Life Within the Gilded Cage

15 minutes of fame

Had my 15 minutes of fame last Saturday nite. About a year ago a documentary filmmaker interviewed me for a movie he was doing on the life of one of my dearest friends, Mother Cavellucci. Mother was a lifelong drag queen, who transcended all barriers, gay and straight, and was a permanent fixture in New Hope, up until her death in May of 2000. Everyone in town knew her. She called herself the "oldest living drag queen in captivity" and joked that when George Washington crossed the Delaware River, she was waiting for him on the other side, waving.

Just before Mother died (at age 75) the filmmaker, named Tim, met her and was fascinated by her, so did a 60 minutes film about her life. Mother truly was worth the effort, a definite enigma of a character. Try to imagine your grandmother with a wry, very dry sense of cutting edge humor - and you have 'Lucci. It was heart-rending to watch the scenes of her, because it made me miss her so much. But of course, I'm sure she would have loved the tribute.

The film was accepted into the Philadelphia Gay/Lesbian film fest, and premiered on Saturday nite, as the feature film shown after 5 shorts. They do theme nights, and that night's theme was transgenderism. I end up in a good 10-15 minutes of the picture, simply because I was close to Mom (as close as to my own mom).

Since the film was based on a local icon all of the local papers had run stories on the film -- so it was sold out at both showings. Fortunately Tim slipped me in, which was great. Interestingly 1/4 of the audience were straight people and couples, who obviously must find us interesting, or at the very least entertaining.

I loved watching the crowd's reaction, all of which was very good. Tim is a gay filmmaker, so his viewpoint on everything was extremely positive, and definitely showed our community in a faborable light, which was great.

For me, the best moment came after the film, when the festival director surprised the shit out of me by pointing me out to the audience and asking me to stand. Ack! Wasn't expecting that, and was extremely glad that I had opted not to wear the black leather mini skirt -- but intead had worn a pair of hiphugger flares and backless halter top with flip flops. Nice and casual, which is the way you want to go when you're walking the streets of the inner city.

Anyway... after the show I was kind of swamped by nice people expressing how much they enjoyed the film. All of which nice, but the nicest part was a 6'2", 30 yr old, gorgeous black man with a shaven head, goatee, and nice build, who just kept hanging around and ended up going to the after party with me. As it turned out he is a professional opera singer with the Philadelphia Opera Company. No sex girls -- no nasty stories to tell. It was just wonderful to meet an intelligent, curteous guy, and have a fun time.

Well... that was my 15 of minutes of fame. Okay, I didn't invent a cure for AIDS or anything, no great shakes, but it was fun to go out, hobnob with good people, and do it all "my way" with total acceptance.