Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Justina The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Gordon-11 This documentary tells the journey of Charles Busch, the legendary drag performer who makes it onto the mainstream Broadway shows through his incredible talent and hard work.I have not heard of Charles Busch before, but this documentary gives me a pretty good sense of his work through the generous use of footages of his theater productions. His quick rise to fame is chronicled in detail, and it's a very interesting story. The transition from the rest village, gradually moving up and onto big things is lifted right out of an inspirational film, and I found myself very moved by his journey. It's unusual that a documentary can move me to the point of tears. Not only that, it also makes me very interested to watch Charles Bush's work.

jm10701 For those unfamiliar with Charles Busch, he is an actor who almost always plays highly dramatic female characters, inspired by the great Hollywood stars of the 1920s through the 1950s, in plays or movies he writes himself. He first found success in the early 1980s on the far fringes of New York's East Village; from there he moved gradually to more mainstream theatrical venues, movies and television.Although he's often called one, he's not actually a drag queen. He's an actor who happens to play female characters, but his makeup and costumes are never any more outlandish than those of the great female stars who inspire him. Although he's also often called "camp", he really is a serious actor and writer. There is nobody else like him.This movie is a documentary of his life up to about 2004. A typical online review of it says, "You will laugh and you will cry as you follow Charles Busch's path to the bright lights on Broadway!" Well... no. I did enjoy this movie, though; and I guess it's not surprising that his fans would gush like that about him. It fits.I wasn't a Charles Busch fan before I watched this movie, and I'm still not a fan, but I'm very glad there are people like him in the world. I'm also glad he has found productive venues for his eccentric talents.I greatly admire anybody - and he is a PERFECT example - who fits nowhere in the world and so makes a place just for himself where nobody was before. Good for him. And everybody who knows him evidently truly loves him (even his own family!), which is remarkable for anybody in any field. Although I neither laughed nor cried a single tear, I'm very glad I watched this movie.I actually liked the silent-movie short included on the DVD (Her Royal Escape to Love, filmed in and around Central Park's wonderful Belvedere Castle after a snowstorm) better than any of his speaking performances. His acting style, which is far too hammy for me, is absolutely perfect for silent movies. He is a terrific silent-movie actor, and if he did more such movies I would become a big fan fast.

evening1 I never thought I'd come across a drag performer I could take seriously, but I liked Charles Busch both as an actor and the central talking head in this intriguing documentary.The film does a great job showing how Busch drew inspiration from classic film and opera, as well as his dysfunctional family, where he lost his mother early and learned to equate performance with love."I was desperate to become a childhood star but there was no one in my family willing to exploit me," Busch states in a typically endearing confession. Yet I found it hard to care about the many excerpts from Theatre in Limbo. They were often too campy, soap operatic, and sitcomish to capture let alone hold much interest, but I realize many would disagree with me.I really admire the way Busch created his entire professional world. He needed to act, so he became a writer to create scripts, and he created companies so that he could perform. Now that's indomitable!

MOSSBIE To see any reviews of Charles Busch, it appears he is definitely more of an East Coast phenomenon since elsewhere there is less of an adoration of formal theater.I would consider the reviewer from Wisconsin more "Eastern". To see an ensemble group producing camp theater which is more serious in presentation than outlandish raucous camp one is used to in, say, LA, where the brassier, the better.For San Franciscans,EVERYTHING is camp and dying a fast death in the Castro but still available in clubs, but definitely not "theater" with, say, an intermission.....just drinks at the bar while feathers fly onstage. As for the rest of San Francisco, it is a more "straight" theater town but has one of the best satirical giant productions in BEACH BLANKET BABYLON which is now a SF institution with humor that outlandish to very "in" and much more relaxed, informative and not a showcase for a drag like Charles Busch who falls into a "diva" category...That would never work on the West Coast and is one of those distinguishing markers which separate the snobbery than has been handed down through the years from taste, fashion, society, and money. With the outbreak of the computer industry,and the billionaires flourishing in CA, art is in a state of limbo because there is also a big divide between what is offered in SF vs. LA. I found the entire Busch idolatry overdone, very "clicky", and his self deprecation indulgent and that heart business was like Laurette Taylor playing "humility". DIE MOMMIE DIE was amusing but just a takeoff on Douglas Sirk films.His ensemble was just so adequate as to make me wonder if their performances were sincere or a put on.