Mascara w/ Calpernia Addams

Queer Horror: A Film Guide creator/co-editor, Sean Abley, and contributor Calpernia Addams do a deep dive on the Charlotte Rampling vehicle, Mascara (1987).

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Queer Horror: A Film Guide - The Podcast is a 30 minute deep(ish) dive into a classic (or not-so-classic) horror film found in the 500-page encyclopedia of genre films with LGBTQ content, Queer Horror: A Film Guide. Each episode Sean Abley, creator/co-editor of Queer Horror: A Film Guide, asks one of the contributors to pick a film they wrote about for the book that deserves even more queer analysis. Guests include co-editor Tyler Doupé, contributors Calpernia Addams, Daniel W. Kelly, Brian Kirst, Michael Varrati, and special guest Heather O. Petrocelli, PhD.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hi everyone. Welcome to Queer Horror A Film Guide, the podcast, where the co-editors and the creator and the contributors to the book, Queer Horror A Film Guide, do a bit deeper dives into well, in each episode, one of the films they wrote about for the book. My name is Sean Abley, and I created the book and I'm one of the co-editors. And today we have once again Calpurnia Adams. Welcome back, Calpernia. It feels like I haven't seen you in ages.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

I'm just glad to be here, as I always say.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

Ages being 15 minutes, because we're doing two of these back to back. I think it's also interesting. Maybe it'll be interesting to somebody down the road that these are the pilot episodes. So wherever they fall in the broadcast of these, Calpurnia's first two episodes were our first two episodes. So thank you.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

One of the rarest opportunities for me to be a virgin again.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

So well, thank you for availing yourself of us or something like that. Um, anyway, so we are back to talk about another film, and this is one that you brought to my attention when we were putting the list, the master list together. And it is one of many films with the name Mascara. But let's talk about the specific mascara you brought to our attention, Calpernia.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Well, Mascara 1987 is the year, and um, a lot of these films are very hard to find, or the ones that I'm fascinated by. So I I may have had to uh take a brief detour through Russia to obtain this video file. It's incredible for a lot of reasons. This one I would encourage people to really seek out. Number one, it stars Charlotte Rampling, who's uh I'm a mega fan of, and and she's an actress more for the Cinephile. You know, she's very she has a lot of gravitas and uh beautiful speaking voice and everything. This movie dives into the trans underground nightclub scene in Paris. So who wouldn't want to see that?

SPEAKER_01 2:18

It's really interesting, and I'm gonna have you recount the plot here in a second, but jumping ahead, the way that the trans women are shot and costumed and just contextualized in this film is so glamorous, it's so different from so many of these kinds of, I mean, obviously, this is a CD film, and we will definitely get into that, but you know, it's not a gross strip club, you know, somewhere on the Sunset Strip. This is Paris, France. And, you know, the aesthetic of what they're doing feels much tonier than I think any other film I've seen that sort of explores this subject matter.

SPEAKER_00 2:59

Yeah, I think it it definitely pulls towards it references like Weimar Germany, uh like the movie Cabaret. It is a cabaret. So these aren't sleazy, you know, sex workers. Um, not that there's anything wrong with sex work, but that this is not showing trans women in that light as exploited um victims. They are the stars of this hidden underground world. And and I think this film, in a way, might even reference the myth of Orpheus, where one has to go into the underworld to rescue uh the the female love of the protagonist. And we can talk about that more later. But this film is a time capsule. The these performers are real trans performers, and you're you're not gonna see this almost anywhere else.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

Well, well, let's talk about the plot. Can you also? Well, first of all, I'm gonna ask you, can you hear that fire truck outside?

