Two very different icons of the queer community brought very different but inspiring messages to last week’s 14th annual CinemaQ Film Festival at the Sie Film Center.
Actor Colman Domingo, a Tony Award nominee for “The Scottsboro Boys” and best-known to TV audiences from “Euphoria” and “Fear the Walking Dead,” accepted Denver Film’s inaugural CinemaQ LaBahn Ikon Film Award. And drag legend Charles Busch, author and star of the cult favorite play and film “Psycho Beach Party,” was here to screen his new comedy “The Sixth Reel.”
At 52, Domingo is a rare Hollywood and stage actor who has made it into his fourth decade living his truth as an openly gay man without it having any apparent negative impact on his career opportunities. Busch, now 67, had it much harder. He says he was labeled “too gay for the industry” in the 1970s, so he forged his own path as an actor, playwright, cabaret entertainer, filmmaker and drag legend.
Award-winner Colman Domingo sported his schwag at a recent Denver Film appearece.
Not that Domingo – or anyone aspiring to a meaningful life in the entertainment industry – has had it easy.
“Everything in the world tried to stop me from being here today,” Domingo said Friday night. He was talking about his delayed flight to Denver. And he was talking about his entire unlikely life.
He was chosen for the Ikon award, its namesake Will LaBahn said, “for his “tremendous contributions to LGBTQIA+ culture and advancement through his work in film and entertainment.”
Domingo called the award an extraordinary honor, especially as its first-ever recipient. “Legacy,” he said, “is paving the way for others. I stand on the shoulders of many extraordinary people, and I want to be an example.
“I came into this industry 31 years ago with people telling me that I should quiet down that part of me that was so personal. Maybe that will stop you from getting work, they said. Hide that, they told me. But none of that made sense to me because I was loved at home, and I was loved in my community. I started to realize that no one can marginalize me unless I marginalize myself.”
Earlier Friday, Domingo wrapped production on his first leading role in a film. He plays influential civil-rights and gay-rights activist Bayard Rustin in the highly anticipated biopic “Rustin,” which is produced by Barack Obama. And he will be playing Mister opposite Fantasia Taylor and Taraji P. Henson in Oprah Winfrey’s remake of “The Color Purple,” also produced by Steven Spielberg and Quincy Jones.
“When I look at my body of work, Domingo said, “no one is putting myself in any boxes – because I don’t put myself in any boxes.”
'No one is putting myself in any boxes – because I don’t put myself in any boxes,' Colman Domingo told film journalist Lisa Kennedy and CinemaQ audiences in Denver last week.
Busch and co-writer Carl Andress offered up “The Sixth Reel” as a cinematic “bon-mot” to pandemic-weary filmgoers. It’s a quippy caper about a down-on-his-luck film buff who discovers a legendary lost horror film and becomes ensnared in a world of comically cutthroat collectors.
“The Sixth Reel” not only pairs him with longtime stage chum Julie Halston for the first time on film, it gathers an eclectic band of players including Margaret Cho, Tim Daly and Broadway royalty Patrick Page, Dee Hoty and André De Shields.
Having spent most of his career playing female characters, Busch said it is much more challenging for him to play a man. “Playing a female character comes from a very profound place within me,” said Busch. In this film, he does both.
Busch made his first-ever Denver drag appearance in 2016 at the Clocktower Cabaret. For his whole life, he said, “my generation of performers would get totally apoplectic if somebody called us drag queens, because it can be construed as negative or dismissive of us as actors," Busch told me at the time.
“The words ‘drag queen’ have always kind of haunted my career. If I could be 100 percent sure there were no elements of being patronizing, I’d accept it when people use it. But I’m not so sure about that.”
But in recent years, Busch has come to fully embrace his place as a drag legend, but only after coming to a new understanding of the term’s evolving connotation, and its empowering effect on the younger generation of performers.
“It’s funny how things change,” Busch said. “When I look at old interviews I gave, I am mortified by the glib, defensive things I would say. But it was a different time. Now, of course, when you see 'RuPaul’s Drag Race,' they celebrate being called a drag queen and it signifies a marvelous liberation to them. But it was different in 1985.”
Amy Adams’ Colorado roots
Following the screening of “The Sixth Reel,” CinemaQ played Busch’s most popular film, “Psycho Beach Party,” a 2000 satire of 1950s surfer and slasher films. Playing nasty Marvel Ann in only her second significant film was future six-time Oscar nominee Amy Adams. The Castle Rock native graduated from Douglas County High School and performed at Heritage Square Music Hall, Country Dinner Playhouse and Boulder's Dinner Theatre before hitting the big time.
CinemaQ founder Keith Garcia worked at the Mayan Theater when the film opened, “and Amy’s entire family came from Castle Rock on opening night,” hesaid. “They loved it, even though she has a risqué, semi-nude scene in the film. Afterward, they were so proud of her. They were asking me, ‘Do you have any extra posters?’”
