Note: I suggest you read my first entry- posted on my myspace page myspace.com/claudiadebdp so that this entry makes some sense to you
My friend and BdP supporter extraordinare and future film critique Party Ahn asked me on Friday, premier night of Dickwhipped show, during our Q&A session, what it felt like to work with video. It was a great question especially coming from someone who works and has a deep interest in that medium. Honestly, our time and minds have been so wrapped around the production of the show that I don’t think I had a chance to process the whole experience of producing the work to give her an answer I felt good with. In other words I hadn’t had the distance from the work to think about how it was for me to take part in its creation. But I feel like I’ve had time and so here goes- this is how the experience felt. It was beautiful. As a writer I anchor myself- my art in words sometimes more securely than other but that’s what I do. I almost cherry-pick each work to make sure that what I’m writing sounds like what I hear and see in my mind and is palpable to the audiences’ mind. Words. A picture paints a thousand words but how many pictures can you use to tell a story. Sounds too obvious perhaps, it was a trippy experience for me. I’m used to creating images through narrative not so much creating narratives with images. The inverse of my comfort zone. That’s what “Fuck, Love: a love story with no words,” was like. When Mari and I started off we had an idea in mind for a storyline but in the end the pictures had their own agenda.
I also wrote my first script, another first for me. I adapted one of Raquel Gutierrez' narrative pieces ("Waterboy") into a script called “Metamorphis”. Marie Gaerlan got in the director's chair and cranked out a 5.09 minute short with the incredible support and talent of and Morgan Dye.
The Script
This piece is a butched out version of Marie Shelly’s story of Frankenstein portrayed by Mama Dragga as Dr. Frankenstein. While both Frankenstein and Mama Dragga are in search of creating life, both trying to find meanings to give life purpose, Mama Draga’s goal is to create the ultimate butch. Masculinity being perfected, created and molded in the strong, delicated big hands of a drag queen. Mama Draga is not a typical mad scientists/adventurer she is a bruja with shaman-esque powers who through séance-like rituals is able to draw the most “desirable” attributes from two butch corpses that lay before her and transfers the attributes to a third corpse- her creation… the ultimate butch.
Int. Mama Draga’s Séance Room - Night
A high SHOT of Mama Draga’s room features the 3 bodies laying on operating tables covered neck down with sheets, Mama Draga mixes concoctions, pulls herbs out of her satchel and burns sage.
Mama Draga
(still busy setting up)
Why is it that the handsome and the
courageous are always handling the
ball and calling the plays? How do
the worthy and the scandalous charm
their way through the endzone so effortlessly, these machos so full of grace!
She turns and walks over to Butch 1, grabs Butch 1's face endearingly.
I’m most impressed that she was able to make something out of it. I wrote the shots the way I saw them in my mind and then Marie managed to “stage” them for lack of a better term and Morgan captured and made it look like something I hadn’t imagined. It was a good collaboration working with that group. I thought that this type of collaboration was interesting and fun. Some of you saw “Metamorphis” and perhaps didn’t get it. I say SO WHAT! Just enjoy the delectable colors on the screen. And wasn’t Plastinlina (aka Mamma Dragga whose real name is Isaac Prado) HOT? Yes! Hot enough to have three-3 fine butches offer to buy her lunch all in one day. Plastilina has a great voice and is also a talented make-up artists and designer. We first met when BdP did a show back in September 07 at Highways New Latino Arts Festival. We all felt it, there was chemistry from the start, such good energy. So good that the simple act of Plastilina fastening my lush-lashes as we transformed me into (Roundkeeper (aka King Bitch aka Pat Benatar IMPERSONATOR) was enough to make my butt-hole go "tee-hee". That’s how it started she was my Mamma Draga that day. Which leads me to another question that we’re often asked, “Where do your ideas come from,” from everywhere…including chemistry. If you guys didn't catch the show, pues ni modo hasta la next time. Not sure when's the next time we'll be doing Dickwhipped in LA but we're coming to the Bay, La Pena Cultural Center in Berkeley to be exact on February 9th hope our Bay area supporters come to play with us.
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