On August 24th, 2013, hundreds of scantily clad cinema & sleaze enthusiasts descended on the Bay Area as the result of a sixteen year odyssey that began when my dear ghoufriend Peaches Christ invited the city of San Francisco, and subsequently the world, to celebrate a singular chapter in cult film history. For nearly twenty years now, Peaches has hosted thousands of screaming fans who have traveled near and far to worship at the altar of Paul Verhoeven’s seminal masterpiece, Showgirls.
As a committed member of the Peaches Christ family, I’ve done my share of Midnight Mass events, but I have to tell you, there are few that engender the level of excitement that surrounds Showgirls. After so many years of presenting the film, which Quentin Tarantino once famously described as “the last great American grindhouse movie,” the people who gather to celebrate it with us have come to expect nothing but the absolute best in showmanship and sin. Peaches, who has taken her personal love of Showgirls to an unprecedented public degree, has made it her mission to celebrate the movie in the grand fashion in which it was made, and, in the process, inarguably helped add to the film’s new lease on life in the cinematic pantheon.
Indeed, in some circles, Peaches’ preshow celebration of the movie has become just as popular as the film itself, and this latest outing proved no different.
This year, as mentioned, was Peaches’ sixteenth annual screening of the film, and the fan response was as voracious as ever. The event was held at the historic Castro Theatre in the heart of San Francisco, and sold out to a capacity crowd of 1400 extremely enthusiastic audience members.
The pre-show started, as has become tradition, with Peaches Christ’s loving recreation of the Goddess Spectacular from the movie. However, this year, in celebration of Showgirls’ Sweet Sixteen, there was an added bonus: A comedic short film that opened the evening, featuring a number of San Francisco’s finest drag performers auditioning to earn the coveted role of Nomi Malone in the show.
…and why not? Who wouldn’t want to the Goddess supreme?
Mirroring Nomi’s own audition for Mr. Moss in the film (played hysterically in the parody by San Francisco icon Timmy Spence), the audience roared with laughter, watching their favorite queens spit barbs at each other, all in hopes of donning the mighty nails of Malone.
With the fate of who won the role of Nomi in question, the short film drew to a close and dancers flooded the stage. Moments later, Peaches Christ herself emerged from a volcano to the screams of hundreds. This was no mere Rocky Horror-esque preshow, it was a full-on rock concert experience in homage to one of the greatest, albeit misunderstood, films of all time.
After several moments of dancing and vamping for the crowd, Peaches’ party was crashed by Showgirls very own Rena Riffel (Penny/Hope), who made her way down the aisle of the Castro on the backs of a cavalcade of luscious, shirtless men.
After the applause died down, Rena announced to everyone, seemingly in defiance to Peaches’ own Cristal Connors-style plans, that the winner of the role of Nomi was inconclusive, because in a perfect world we’d “all be Nomi.” She then invited all the queens from the video to join her and Peaches on-stage for a Nomi Malone-filled extravaganza!
…and what a line-up! San Francisco drag icons like Sister Roma, Lady Bear, Peggy L’eggs, Cousin Wonderlette, and RuPaul’s Drag Race’s own Honey Mahogany all contributed their best to serving Nomi-realness. Each one gave it their all, joining Peaches in loving recreations of classic moments from the film. Cousin Wonderlette faced off against Peaches in a dance-off, while Peggy L’eggs stepped all over Peaches’ lines in a recreation of the dressing room scene. Then, Roma and Lady Bear helped Peaches renact the infamous Spago lunch, complete with Peaches and Lady Bear eating heaping spoonfuls of Doggy Chow to the horrified screams of the audience.
Not one to be outdone by imitators to the throne, Rena returned to the stage to perform “Deep Kiss,” a provocative song and dance number that left the crowd howling for more. It was evident from the grin on her face that Rena Riffel was reveling in every second of the Showgirls love that was permeating the room.
The staged portion of the preshow ended with Peaches taking a tumble at the hands of Honey Mahogany, who took the opportunity to end the show as she began it: A total goddess.
With the performance aspect done, Peaches and Rena invited members of the audience to join them onstage for a “Nomi Malone Lookalike Contest.” However, deciding that they needed a tie-breaker, the duo invited up another surprise guest of the evening: Dewey Weber, who played the truck driver who delivered Nomi unto Vegas in the film.
With two members of the film’s original cast in the house, the crowd couldn’t have been more ecstatic. Through the hoots and hollers, there was eventually a winner crowned. However, for those who lost, there’s always next year (just remember to push harder at the top of the stairs).
The final moments of the preshow occurred when Peaches asked the house lights to be brought up, and for members of the audience who purchased a large popcorn to raise their bags high. As has become Showgirls tradition, large popcorn signifies a lap-dance from a motley assortment of drag performers, dancers, and other fun-loving weirdoes hand-selected by Peaches and curated by yours truly. With a gleeful raise of her hands, Peaches set the nearly hundred performers off on a mad dash into the audience, resulting in over five minutes of party in the aisles. Popcorn kernels flying, people dancing on chairs, and the crowd laughing and cheering the whole time. It was bedlam of the finest order.
As the lights dimmed, but the chaos still not entirely calmed, Peaches announced proudly, “This is Showgirls!”
…and, oh, was it ever. The cheers didn’t stop when the movie began, either. In fact, they grew louder. They cheered for Rena, they cheered for Dewey, and the cheered for every single sordid second. By the time that infamous pool scene played, I swear they heard the screams all the way in Oakland.
In talking with our special guest Dewey Weber backstage, he revealed to me that he had feelings of reticence about the film. He recalled the time when the critics weren’t so kind, and he admitted he wasn’t sure what the audience reaction was going to be. He also said he thought that people attending Peaches’ show were there to make fun of the movie. But, with that initial volley of cheers, he learned they weren’t there to make fun of it, but they were there to scream, cheer, and carry on because they truly love Showgirls. He had the biggest smile on his face, and he couldn’t stop talking about how impressed he was of the crowd’s reverence. Seeing Dewey finally get what this movie meant to these people, people like me, made it worth everything.
That smile he had is one that all of us who work with Peaches have shared at one time or another. That grin is a reminder that when we celebrate a movie at Midnight Mass, it’s because we understand the “cult” in “cult film” means “community,” and the Showgirls community that Peaches Christ has cultivated is all about celebration.
…and celebrate we did. For one shining night, the audience at the Castro was able to live the dream proclaimed by Rena at the night’s onset. We may have entered the theater in our normal, real world guises, but before the night was through, each and every one of us left a Goddess.
Here’s to sixteen years of Peaches Christ and Showgirls, and I hope you join me in raising a well-manicured hand in the air for sixteen more.
Until then, love, brown rice, and vegetables.
-Michael
