Seeing Jesus in lipstick: only '60s San Francisco could have hatched the anarchic drag troupe the Cockettes. A fabulous new film tells why. - 'The Cockettes' - movie review

The Cockettes * Directed by David Weissman and Bill Weber * Strand Releasing

Oh, to have been down and out and unformed in 1969 San Francisco. Even the terminally ungifted could find a refuge in this city of 1,001 communal sanctuaries: the car repair communes, the child care communes, the food communes, the Hungadunga commune, the Kaliflower commune--or, if you were flamboyantly talentless enough, the Cockettes commune.

Making rent with government grants for the disabled and stealing costumes from visiting Chinese opera companies, the Cockettes gave terrible "art" but great revelry: raucous, ad-lib theatricals featuring strategically revealing drag and half-naked kick lines with boobs and genitals flapping in the marijuana smoke.

The transformative spirit of the late Cockettes founder, Hibiscus (a.k.a. George Harris), hovers over David Weissman and Bill Weber's enchanting documentary. A would-be soap actor turned cross-dressing Haight-Ashbury freak, Hibiscus was a self-styled drag messiah whose idea of a sermon on the mount consisted of perching himself on a tree branch in full makeup and regalia and wailing "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man of Mine."

"He was like Jesus Christ in lipstick," says one former Cockette. And indeed, the Cockettes' history plays like a travesty of the evolution of a Christian religion: A group of disenchanted cluster around a charismatic leader (he can't heal the sick, but he can provide the boring a makeover). The leader abandons his flock of origin to spread the new word (Hibiscus flees his original commune for being too strict). Followers bring born-agains into the fold (including diva disciple Sylvester). A rift over spiritual practice develops (whether to charge money for Cockettes performances), and a breakaway sect is formed (Hibiscus leaves the Cockettes to form a new performance troupe).

Too undisciplined as performers to rate with testy New York audiences, the Cockettes were rescued from becoming just another insular cloister of dizzy drag queens by the presence of three up-for-anything women members, a stunningly relaxed straight guy named Marshall, and enough hallucinogens to help anyone of any inclination cross the lines. "It was complete sexual anarchy, which is always a wonderful thing!" recalls John Waters, one of the many captivating talking heads among a range of witnesses lucky to be alive.

The Cockettes is the most celebratory document of sexual transgression since Paris Is Burning. We'd give a thrift-shop roach clip for a sequel that would tell us what went down at the Hungadunga commune.

Stuart is film critic and senior film writer at Newsday.

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