled to brim with archival footage, and fabulous retellings of gone by New York era. If anything see this film to listen to the recountings of Holly Woodlawn, Alexis De Lago and Harvey Fierstein , these interview subjects throw stories around with sauciest, campiest glee. This is a rough around the edges, but completely satisfying and informative treasure of a film!! Fabulous!! Glorious!! Trashy !! Bitchy!!

Fascinating remembrance of a unique artist who could seemingly change his sex at will, and also was a talented playwright and performer. Recalls the Warhol era in New York City which saw wide artistic experimentation in art, underground theater, and experimental film. The film includes archival film and video shot in the late sixties and early seventies and hundreds of photographs. Most interesting is the look inside the apartments of about two dozen interviewees in New York and Hollywood, including obscure artists and people like Lily Tomlin and Harvey Fierstein. The stories told by Jackie's surviving friends and colleagues are priceless - and hilarious! Bravo to Highberger for capturing and sharing them with us!

This was worth seeing for me just to see and hear the Warhol icons Paul Morrissey and Joe d'Alessandro "now," or close to now, as they were characters I watched from a small distance long ago. Also as someone has already noted - the environments of the people interviewed bring back the East Village of the 60s and 70s. Now in their own 60s probably, they are probably the last generation of young artists who were able to live in Manhattan.

If you remember the Max's Kansas City/Andy Warhol era, this will bring something back for you. If you don't, you might get a breath of a so-different, now-gone downtown artistic atmosphere of the East Village in the 60s and 70s.

The movie does a nice job of introducing the gender-shifting performer Jackie Curtis and a kind of outrageous whacked-out druggy boundary-trashing theatre/movie scene, part of the moment of giant culture shifts where gender and sex were concerned.

It's well-paced, intelligent, and always interesting. To some extent it's about the Jackie Curtis phenomenon, but the very articulate woman performer called Penny Arcade communicates a feeling for the person himself, and Holly Woodlawn - I am glad she is still with us - is sad when she remembers his death in his 30s.

The DVD extras - don't skip them. If I recall correctly, that's where we hear from the man who tells us about the seven chihuahuas that Curtis' grandmother kept on top of her breasts.