By Brandon Voss

Originally published on Advocate.com February 02 2009 1:00 AM ET

It’s been
25 years since Charles Busch’s outrageous play
Vampire Lesbians of Sodom made him a star of
Manhattan’s East Village performance scene. Since
that unlikely long-running sensation, Busch has
channeled his obsession with Hollywood’s Golden
Age -- and a penchant for drag -- into a legendary
theatrical career crowned by his Tony-nominated 2000 work
The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife. Now, the
actor, playwright, novelist, director, and screenwriter
behind campy genre parodies such as Psycho Beach
Party and Die, Mommie, Die! is back
off-Broadway portraying three delicious female roles
in his new too-hard-to-summarize show-within-a-show
sci-fi mob comedy The Third Story.

Opening February
2 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, The Third Story also
stars Kathleen Turner, who does double duty as a
German doctor and an alcoholic 1940s screenwriter.
There’s no trimming this Busch as he recalls
romancing Miss Turner and discusses his other favorite
divas.

Advocate.com:I spotted you in the audience of Liza's at the
Palace on Broadway back in December. What did
you think of the show?Charles Busch: I thought it was thrilling.
It’s the kind of show business that just will not
exist anymore. And I saw it under wonderful
circumstances. I remember I was 13 and at sleep-away
camp when Judy Garland was at the Palace the last time,
so I was devastated that I had to miss it, but my aunt sent
me the clippings from all the papers. I was the only
13-year-old at summer camp getting clippings about
Judy at the Palace. Now I have this
16-year-old protégé -- this young kid I’ve
known since he was 12 -- so I took him to see Liza
at the Palace, which is the closest thing to
Judy. It was great seeing it with him particularly. I
enjoy exposing him to all sorts of cultural events. We
went backstage afterward, and it was like going to see Santa
Claus at Macy’s: You’re led into a bright red
room, there’s a mythical creature sitting
there, you say a few words, you have your picture taken
with her, and then you’re ushered off.

Did Liza know your work? Gosh, I’ve met Liza Minnelli maybe six
times now, but I wonder if she really knows who I am.
She always greets me with great enthusiasm and says,
“I’m a huge fan of yours,” but
I’d know if she’d been at one of my
shows, and I wouldn’t count on her having seen
Die, Mommie, Die! I think she just has very good
manners.

I also noticed you chatting up Judith Light at intermission. Judith Light was sitting in front of us by
herself, so we kind of ended up being her dates for
the night. She’s a lot of fun.

I hope you asked for a cameo on Ugly Betty. Well, it seems like everybody else is getting
one these days.

Speaking of big celebrities, your new play, The Third
Story, costars Kathleen Turner. So is this the
first time that you’ve starred opposite another
man in drag? Sorry, I couldn’t resist. Aww, be nice now! I’m crazy about
Kathleen Turner. She’s a big, ballsy, brash
gal, and I’m having a ball with her. I think
she’s also having a very good time. She
hasn’t been in an off-Broadway show since early on in
her career, so she’s roughing it a bit. I may be a
lady, but I’m also a gentleman, so I gave her
the private dressing room -- and the last bow too.

How’d you get her for the role? We’d done the play at La Jolla Playhouse
last year with Mary Beth Peil in the same role, but
I’d done a big rewrite that really changed the whole
character: She had been an elegant, ladylike mother, but it
seemed to suit the play more if she was this
garrulous, hard-drinking dame -- which is just not
Mary Beth Peil. Bernie Telsey, one of the producers, is also
a major casting director. Kathleen had approached Bernie
about another play that she was interested in doing,
and he said, “Would you consider working
off-Broadway?” She said, “Yeah!” So he
sent her my play. When he mentioned Kathleen Turner to
me I thought, Oh, it’s a nice idea, but
she’ll never do it. I do sometimes go to the
negative place. But she wanted to meet with me and Carl
Andress, the director. So we went over to her
apartment -- which has this extraordinary view of the
Hudson River -- and she had the play laid out on the
dining room table. We sat down on either side of her, and
she said in that lethal baritone, “Boys, I am
intrigued, but not hooked.” So I laid all the
jewels on the table: I said, “It ain’t much
money, but we’ll treat you with the respect
that hasn’t been seen since the days of
Bernhardt and Duse.” I think she liked that. When we
left I told Carl, “Man, she has some poker
face, because I could not tell you which way
she’s going to go.” The next day, though, she
said yes.

