Charles Busch, the gay playwright, screenwriter and iconic female impersonator—best known for Psycho Beach Party and Die Mommie Die!, the film versions of his hit plays—has added another talent to his resume: directing. Busch has not only directed his first feature film, A Very Serious Person, but he co-stars in it ( along with Polly Bergen ) out of drag—another on-screen first for Busch. The movie, co-written by Busch and Carl Andress ( who co-stars ) , is a small character study that focuses on a grandmother dying from cancer and having one last summer with the adolescent nephew she's been raising. The nephew, played by Busch discovery P.J. Verhoest, is not only confronting his grandmother's mortality but is also coming to terms with his burgeoning gay sexuality. Into this household comes a new caregiver for Bergen: the stern, no-nonsense Jan, who has a few issues of his own to deal with. The film was well-received on the film festival circuit and has now come to DVD courtesy of Wolfe Video. Busch, who is currently in the midst of a New York run of an expanded version of Die Mommie Die!, discussed the film with Windy City Times.
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Pictured: Charles Busch, Busch with Polly Bergen
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Windy City Times: I'm so thrilled about your movie, A Very Serious Person, because it shows such a different side of your talent.
Charles Busch: You know it's funny. I actually think it works better on the small screen. We shot it on an incredibly low budget which is the only way it could be made and in a way that would allow me to be the director because I'd never directed anything before. So we shot it on high-def digital video and I think it looks better on the small screen and it's also such an intimate little story.
WCT: Right, right.
CB: And, in fact, I think my other movies—both Psycho Beach Party and Die Mommie Die!—had their theatrical release but ultimately really found their following on cable and DVD so I think this is probably the best way to see the movie.
WCT: Can you talk about how the project came about?
CB: It came about in kind of a funny way. I had directed a little five minute short subject for Showtime a couple of years ago and I had a wonderful time doing it. We shot it in one day and I showed it to my friend Daryl Roth who is a wonderful theatre producer and she was one of the producers of [ my play ] The Tale of the Allergist's Wife on Broadway. I think she also was a producer on the documentary about me.
WCT: The Lady in Question is Charles Busch—the reason we talked a few years back.
CB: Yes, and she's been sort of a benefactress of mine. Anyway, I showed her the short subject and she said, 'If you ever want to direct a feature I'll produce it' and I thought, 'Whoa, wonderful,' and as soon as I left her I called up my friend Carl Andress, who has directed me in a lot of my plays over the years and [ is ] very disciplined, and he said, 'We've got to write a script immediately to show Daryl so she'll produce it!' So we got on the stick and Carl's so disciplined—I'd have been procrastinating—but he had us working every day. I thought rather than doing Die Mommie Die! Part II or a camp movie, this would be a good opportunity for me to do something very different and very personal. When we shot Die Mommie Die!, some of my favorite parts to play were the small, intimate places where I wasn't very campy and outrageous, and I so admire that kind of minimalist screen acting where the actor almost seems to be doing nothing and you just read their thoughts. I really wanted to have that experience.
WCT: You certainly wrote yourself a character that fits that description.
CB: Yes. It's a part that's very non-verbal, a sort of austere person and in a way that's almost a bigger challenge in a crazy way rather than directing a feature film was. I have aspects of Jan, the character, in me but it's another thing to play it. Carl ... not only co-wrote the movie but played one of the leads, the hairdresser, who was always there and Polly Bergen, my co-star, knew what I was trying to achieve and sometimes after we'd do a scene together she'd say, 'A little too much eyebrow acting going on there' and I'd say, 'You're right, you're right.'
WCT: [ Laughs ] 'Pull it in girl!'
CB: Take it down more, yes. Well, it was very hard. I was trying to tone down 30 years of a rather baroque acting style so it was hard, but I'm very pleased with it. I thought I pulled it off.
WCT: I think you did, too.
CB: Anyway, to finish this story: Basically, we wrote the script very quickly and I showed it to Daryl and she immediately said, 'Let's make it.' It was something she really related to a lot because she has a gay son and has been such a wonderful mother as far as trying to make being gay for her kid as easy as possible for him in a homophobic world. So it meant a lot to her. We really shot the movie within months of writing it.
WCT: What is it about gay men and older ladies? I just love the attachment that we seem to have that's cropped up over the years in so many films, plays, and TV shows. That Auntie Mame/Patrick relationship…
CB: Well, the older woman is wise and can usually accept people as who they are and not as some fantasy.
WCT: It's an 'archetype' relationship that I have venerated and many other gay men I know feel the same way.
CB: Well that's my life, you know. I was raised by my aunt, my mother's sister, and my childhood was, in some ways, Auntie Mame because my aunt took me to live with her in Manhattan—and that's certainly why I've always related to Auntie Mame. But in this movie we have several Mames. Number one is the grandmother who is very much like my aunt who raised me and also Jan, her caregiver, has a kind of a perversely severe Auntie Mame aspect as well. He's sort of the anti-Auntie Mame. [ Laughs ]
WCT: Polly Bergen is wonderful in the film. How did she come to be involved in the movie?
