| The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Stephan Elliott |
| Written by | Stephan Elliott |
| Produced by |
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| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Brian J. Breheny |
| Edited by | Sue Blainey |
| Music by | Guy Gross |
Production companies |
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| Distributed by | Roadshow Film Distributors[1] PolyGram Filmed Entertainment |
Release dates |
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Running time | 103 minutes[2] |
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Budget | A$1.8 million (US$1.3 million) |
| Box office | $29.7 million |
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is a 1994 Australianroadcomedy film written and directed byStephan Elliott. The plot follows twodrag queens (played byHugo Weaving andGuy Pearce) and atransgender woman (Terence Stamp), as they journey across theAustralian Outback on a tour bus namedPriscilla, along the way encountering various groups and individuals. The film was based upon the lives of three actual drag queens—Cindy Pastel, Strykermyer, and Lady Bump—who were to play themselves but were later replaced with what the studio considered "bankable" actors.
Priscilla, Queen of the Desert premiered at the1994 Cannes Film Festival, in theUn Certain Regard section. Upon its wide release, it became a surprise worldwide hit and its positive portrayal ofLGBT individuals helped to introduce queer themes to a mainstream audience.[3] It received predominantly positive reviews and wonBest Costume Design at the67th Academy Awards. The film is one of only three films set in contemporary times to win the award for Best Costume Design. It became acult classic both in Australia and abroad. The film provided the basis for a musical,Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, which opened in 2006 in Sydney. A sequel,Priscilla Queen of the Desert 2, is currently filming.
Anthony "Tick" Belrose, using thepseudonym of Mitzi Del Bra, is aSydney-baseddrag queen who accepts an offer to perform his act atLasseters Hotel Casino Resort managed by his estranged wife Marion inAlice Springs, in remote central Australia. After persuading his friends and fellow performers, Bernadette Bassenger, a recently bereavedtransgender woman, and Adam Whitely, a flamboyant and obnoxious younger drag queen who goes under thedrag name Felicia Jollygoodfellow, to join him, the three set out for a four-week run at the casino in a large tour bus, which Adam christens "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert".
The trio proceed through remote lands bordering theSimpson Desert meeting a variety of characters. Early on, Tick reveals that Marion is actually his wife, as they never divorced, and that they are going there as a favor to her. They stop inBroken Hill, where they are subjected tohomophobic/transphobic abuse andviolence, including having their bus vandalized with homophobic and transphobic graffiti. After they leave the main highway to save time, their bus breaks down in the middle of the desert. Adam spends the whole day repainting the bus in lavender to cover the graffiti. After a homophobic couple turn up but leave them stranded, a group of friendlyAboriginal Australians with whom they perform at acorroboree help them get Priscilla to Bob, a middle-aged mechanic, in a small outback town. Bob is delighted to see drag performers in his small town and ultimately joins them for the remainder of the journey after hisFilipina wife Cynthia leaves him.
Continuing their journey, they stop for repairs at the remoteopal-mining town ofCoober Pedy, where Adam is attacked by a homophobic gang. Bob and Bernadette save him. Bernadette comforts the shaken Adam, allowing them to reach an understanding. As they near Alice Springs, the others come to terms with the secret of Tick's marriage and resolve their differences.
Upon arrival at the hotel, it is revealed that Tick and Marion also have an eight-year-old son, Benji, whom Tick has not seen for many years. Tick is nervous about exposing his son to his drag profession and anxious about revealing hishomosexuality. He is surprised to discover that Benji already knows and is fully supportive. While Benji is playing with Adam, he reveals that Marion has previously been in alesbian relationship.
When their contract is over, Tick and Adam and the group go on a camping trip in the outback. Marion insists that Benji go back to Sydney with them so that Tick can get to know him better. Tick and Benji are talking by the river and Tick hesitantly talks to Benji about what he does for a living, to which Benji replies "Mum says you're the best in the business."