SPEAKER_00 4:01

I I don't hear it. Okay, good.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

I live across the street from a firehouse, which is you know, any podcaster will tell you is perfect uh when you need quiet all day.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

Well, at least do the firemen wash the trucks with no shirt on uh in the sunlight.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

They're pretty attractive, I won't lie. Um, and we just had some fires here in Los Angeles, and so they were like in and out there all day long. So we were happy to bring them, you know, Gatorade and power bars and things like that, and get to see them, you know, covered in soot. Um anyway, uh let's talk about the plot. And uh listeners, you will know by now that we do spoilers on this show because often spoilers are needed to examine the queer content of the film that we're talking about. So uh Calpurnia, spoil this film for us.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

Yes, uh, I'm gonna spoil a film from 1987, which uh for many listeners might have been when your parents were born, which is horrifying to me uh to think of my age. But yes, um Mascara 1987. Charlotte Rampling is this uh glamorous uh fancy lady living in Paris, and her brother, played by Michael Sarazin, I may be mispronouncing that, is uh some sort of uh bigwig or functionary in the police system. And uh they're both big opera fans. They go to the opera in Paris, and um he, it turns out, has this secret, uh, the film would say morbid desire to descend into this underworld of trans nightclub cabaret scenes. He falls in love with this girl he meets there. He gets a fancy opera costume from a huge opera to give to her to wear on stage, but somehow he's uh shocked when it turns out uh he discovers very graphically that she's trans, and murder ensues. Because uh God knows if there's a trans person in a film, they're gonna get murdered. As I always say, we're either prostitutes, punchlines, psychos, or in this case, the poor thing who gets murdered. And uh that that's basically the plot. You can watch it unfold, but really this film is just here for the cinematography, for the documentation of the trans cabaret scene, etc.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

I have my book open that we both worked on in front of me, and I'm looking at your entry to the book. And uh, as you said, these are actual uh transgender uh performers of note, correct? Uh are they all French?

SPEAKER_00 6:53

Um I I think they kind of uh just ended up here. There's Romy Haig or H A A G, however one would pronounce that. Um there's uh Eva Robbins. Yeah, you'll see them in the film. These are gorgeous trans women, uh, not to be lookist, but uh they're just drop dead gorgeous. And Romy Haig, she gobsmacked me. You know, I'm watching this movie from 1987, set in Paris, doing this crazy underground cabaret, and she sings a cover of Help Me Make It Through the Night, this old country song. And, you know, I'm from Nashville. I grew up grew up playing in a bluegrass goshful band, hearing like help me make it through the night, as as a torch song in a cabaret, I was like, oh my god, this movie is incredible.

SPEAKER_01 7:52

It is interesting that it's so hard to find. It feels like this is something that would be out there. But as I know when we were I know that when we were trying to find a copy of it for the book, like you and I dug up like every other film named Mascara, thinking it was the oh, I've got it, and that it wouldn't be the right one. So thank you for the efforts.

SPEAKER_00 8:11

Email me at calpurnia at calpurnia.com and I may be able to give you some advice on where to find it.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

Excellent. You bring up an interesting, I guess it's is it an issue? Is it a context? That the the girls in this film, so I will I'll just say it. I was watching this film and I didn't realize the girls were trans. I thought this was going to be, I thought the the the crime that this film committed, other than just poor trans, you know, trans people being murdered, was that they were not using trans girls as the show girls. But I am incorrect, correct? Like they're all trans women.

SPEAKER_00 8:55

Yes. And even even a lot of the sort of unnamed extras and side characters, these are authentic performers, uh, trans and and gay performers and stuff too. There's like bondage scenes and all this.

SPEAKER_01 9:10

So that sort of speaks to my personal um bias and lens is that I would watch a film like this and I would see these beautiful women, and I would immediately think, oh, those aren't trans women. And I'm assuming that that ref is reflected in how trans people are portrayed in film in general. Like if you have, I think, was it Kate Bornstein? I don't know, are we allowed to like Kate Bornstein right now? I don't know. I never know, but um, they said something about like uh trans women having a soft landing versus the ones that don't, and how and and she she spoke about how they're treated by society.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

Oh yeah, and and uh just so listeners know I am a trans woman, transitioned in the early 90s, but there there are infinite layers and levels of trans politics, respectability politics, identity politics that you can go down, down, down into. And um, you know, some some people cite a something called passing privilege, where if you quote unquote pass, which in itself is a problematic term, I get so exhausted by all that, but um, if you can pass as your target gender, then you experience less discrimination, less violence, et cetera, et cetera. And you could contrast this film with the other film I reviewed, Trans American Killer, where the the antagonist does not pass at all, I think, as a cisgender female, whereas the women in this film, Mascara, um, the trans women, I think very easily pass as what most people would consider cisgender females. So you could compare and contrast that, you know, write your college paper on the passing privilege and what that uh reads into the text.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