What’s your favorite Kathleen Turner film? I haven’t seen it in years, but I loved
Prizzi’s Honor. That was a wonderful
movie. She really did have a great stretch of
first-rate movies. I read somewhere that the average life of
a glamorous movie actress is five years, so
she’s been very smart about extending her
career by taking challenging roles in the theater.

You’re both 54. Have you bonded over your age? No, but I’m glad that I’m not the
oldest person in the room. Lately, that’s been
happening to me, and I don’t much care for it.

The New York Timesrecently ran a picture of the two of you laughing
and drinking together at a cast party. I loved it, but
the fabulous chenille toque hat that you wore threatened
to upstage Miss Turner! When you don’t have that much hair, hats
become very important. My life has always been a
search for the perfect hat. I’ve got so many hats
sitting in my closet that I never wear, because I’ll
say, “Well, this isn’t really a
woman’s hat. It’s not gender-specific.”
Then I buy it, wear it, and realize I look like
somebody’s Aunt Sheila. The secret is that when
you do find a good hat, you’ve got to buy two of
them. I’ve lost more hats in taxis --
it’s almost like losing a child.

The Timespiece quoted you as saying that you’re often up
until 3 or 4 in the morning following performances. All my life that’s been a problem. I
never liked going to bed. Even as a young kid,
I’d set the alarm clock to 4 in the morning because a
Norma Shearer movie would be on. And I know this is
going to make me sound a little loony, but the curse
of my imagination is that I have the wildest dream
life. Sometimes I’m almost afraid to go to sleep at
night. I don’t have nightmares, but every dream
I have is like an epic, full-length movie -- quadruple
features. Sometimes I wake up more exhausted than
before I went to sleep.

I was also surprised by your admission of being a
reality-television addict. It’s an obsession. Is there a 12-step
program? I really need one. Though I like to convince
myself that I’m only addicted to high-end reality TV.
I’ve never missed a single episode of any season of
Survivor. I really like Project Runway, Top Chef,
Top Design, American Idol, Dancing With the
Stars… I went so far as to attend a taping of
Dancing With the Stars. And for some reason, I
keep running into all the winners of my favorite shows on
the street, so I accost them. I never know if they
know who I am or if they just think I’m a kook.

Doing Dancing With the Stars seems like a
logical next step for you.[Laughs] I don’t know. When I have to
dance in a show I’m like one of those old star
ladies who doesn’t move while the chorus boys do
all the work. In fact, I think my next play will be
something where I can just wear a kaftan and sit on a
divan. I’m so tired of learning blocking.

Explain your choice to star in The Third Story
after not having taken on the female leads in
your plays Our Leading Lady and The Tale
of the Allergist’s Wife.Not everything I write is in the same style. The
Third Story suits my genre-parody style, so I
wrote that for myself. The characters aren’t supposed
to be real women; they’re comments on
star-acting. Allergist’s Wife, for
example, was much more naturalistic, and having me play one
of those roles would’ve made it seem like it was in
the same style of Vampire Lesbians of Sodom. Although
sometimes I wonder if I’m being hypocritical,
because I had to really fight hard to get the rights
to play Auntie Mame. The Lawrence and Lee estate
didn’t ever want to allow a man to play that
part because they didn’t want it to turn into a
camp piece. I had to write letters saying that I was going
to play it very much like Roz Russell, and that I
wasn’t making fun of it. At the same time, I
would receive letters from theater companies who
wanted to do Allergist’s Wife and cast a guy
in drag in one of the roles, and I said, “Absolutely
not. You can’t play Allergist’s
Wife like you’re doing Psycho Beach
Party."