Bernadette decides to remain at the resort with Bob, who will work at the hotel after the two of them have become close. Before parting ways, the three travellers fulfill a long-held dream of Adam's, to climbKings Canyon (Watarrka) in full drag regalia.
The film ends with Tick and Adam performing in the same club featured in the opening credits, with the crowd (including Benji working spotlight) cheering on encouragingly.
In a post-credits scene, the dummy attached to a kite that was released earlier in the film is revealed to have travelled toTibet and landed in atemple, where a monk recovers it.
The film was based on the lives of threedrag queens who performed as Cindy Pastel (Ritchie Finger), Strykermeyer (Mark Fitzhugh), and Lady Bump (Stuart Garske). The original intention was to have the three play themselves, but this was scrapped once the film attracted a large budget, as it was decided "bankable" actors were needed. This ultimately led to the casting of threestraight men with no background indrag, and asThe Age wrote, "the people upon whose lives the mega-hit was based were overlooked". The three original queens were profiled in the 1995 documentary,Ladies Please.[4]
Priscilla, Queen of the Desert had been conceived (mainly out of frustation) by filmmakerStephan Elliott while he waited for a response fromPhil Collins about his participation in the filmFrauds. Elliott, in an effort to distract himself, wrote a script in just 10 days, but one which felt at the time to be "tricky" to pull off. Rebel Penfold-Russell, Andrena Finlay and Stuart Quin (the co-founders of the production company Latent Image) pitchedPriscilla to various financiers at the1991 Cannes Film Festival, without success; however, before Cannes, they had taken the project to Sarah Radclyffe at Working Title,[5] who took the film's concept to PolyGram with Graeme Mason, who suggested Michael Hamlyn as the British co-producer and, with the backing of the AustralianFilm Finance Corporation, were able to begin production of the film on a relatively modest budget of 2.7 million Australian dollars.[citation needed]
Elliott and the film's eventual producers, Michael Hamlyn and Al Clark, agreed to work for $50,000 each, a relatively low fee for filmmakers at the time, while the lack of funding meant that the crew agreed to receive takings of the film's eventual profits in compensation for their low salaries.[6] Due to the involvement of the Australian FFC, only one non-Australian actor was allowed to appear in the film, and Clark initially consideredDavid Bowie, whom he had known back in the 1980s, and later briefly thought ofJohn Hurt, although neither was available.[7]
The idea of casting the actual drag queens upon whom the story was based was abandoned when the producers decided to seek out "bankable" straight actors without a background in drag instead.[4] In May 1993, after travelling around theAustralian Outback searching for appropriate sites to film in,Priscilla's creators attended the Cannes Film Festival and Marche to advertise their project, hoping to capitalise on the selection of Elliot's first filmFrauds, which was "In Competition" at the festival and despite the fact that they had not yet confirmed any actors for the roles. Their primary choice for the role of Bernadette wasTony Curtis, who read and approved of the script, but eventually became unavailable. They then approachedJohn Cleese, who was not interested.
For the part of Tick, they had initially wantedRupert Everett and for Adam they wantedJason Donovan.[8] However, at a pre-production casting meeting held at Cannes, Everett and Donovan did not get on well with one another and were found to be openly hostile toward the production staff. In light of this, it was readily agreed that they would not be suitable for the parts[9] and the search for their three leading men would resume. However, Donovan would go on to play Tick in the West Endmusical adaptation of the film.
After unsuccessfully lobbyingColin Firth to play the role of Tick, producers eventually awarded the part toHugo Weaving. Initially consideringTim Curry for the part of Bernadette, they castTerence Stamp, who was initially anxious about the role because it was unlike anything that he had performed previously, although he eventually came on board with the concept.[10][11] Stamp himself suggestedBill Hunter for the role of Bob, who accepted the role without even reading the script or being told anything about the greater concept of the film other than the basic character description, while Australian actorGuy Pearce (who had previously appeared with Donovan in the Australian soap operaNeighbours in the late 1980s) was hired at the eleventh hour to portray the sassy but spirited Adam.[12]
It is striking what an effect the disguise of drag is having on [the actors'] personalities. It makes Guy [Pearce] flirtatious, combative and loud. It makes Terence [Stamp] withdrawn and watchful ("Hello sailor", he greets me warily with his back to the wall, looking like a fallen woman in a '50s melodrama.) It makes Hugo extraordinarily trashy.