CB: I knew Polly somewhat socially. Daryl is very good friends with Polly and mentioned her and we all thought, 'Wow, that would be really cool.' She came in to meet with us and really related to the material and said, 'It sounds just like me. That's exactly how I talk to my grandchildren.' There's a danger of the movie becoming rather saccharine with a little boy and a dying woman and Polly has kind of a tough edge to her. She can cut through sentimentality and yet at the same time, there's something very warm about her. It certainly was awfully brave of her to do a movie like this. There are many scenes where she has no make-up on at all and being photographed so harshly but she loves to act and really wanted to go for it. We worked under such really awful circumstances because it was so low-budget. I mean we nearly killed Polly. [ Laughs ] We shot it during the very hot summer. It was mostly shot out in this house out in Rockaway outside New York and we had to turn off the air conditioning while we were filming ... and there was no dressing room or trailer. We used the basement of the house next door and we're all dressing in this one room—children and everybody. So it was difficult and two days before we shot the movie Polly fell and really hurt her leg. So there were many problems but she's such a trouper and she really threw herself into it.
Then, of course, she's such good company because she's basically known every single person in show business over the past 50 years. So one day the theme would be 'Comedians I've Known' and we'd go from George Burns to Bob Hope, and another day she'd be talking about the early days of Vegas during the lunch hour and her knowing Bugsy Siegel [ laughs ] and another day it would be discussing gay icons. She was friends with Judy and Marlene. [ Laughs ] It was like being with Scheherazade.
WCT: How wonderful.
CB: It really was. And we also had Dana Ivey in the cast, who is a friend of mine. I knew that the part of Betty the housekeeper is also very non-verbal and could sort of disappear in the wrong hands, but I knew that if we had a really great actress who could fill it in with those silences it would be great so Dana's really an asset.
WCT: She's quite marvelous in everything.
CB: Yes. And, of course, Julie Halston who is kind of my muse. Carl and I knew from the beginning that we wanted to write ourselves marvelous roles and we wanted to write a marvelous part for Julie as well so that was always a given.
WCT: [ Laughs ] That's what friends are for…
CB: Yes. Because I adore her so much and we've done so many shows together and then there was a period where we didn't work together but now we're back being Laurel & Hardy again so that's fun.
WCT: And what about your young discovery, P.J. Verhoest, who has the weight of the film on his young shoulders?
CB: We found him at an audition. We saw all these kids and it was odd because I was really looking for myself at age 12 which made it very difficult and it seemed like so many of these kids that we saw were so butch and you look at their resumes and special talents and they'd list 'tai Kwando, karate, loves football.' Where did all the gay kids go in show business? So it was a bit tricky. Now I don't know what P.J.'s sexual orientation is, but he had a sort of androgynous quality that worked so well and he was a remarkably sophisticated kid. I've had so little experience around young people since I'm the youngest in my family and I was very nervous. You know, 'How am I going to induce a performance out of this kid?' and am I going to have to tell him that we shot a dog or something to try to get him worked up. But P.J. is a very sophisticated actor and after we initially discussed the arc of where the character is going there was little discussion after that. He just kind of knew and sometimes I can be very inarticulate, too and I'd just be mumbling some sort of gibberish and he'd just say, 'Yeah, I know,' and then he'd just do it.
WCT: One of those pint-sized pros, eh?
CB: [ Laughs ] Yes. One time we were ready to kill him, though. He was the only kid around so he could get very obstreperous sometimes—just silly—and his concentration is so pure that right up to the moment you call 'action' he's just goofing around and then suddenly he's into it perfectly. But it was driving the rest of us crazy. You know, you need to focus a bit and Polly finally said, 'You'd better have a talk with that kid' so I said, 'You know, P.J., those of us over the age of 14 actually need 30 seconds to concentrate before we start the scene.'
WCT: Playing this relationship on screen—has it opened any yearning for you to adopt a child with your partner?
CB: No, no. I don't think I want to have a kid and I've been debating for the past 30 years to get a dog. [ Laughs ] I do sort of have protégés, though. I tend to adopt my kids when they're past the age of 18. I have become a mentor to a young boy, Shawn, who is 14 and I take him to the theatre and it's interesting, how aspects of my aunt's character have influenced me. She passed away in 2000 and there are times when I wish I could call her up and have one more of those really good conversations but you're never going to get that. But one day I took Shawn to see Angela Lansbury in Deuce—and he worships her—and when I took him backstage to meet her suddenly I found myself completely channeling my aunt as if he was me. Just the way I was trying to get Angela Lansbury to understand that this kid was not just a silly kid, but somebody who really knew her work. It was so odd; I thought, 'I'm completely my aunt right now.' In a way I was using almost a different kind of syntax and body language. After he left I thought, 'In a way maybe that's the way we ultimately can revisit the people who have died and left us—by becoming the best of them.' Maybe that's the final visit we have.
WCT: And how wonderful to have that breakthrough when you're standing there with Auntie Mame.
CB: [ Laughs ] That's right! I think the first version I saw was when my aunt took me to see Angela Lansbury in the musical and we were kind of living it and we watched this stylized version of ourselves onstage. Interesting, interesting—there are certainly many circles there, aren't there?
WCT: Yes, there seem to be and A Very Serious Person would be included in that circle, I would guess.
CB: Oh, definitely.