What happened to plans of a film version of
Allergist’s Wife?A wonderful producer optioned it and paid me a lot of
money to write the screenplay, and we both felt that
the screenplay was an improvement on the play. Then he
had a terrible time getting a production company to
make a movie about middle-aged Jews in New York. One studio
head said, “Can you make the Michelle Lee
character 20 years old?” So it’s sitting
in limbo. At one point we sent the script to Barbra
Streisand, and there was a brief flurry of e-mails
about her doing it at HBO. Then some emissary
basically said that if Streisand was going to return to the
screen, it should be in a role of import. Of course, then
she did Meet the Fockers. But who knows what
Streisand really wanted or if she really even looked
at it.

If I were a young homosexual in desperate need of
classic cinematic education, what would be my required viewing? The two essentials would be All About Eve
and Sunset Boulevard. It’s interesting
because they’re two of the most totemic films
in gay camp culture, and yet both movies were written
and directed by very heterosexual men. Then one of my
favorite movies of all time -- and it’s never on
anybody’s top 10 list, but I’m a major
Judy fan -- is Judy’s last movie, I Could Go on
Singing. That would be number 3. Actually, I
conduct an unofficial film course for new friends -- mainly
young actors who come to my plays and haven’t seen a
lot of old movies -- and I have a list of films they
should see. It’s an idiosyncratic list, but I
think it’s a good one. I differentiate between
“movies you should see” and
“movies you should see just because I love
them.” In a way I get very jealous thinking of
all the pleasure they’ll have seeing these
movies for the first time. It’s fun to watch them
again with someone who’s never seen them
before. It’s almost like seeing it fresh.

In one “Charles and Julie” YouTube episode
with your friend Julie Halston, you said,
“The best movies have been made, and the
best plays have been done.” So why get out of bed
in the morning, Charles? Wasn’t that a terrible thing to say? It
does get a little discouraging when some people die
and we don’t really have anyone to replace them. But
I loved Milk, actually. I thought that was a
wonderful film. It was particularly fun for me to watch
because when I first performed in San Francisco in
1981, it was at this marvelous gay performing arts
center called Valencia Rose. It was a great dream of mine
to perform in San Francisco because I’d read all of
the Tales of the City books. This was just a couple of
years after Harvey Milk was killed, and all the people
in his circle used to hang around at the Valencia Rose
cabaret. I got to be friendly with Scott Smith, Cleve Jones,
and Danny Nicoletta, particularly. At the time, I felt
like I was in an Agatha Christie mystery, talking to
all these people who had known this man, hearing their
different points of view.

Finally, settle a bet: Was the long blond wig you
wore in your 2006 film A Very Serious Person
the same one you wore for a guest spot in an episode of
Lipstick Jungle in March 2008? Yes! I paid more for that wig than somebody
might pay for a car, and you can’t use it for
much. When they called me to go on Lipstick Jungle
and play this Karl Lagerfeld kind of designer, I
didn’t want to look like myself. I wanted to look
more theatrical, so that wig came in handy. I thought I
looked pretty good.

And it was good to see you on prime-time network television. Well, I’ve often been asked to play those
kinds of little parts -- the bitchy fashionista or the
vicious desk clerk. But I’m very, very grand
and like to see myself as a cult star, so I don’t
want to play those kinds of parts. They’re gay
stereotypes, and they’re usually only a couple
of lines. I once told an agent, “Any part that
I’m right for, I wouldn’t want to
play.” But then Lipstick Jungle came
along. At first I said no, but then, being grand, I said,
“Well, if you give me fabulous billing, that would be
exciting.” And they did give me wonderful
billing for a part that was only four lines.

Any behind-the-scenes drama on set? I do have one story about someone being a bitch,
but I’ll have to tell you later, off the
record!