RuPaul Is: Starbooty!
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RuPaul Is: Starbooty! | |
---|---|
Directed by | Jon Witherspoon |
Produced by | Jon Witherspoon |
Written by | Jon Witherspoon |
Starring | RuPaul Larry Tee |
Music by | Songs by RuPaul |
Distributed by | Funtone Records |
Release date(s) | 1987 |
Running time | 60 min (aprox.) |
Language | English |
Budget | less than $1000 |
RuPaul is: Starbooty! was an extremely low budget underground film starring and co-produced by then-unfamous drag queen RuPaul. To be precise, it was a trilogy of three films.
Filmed on a zero-dollar-budget, the movies are a pastiche of 60's blaxploitation films. RuPaul stars as Starbooty, a crime fighting federal agent who disposes of villains while getting entangled in romantic liaisons. At the time, RuPaul was still participating in a type of drag known as genderfuck; as such his appearance generally is of a man with feminine makeup and clothes, but no padding or taping to make the body look female.
In the first film, simply called "Starbooty," Starbooty is assigned to protect the president's son from "The Evil Twins," who want to infect the entire world with AIDS. In the second film, "Starbooty II - The Mack," Starbooty's sister Cornisha is killed by her Mack (pimp). Starbooty organizes his hos into a crime-fighting force to get revenge. In the third film, "Starbooty III - Starbooty's Revenge," Larry Tee has been kidnapped by The Singing Peek Sisters who want to get a recording contract. (Larry Tee, like RuPaul, was a fixture on the Atlanta gay scene at the time. Both went on to become major celebrities.)
When originally produced, cheaply manufactured video cassettes were passed out on the streets and at clubs. Currently they can be purchased together on one video cassette at the website of Funtone Records, a trademark established by Jon Witherspoon, the man who paid to produce the films originally.
Outside the canon of the actual films, a sketch on RuPaul's VH1 talk show continued the storyline of the character of Starbooty with a preview for an alleged new film called "Starbooty in: Take That You Honky Bitch".
In 2006 RuPaul used her blog to discuss a film she was in the process of making which she called "The Untitled RuPaul Movie". She has since proclaimed that the movie's official title is "Starbooty: Reloaded".