If we look at those two films, you know, this one that we're talking about now on Mascara and Trans American Killer, aka Switch Killer. Yes, it actually makes me think of all of the films that we have in the book that have a trans character and that who are either victim or villain. And more often not, the villain version is what I would call what I called in the book a dude in a dress. Like that's the that's how they're presenting it to the audience. It's like, you know, a clockable male presenting person wearing a cheap wig and you know, bad makeup and some sort of voice like this, you know, and and they're the killers. Where it if if they're women who, as you know, just to use this phrase that I know you're exhausted by the women that pass, they're the victims. And I can't think of a film right now where a woman that looks like the women in mascara is the killer, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Right. Well, it I'm I mean, you could delve into a feminist dissection of film and see that the minute you start to pass as a woman, you become the victim. Um, because women are so often victimized, especially in horror films. That's kind of one of the most uh major tropes in horror films is that women are victimized. And um, I think it's a really interesting topic that could do with some deep writing on um the the killers, the trans killers who are very visibly gender variant, who clock as male, they're often like kind of a demi-urge, uh the director's idea of of murderousness or villainy or evil. But what's really amazing about this film, and I cannot recommend Mascara in 1987 enough, is that these trans women are just living. They're being they're being women, they're singing, they're performing, they're looking gorgeous, they're out there dating, even though one of the guys they're dating is a killer. They're they're in the world as women, which you do not see in movies like Switchkiller or Dress to Kill or A Silence of the Lambs or whatever. It's it's night and day.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

I wonder if the reality of these performers where they were from and performing was the same. I I get the impression that the theater, where I am from, um, is more forgiving of that, you know, if as as as long, and I think that's for a lot of different types of people, right? As long as you don't poke your head too far out of the water and are too visible, you're good to go. So the world of theater where people see you and then walk away and they can't like own you or take your image with them is a safer bet than it would be to for say to like be try to be a movie star.

SPEAKER_00 14:00

Um yeah, it's theater has always been the island of misfit toys. You know, if you're a little freaky or weird or or queer or gay or whatever, you can, you know, join the traveling circus and find your people. And that's that's always been a great place for us.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

Well, I love that this film is set in a theater uh setting. The inclusion of Charlotte Rampling, I I look at this film and I see something with high aspirations. You know, Charlotte Rampling is one of those movie stars that's like, how do I categorize her? She's a movie stars classy, but also like she's in another lane, if that makes sense. Like she's in the European film star, respected actor, you know, actor's actor, and almost on a level like untouched by like Hollywood stardom, even though you know, obviously she was in Hollywood movies. So to put her in a film like this and and build it around her is really interesting for the time. And and I wish I could talk to her and ask her what her thoughts were on being in a movie with this subject matter, because the subject matter is grindhouse, the subject matter is like slea's film, but they polished that turd with this movie. You know what I mean? Like it's it looks lovely.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

I think my my in with Charlotte Rampling, if I ever, you know, go to an event or an award show or dinner or something and she's there, is I'm gonna come up and ask her about mascara because it people would ask her about a million other things she's done that are super prestige and high profile. And I'm gonna be like, tell me about mascara. But it also had playing her brother, Michael Sarazen, however you pronounce that. Um, he he did quite well. He was in um They Shoot Horses, don't they? With my pal Jane Fonda. He was her dance partner in that movie, and that kind of launched him into a lot of other um really cool movies. You know, he worked with some big actors and actresses. So but both of them, I think, I'll bet it was the underground theater scene. I bet they saw how actually talented these other performers were, and they're like, this isn't just a silly cross-dress criminal thing. These are actually cool, talented people who need a spotlight. And of course, this is a sleaze trash film, but right.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

But Euro sleaze. So it has, you know, which we can, you know, put into air quotes, but also as a legit genre of film that has different criteria than our grindhouse sleaze, which is, you know, better cinematography. I I feel like European directors like bounce back and forth from sleaze to like what they would call legit filmmaking, with it's like British actors will go from being on the West End to being in a sitcom to being in a downtown, you know what I mean? They they just look at the work and it's like it's the work, and I'm flexible. I feel like filmmakers in Europe were were that as well. You know, the more I think about this film, and again, it's presented as salacious, but it's truly a tragedy for these characters. I'm thinking about the scene where our killer shows up to um are they are they transferring the costume? There's something something about you know that this this trans performer who trusts the killer and he comes and then murders her. And it's not law and order, you know, it's not. I was gonna name somebody that we know that has played a prostitute on one of those shows, but that's sort of unfair to them.

