“She was born as the sun set at the top of a ferris wheel here in Southern California”….
Hunter Ray Barker’s haunting voice-over begins the 2019 documentary short of The Goddess Bunny (born Sandie Crisp) that he directed and narrates (Barker is one of Bunny’s chosen “adopted sons”). The world lost The Goddess Bunny this week, as the legendary cult figure and performer passed away at the age of sixty-one.
The ‘She-Devil on Six Wheels’ (as Barker aptly describes her) had far from an easy life. Bunny has described being born with polio, as well as being sexually abused as she was moved from one home to another for children with disabilities. (Bunny documented much of her life in the memoir titled A Child’s Tear she put on published on her blog several years ago). According to a piece in Vice, Bunny “contracted polio and underwent several botched surgeries as an infant. The combination stunted her growth, deformed her hands, and left her legs bone-thin and crooked. When she began presenting as a woman—at different times, she has said she was born with both a penis and a vagina and identified as trans—in the late 1970s and early 1980s, she used makeup, wigs, dresses, and, most of all, extreme self-confidence to see the beauty in her disability.”
it was going to take much more than disability or disease though, to cause The Goddess Bunny from fulfilling her own dreams. During her sixty-one years on the planet (wheelchair bound and all, save for occasional tap-dancing stints that are that of legend), Bunny found herself developing friendships with everyone from Gene Simmons (of KISS fame) to acting alongside Carrie Fisher in Hollywood Vice Squad. Her sweetest spot (and most public) seemed to be though, in the world of music. Bunny appeared in Dr. Dre’s ‘Puppet Master’ video, as well as appearing as a puppet on the MTV Video Music Awards with Marilyn Manson (she also appeared in Manson’s video for ‘The Dope Show’). Bunny also found herself the subject of the 2017 documentary titled (what else) The Goddess Bunny.
Even as she was facing the end of her own life, The Goddess Bunny posted a message on her Instagram page from the hospital, thanking her legion of fans for a “great run”. A GoFundMe has been set up in The Goddess Bunny’s honor by Hunter Ray Barker in an effort to fulfill one of Bunny’s last wishes; to be buried in the legendary Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Barker ended the entry by simply saying “In true Goddess fashion, she wanted to make sure the funeral was just as extravagant as she was.”