听 Australian filmmaker Stephan Elliott arrived in fabulous style with his cross-dressing comedy The Adventures Of Priscilla Queen Of The Desert. Terence Stamp, a pre-Matrix Hugo Weaving and post-Neighbours Guy Pearce dragged up and took their show on the road for the surprise hit of 1994. Over ten years later this outrageously funny movie gets a revamp on Special Edition DVD.
Carry On Camping
With a half hour runtime, Birth Of A Queen is a substantial featurette but Stephan Elliott is the only speaker. Thankfully he's very entertaining as he talks about writing the script he dubbed "Florence Of Arabia", raising the money, and eventually shooting it. "I used to go to drag queen jelly fights every Tuesday," he says - purely for research purposes, of course! Later, on casting the actors he reveals that, "Terence really wanted to be Jacqueline Bisset with Brooke Shields' eyebrows." We can only take Elliot's word for it, as Stamp appears just briefly in Tidbits From The Set. Still, the veteran actor does make the shocking confession that, "Dame Edna is one of my icons".
Stamp gets dragged further through the mud in Elliott's audio commentary. The director stifles a giggle as he recalls the time Stamp forgot he was wearing a radio mike. The crew heard him trying to chat up an attractive young clapper loader while in full girly get-up. By all accounts the young lady was appalled, not just because of the garish outfit, but because Stamp actually used the line, "What's your star sign?"
Dragging It Out
In the ten years that have elapsed between the theatrical and DVD release, Elliott rarely offers scene specific commentary, but he is full of funny and sometimes bizarre anecdotes like the one above. On top of that, there's a lot of background on how he managed to get the film made despite initial rejection before eventually taking it on the festival circuit.
In four deleted scenes, there's banter around the desert campfire, Pearce throwing a hissy fit, and ABBA getting slated. In other words, nothing you haven't already seen. Wrapping up the package is a blooper reel that runs at a whopping nine minutes and is only vaguely amusing. As Special Editions go, Priscilla isn't exactly bursting at the seams, but it is hugely entertaining. Sort of like Liza Minnelli in reverse...
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