The Imperial Hotel inErskineville,Sydney was the filming location for the opening and closing scenes. The Imperial Hotel has hosteddrag shows since 1983, and continues to be an icon forSydney's LGBT community, with its restaurant renamed "Priscillas" in honour of the film.[14] Many scenes, including one where Bernadette encounters a butch, bigoted woman named Shirley, were filmed at theoutback town ofBroken Hill inNew South Wales, largely in a hotel named Mario's Palace (now simply thePalace Hotel), which Al Clark believed was "drag queen heaven".[15][16] Some small scenes were filmed in the All Nations Hotel.
They also decided to film atCoober Pedy, a remote rough-and-tumbleopal mining town in south-central Australia which featured prominently in the film. The executive producer, Rebel Penfold-Russell, appears as the marathon runner.[17]
Initially, they tried to get permission to film uponUluṟu, but this was rejected by organisations responsible for the monument, such as the Uluṟu Board of Management, as it would have been in violation of Indigenous Australian religious beliefs.[18] Instead, the scene was filmed inKings Canyon (Watarrka).[19] Dialogue from the scene was rewritten slightly to accommodate the new location.
With filming over, the director and producers began editing the footage, repeatedly travelling to both London and to Los Angeles, which had then just been hit by the1994 Northridge earthquake. Scenes were deleted on the advice of early viewers to shorten the film.[20]
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert took $18,459,245 at the box office in Australia,[21] which is equivalent to $37,763,000 in 2022.[22] It was the fifthhighest-grossing Australian film in Australia of all time.[23]
Being an Australian film, not an American-produced Hollywood blockbuster,Priscilla was released as a minor commercial product in North America and other English-speaking nations.[24]
Director Elliott noted that the audiences viewing the film in Australia, the United States, and France all reacted to it differently, going on to state that "At a screening we had for an Australian audience, they laughed at all theAussieisms. The Americans laughed too, but at different jokes. There is a line where Tick says, 'Bernadette hasleft her cake out in the rain...', the Americans laughed for ten minutes."[25] Tom O'Regan, a scholar of film studies, remarked that the film actually carried different meanings for members of different nationalities and subcultural groups, withLGBT Americans believing that the film was "the big one that will bring gay lifestyles into the mainstream", while Australians tended to "embrace it as just another successful Australian film".[26]
On Rotten Tomatoes,Priscilla has a 94% rating based on 47 reviews, with an average rating of 7.3/10; the consensus states: "While its premise is ripe for comedy – and it certainly delivers its fair share of laughs –Priscilla is also a surprisingly tender and thoughtful road movie with some outstanding performances."[27] Metacritic gives a 70 out of 100 rating, based on 20 critics.[28]
American film criticRoger Ebert of theChicago Sun-Times felt that Bernadette was the key part of the film, stating that "the real subject of the movie is not homosexuality, not drag queens, not showbiz, but simply the life of a middle-aged person trapped in a job that has become tiresome".[29]Janet Maslin ofThe New York Times wrote "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert presents a defiant culture clash in generous, warmly entertaining ways."[30]Peter Travers ofRolling Stone commented "In this roaringly comic and powerfully affecting road movie, Terence Stamp gives one of the year's best performances."[30]Kenneth Turan from theLos Angeles Times wrote "The comic pizazz and bawdy dazzle of this film's vision of gaudy drag performers trekking across the Australian outback certainly has a boisterous, addictive way about it."[30]
The film was ranked 7th onLogo's 50 Greatest Films with an LGBT theme,[47] and #10 onAfterElton's Fifty Greatest Gay Movies list.[48]