Gun incident remains a mystery
A scary incident that forced Sunday night’s performance of the “Pretty Woman” at the Buell Theatre to be delayed remains an unsolved mystery as of this writing.
Just before 6 p.m., a chef at the Prelude + Post restaurant (formerly Limelight) across from the Buell contacted the security team that services the city-owned Denver Performing Arts Complex and reported a suspicious person wearing all black and yielding a weapon believed to be a handgun.
The only scheduled performance in the complex that night was “Pretty Woman,” and police decided to seal both the Buell and the restaurant until an all-clear could be made. A police sweep and review of surveillance footage found no evidence of a suspect either on-site or in the footage.
The show began about 50 minutes late, but the plot of confusion thickened hours later when a 9News report said the suspect was believed to be an employee of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, the nonprofit that both presents and stages live theater at the DPAC. But the suspect remains unknown, and whether he was in fact carrying a gun remains unconfirmed.
“There is no reason to believe that person is in any way affiliated with the DCPA,” said Director of Communications Suzanne Yoe.
Dazzle will have a new neighbor
With last week’s news that the jazz club Dazzle is moving down the street and into the Denver Performing Arts Complex at 14th and Arapahoe streets, that leaves just one empty space on that big vacant block of 14th: The one vacated by the beloved Backstage Coffee at the corner of Curtis Street. Ginger White Brunetti, Executive Director of the city of Denver’s Arts and Venues, which manages the arts complex, is negotiating with Sodexo Live!, a food and beverage company, about opening an as-yet unidentified restaurant in that space in the first quarter of 2023.
The Historic Elitch Theatre has been largely closed since 1991, but two one-night-only productions will be presented there later this year.
Lowe’s offers Elitch Theatre a boost
The historic Elitch Theatre has been awarded a $70,000 grant through the Lowe’s Hometowns community impact program. The 131-year-old theater, located on the original grounds of the Elitch Gardens zoo and then amusement park in northwest Denver, closed in 1986 and has been in a state of (very) gradual resurrection and reinvention ever since.
The Elitch Theatre, which was modeled after Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, opened in 1891 and screened the first moving picture anywhere in Colorado. For decades, it was home to the oldest summer-stock theater in America, with legends Cecil B. DeMille, Douglas Fairbanks, Grace Kelly and Edward G. Robinson among its alumni. (Kelly lived at the house on 4020 Raleigh St. the summer she was here.)
A whole lot of time, love and people have spent the better part of 35 years trying to will the Elitch Theatre back to life in what has to be the longest ongoing home-improvement project in Denver history.
They are calling Friday “Red Vest Day,” during which volunteers from Lowe’s will gather at the theater to complete one of the final steps of the building’s exterior restoration and preservation. The large, cinder-block building (which back in the day created space for scenery to “fly” up and above the old stage) will be painted and weather-proofed. A new concrete patio will be poured. The iconic front awning will be removed, along with additional landscaping and cleanup.
The theater has been used in recent years to host movie nights on the lawn, and limited live performances and community events inside. Part of the enormity of the present task is that the theater was built to operate only in the summer months. So it’s never been an all-weather, year-round facility. It needs heating, air-conditioning and HVAC systems. The stage has no lighting, sound or rigging equipment. The balcony is yet to be restored. The seats date back to the beginning in 1891.
But hey, the ghosts are still knocking those old floorboards. To donate, go to historicelitchtheatre.org
Briefly …
Tonight (7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 18), History Colorado is bringing Denver’s four most recent mayors together for a special conversation titled “A City Imagined: A Historic Evening with Denver Mayors” at 1200 N. Broadway. Federico Peña, Wellington Webb and Sen. John Hickenlooper will join the outgoing Michael Hancock to discuss Denver’s history and growth, the changing role of local government, and all things Mile High City. Tickets $10-$15 at historycolorado.org. Streaming available …
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A pandemic-delayed outdoor production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is finally going to open Friday (Aug. 19). It features some of the most accomplished actors in the local theater community … and it’s free. Shakespeare in the Wild is presenting the Bard’s timeless fever dream from Aug. 19-21 and 26-28 in the open space next to the Goodson Recreation Center, 6315 S. University Blvd in Centennial. No reservations required. It’s directed by former longtime DCPA Theatre Company actor Sam Gregory, whose own return to the stage was announced this week: He’ll be playing a nuclear physicist for the Butterfly Effect Theatre Company in Lucy Kirkwood’s Tony Award-nominated play “The Children,” opening Sept. 15 at the Dairy Arts Center …
Last week’s attack on controversial author Salmon Rushdie (“Satanic Verses” and “Midnight’s Children”) hit Denver’s Jeff Neuman close to home. Neuman hosted Rushdie for an installment of the ongoing “Pen & Podium” series back in 2010. “A truly lovely, gentle and generous human being,” Neuman said. Rushdie “is on the road to recovery,” his ex-wife said Monday …
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