SPEAKER_00 17:57

You know, but it's not, you know, the prostitute getting killed in the alley, and then you know, there's I know so many friends who've played literally murdered trans prostitutes, and none of them are trans.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

Right. And it and I I don't want to give the filmmakers more credit than they're due, but I think that as an audience member in 2025 now, I saw it in 2022, probably. It feels tragic in a way and almost cruel to create a world where these girls are just living their lives, and they can't even do that. Right. They can't even do that, they can't even be at like the pinnacle, like the height of of any person's career to be in one of these shows, let alone a trans person, and and now they're being preyed upon.

SPEAKER_00 18:46

Yeah, I I think uh I think Eva Robbins is the the actor who portrays Pepper, who's the the romantic interest of the brother played by uh Michael Sarazen. Uh there's there's a scene where I think she may even be trying on the costume or something, and he comes in and they show full frontal nudity of her, and and she's medically transitioned, you know, she uh takes hormones, has breasts and everything, but she has not opted for bottom surgery for genital vaginoplasty, whatever you want to call it. So it gives you that that crying game shock. And I know there they were just using it for that, you know, to blow the viewer's mind. Look at this, something you've never seen. And you know, the exploitation of that is wearying and awful, but in in another way, it's um I I don't know, it's just interesting to me that they did use an actual trans woman who's in a a state of being that a lot of trans women, especially showgirls and entertainers, find themselves. And she's summarily murdered after this revelation. So I I don't know, this movie just shows so many interesting things. And like I say, it's long before the the whole crying game thing happened.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

Which I I don't know if you remember, but the crying game thing was it's a secret. Don't if you've seen it, don't tell, remember? Right, right. Like shocking, shocking. I you know, art is forever, art is infinite. So even if you know the artist has certain intentions, the you know, the reactions to it are only limited by the number of people who have consumed it and the number of times they've consumed it. So I I think that now in 2025, when we record this, we can look back at this movie and we can actually lay on it another, I don't know, is it a responsibility? Maybe it's just as an artifact. We can step outside of the film and look at it and say, and look at the tragedy of it, if that makes sense. Like back then it was salacious and it was, you know, that moment of showing her nude and then her being murdered. And that was like to activate the people in the audience that would be like, oh, oh, yes, get rid of that person, please get rid of that non-human entity that is so shocking in the middle of this film. Now we can stand back and we can say, oh, the filmmakers and the screenwriter and everybody around it, while perhaps well-intentioned as filmmakers, were you know feeding us some of the poison that I so frequently bring up about this genre. It's tough because you know, dragging people forward like that is a bit unfair, but it does feel like on some level we have to do it just just so we can continue to move forward.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

make sense am i talking at my ass here right now no i i understand i i think what i can take away from this movie is that that i'm glad that these people were seen and we can see them again and women women like her were murdered constantly uh once their you know people found out they were trans and you you can uh generously take away you know a gratitude that these these people were seeing their their incredible talent performing in the movie singing dancing doing acrobatics um and even even that very real situation of them being murdered of course it's all done in this salacious little vehicle uh for for straight and cis people to gawk at and be disgusted by and all that but I you know it it's always good to be able to see what what good you can find in it as well.

SPEAKER_01 23:07

As a queer person uh you know I'm I'm pushing 60. So back in like the 80s you know late 70s early 80s when I was really sort of coming into my own about who I was but also beginning to really consume film I'm of the generation just after Boys in the Band, but I received uh Making Love, the film Making Love, um, in my formative years. And I just could not get enough of that film. Could not get enough of that film. And I look at it today and I I see all the problems with that film. But because it was the only thing I had at the time I you know every moment that was positive is literally just like etched in the back of my skull. And I think that that's one of the ways you know we talked about it in our previous thing where the queer if you decide you're queer the bigger sort of alt um audience for these films has had to watch or you know through their fingers around the negative stuff to get to the good stuff. So we've developed a callus that I think comes in really handy right now as there are people maybe that aren't so invested or maybe a little bit younger who want to put all these movies in movie jail. And we're here to say no like we get it but to avoid recidivism these these things need to be out in the world for us to look at and here's how you can look at it without like being harmed.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

