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 SOAPBOX: The Art Of Burlesque-ploitation
I’ve always loved Haji, who is one of my costars in Killer Drag Queens On Dope. All the Russ Meyer girls—Kitten Natividad, Tura Satana—they were just fabulous. I don’t know what you call that genre, but let’s go with burlesque-ploitation. Killer Drag Queens has a lot of that.
My mother was a hoochie koochie dancer and a cheesecake model and a stripper (and a fashion model on her lighter days). I was so bummed because she had actually burned all her really good fetish photos. There was supposed to be this amazing print that a great photographer had given her. She had her daughter on set, so there was no sex going on. At one point she brought her into the shot and had Rosanna at 9 years old standing next to her.
So my mother burned this picture of her in full corsetry with a whip. She didn’t want us seeing them. I think she hoped that Rosanna had forgotten them, but of course Rosanna remembered all those shoots. I’m looking at a poster now of Olga’s House Of Shame, which my mother was in. She did lots of those types of movies. People always forget just how many movie theaters played really salacious films.
That was a huge movement, and it bordered in between The Munsters and that. It got ghoulish. It was a ghoulish time. It was post-Red Scare, and everyone was afraid that they were going to end up a nuclear holocaust ghoul. I remember even my older brother had toys like Make-A-Monster kits, and I love that kind of stuff. There are whole groups of people whose music and look is driven by Mad Monster Party—kind of kooky, ’60s weird horror meets sex. It’s a real palette that people like. I think that’s never gonna go away. It’s like any other genre—Let’s have a ’60s party! or Let’s have a ’70s party! or Let’s have a burlesque-ploitation party!
As for myself, professionally, I don’t use the stage name Eva Destruction anymore. I haven’t used that name in years. I just use my real name. It’s a name that many tranny performers and drag queen performers have used over time, and it’ll get used again. It’s sort of like an alias.
Now in films I only perform as a woman, transgendered or something similar to that. I turn down a lot of gay guy roles. I certainly don’t wanna play every drag role. Women love playing men. Linda Hunt won an Oscar for it. It’s limitless, and so should be the art of acting and film. But for me, I had to sort of set a precedent for myself and put a message out there. I think people are aware of it now. But I’m not going to go in for stuff I’m not right for. There are plenty of actors in the world—gay, straight, tranny, male or female—that wanna play these roles, and I’m not gonna take every tranny role.
I love when people push the limits of drag. Plenty of straight performers and gay performers over the years have made a lot of money just by throwing on a schmatte and a fine pair of gloves. It’s like putting a bird on your shoulder if you’re a pirate. It’s easy to do, and it’s easy to get away with stuff. For something like that to ever change would suck, but in this day and age, where people get offended by every little thing, it’s good to see Borat and have people like that. I think there’s nothing wrong with it, and I happily carry on doing burlesque-ploitational films!
I also enjoyed doing reality television. People say reality is dead, but I still get mad when people say analog and vinyl and the print industry and newspapers are dead. I like to think that everything that has been good will always be here. We’re not always gonna be staring at a screen and typing. There are people who want to hold something in their hand. The print industry will never die. People will always want things the way they used to be, a little bit. Someone will cling to the past. And that’s maybe what B horror movies are about—clinging to that look and that kind of nod. You can’t get away from kitsch. It’ll always be here. It’s like a residue you can’t wash off.
Killer Drag Queens On Dope is out now on DVD from Laguna Productions.
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