Yeah it's kind of like in a way how I deal with family. You know I I'm a trans woman I date men so basically my daily life is as a heterosexual woman but you know let's be honest I came up uh I had a transition I've been through all the the things and and I've had all the family problems of of rejection mockery religious judgment etc but I can choose to overlook all that stuff and go enjoy a nice Thanksgiving dinner. And I still love my aunts and uncles and grandma and family and you know they've they've done and said some awful things on some opinions they've changed some they haven't but sometimes it's nice to just look past that stuff and enjoy the good moments and um that's kind of what I do with these films too you know they're like old family that was maybe really mean in the past and said awful things but there are some enjoyable and good parts too.

SPEAKER_01 25:49

When something imprints on you it's hard to give it up and I'm of a mind that you shouldn't have to I know that we have you know of late have had some very high profile artists who've revealed themselves to be terrible people. And I agree that they are terrible people but I have some films that I saw when I was you know in my 40s that you know or 30s that really meant something to me and imprinted on me before we found out certain things about some people. And I I feel like it's okay if I hold on to that. I feel like it's okay if I keep you know my person like and I would never tell I would never go to the map for these people and I would never say you know they get to come back in or anything like that. But I think you know as a community the more that we can pull these films forward the better because you know the other part thing is they're trying to erase us right they're literally taking so if we banish these movies we're doing their job for them. We are taking ourselves out of history by like making putting movies in movie jail.

SPEAKER_00 26:53

So I I agree I I think if if anyone is interested in the ideas of this film of of like the milieu that it is presenting I would encourage them to Google Le Carousel and Madame Arthur's which were two trans uh cabaret and show clubs in the like 40s and 50s in Paris and you can Google them now and see their playbills and their lobby cards that some wonderful person has archived all this and they had some of the most stunning trans show girls uh Le Cochinelle which means Ladybug was one of my favorites and um I mean she she just looks as beautiful as any 1940s um sex pot star goddess that you would ever see look up Leigh Carousel and Madame Arthur's and um you know look at that stuff alongside this film and it's it's uh an era that could have been lost and I'm grateful that it has been documented.

SPEAKER_01 28:06

That's our 30 minutes we my my vow is that we'll do these in 30 minutes. And so they're bite-sized pieces that you can listen to um like on the way to the store or maybe on a short road trip. So thank you Calpurnia for um guiding us through I think those last that last Google advice is amazing because I think one of the one of the great things to come out of this project is is the links to other positive stuff. And so that is like the perfect example. So thank you for that. Well thank you. Speaking of glamorous show girls maybe many of our listeners probably haven't had the pleasure like I have of actually seeing you hosting stuff in West Hollywood my goodness. Where can we find you these days?

SPEAKER_00 28:48

Well I have had the pleasure of being a a showgirl for most of my adult life although I'm into retirement now I was very lucky I got into the internet in the early days.

SPEAKER_01 29:00

So you can find me at Calpurnia almost everywhere C-A-L-P-E-R N I A like dot com Instagram Twitter Facebook I'm all around uh you can look up my old showgirl videos or see me uh feeding my six parrots nowadays whatever you like I love that bird story oh my gosh it's the best it's so good um well um uh you can find me I'm Sean Abley also known as Gay of the Dead and that's me kind of everywhere as well Gay of the Dead on the Patreon and the Instagram and the Twitter and the blue sky Facebook wherever else tick the TikTok all the problematic social media platforms I'm still there. Also uh Queer Horror a film guide is available from McFarlandbooks.com. We prefer that you get it directly from the publisher. If the uh sticker price on the book which is quite high because it is quite a large book um is a little uh strain on your wallet please reach out to me directly and I will be happy to hook you up uh with a bit of a discount on the book. We do what we can here because I feel it's important that everybody have the book that wants to have the book. I'll thank you the listener for hanging out with us for a half an hour and we hope you'll join us again. Thanks so much.