Priscilla, along with other contemporary Australian filmsYoung Einstein (1988),Sweetie (1989),Strictly Ballroom (1992), andMuriel's Wedding (1994), provided Australian cinema with a reputation for "quirkiness", "eccentricity" and "individuality" across the world.[3] BothPriscilla andMuriel's Wedding (which had also featured a soundtrack containingABBA songs) in particular became cult classics, not only in their native Australia, but also in the United Kingdom, where a wave of Australian influences, such as thesoap operasNeighbours andHome & Away, had made their mark in the late 1980s and early 1990s.[49]
In 1995, an American film,To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, was released, featuring three drag queens who travel across the United States. According to Al Clark, the creators ofPriscilla heard about the film while shooting theirs, and "for a moment [were] troubled" until they read the script ofTo Wong Foo, when they decided that it was sufficiently different fromPriscilla to not be a commercial and critical threat.[50]To Wong Foo had a mixed critical response in comparison toPriscilla,[51] but was a box office success in North America[52] as it was a film from a majorHollywood studio and starred big-name actors.[53] LikePriscilla,To Wong Foo has also enjoyed acult following.[53]
During the2000 Summer Olympics closing ceremony,Priscilla was part of a parade of images of Australian popular culture. A 1980Denning (resembling the bus used in the film) featuring a giant steelstiletto heel which extended from and retracted into the roof – inspired by scenes from the film – paraded around theOlympic Stadium. The bus was accompanied by several stiletto heeltricycle floats and drag queens in big wigs in tribute to the film's international success and the localSydney gay community.[54][55] Themusic video forIggy Azalea's 2013 single "Work" paid homage to scenes from the film.[56]
The bus used in the film, which was a 1976Hino Freighter from Japan, was rediscovered in 2019 at a property inEwingar, New South Wales. A campaign was launched by theHistory Trust of South Australia, with the help of theGovernment of South Australia to restore the bus for eventual display in theNational Motor Museum, Birdwood. Restoration works on the vehicle are taking place inBrisbane.[57]
The film has come under criticism for allegedracist andsexist elements, particularly in the portrayal of the Filipina character, Cynthia.[58] Melba Marginson of the Centre for Filipino Concerns stated that Cynthia was portrayed as "a gold-digger, a prostitute, an entertainer whose expertise is popping out ping-pong balls from her sex-organ, a manic depressive, loud and vulgar. The worst stereotype of the Filipina." She argued that, by portraying Cynthia in this manner, the filmmakers were "violently kill[ing]" the dignity of Filipina women, something that she feared would lead to "more violence against us."[59] An editor writing inThe Age echoed these concerns, highlighting that "It is perhaps a pity that a film with a message of tolerance and acceptance for homosexuals should feel the need of what looks very much to us like a racist and sexist stereotype."[59] Similarly, in his study of bisexuality in cinema, Wayne M. Bryant argued that while it was "an excellent film",The Adventures of Priscilla was marred by "instances of gratuitous sexism."[60]
Producer Clark defended the film against these accusations, arguing that while Cynthia was astereotype, it was not the purpose of filmmakers to avoid the portrayal of "vulnerable characters" from specific minority backgrounds. He stated that she was "a misfit like the three protagonists are, and just about everybody else in the film is, and her presence is no more a statement about Filipino women than having three drag queens is a statement about Australian men."[59]Tom O'Regan noted that as a result of this controversy, the film gained "an ambiguous reputation."[61]
The film featured a soundtrack made up of pre-existing "camp classics" (pop music songs that have a particular fanbase in theLGBT community). The original plan by the film's creators was to have aKylie Minogue song in the finale, although it was later decided that anABBA song would be more appropriate because its "tacky qualities" were "more timeless"[62] (although in the musical adaptation, the character Adam performs a medley of Kylie Minogue songs atop Uluṟu). The film itself featured four main songs, which were performed by two or more of the drag queens as a part of their show within the film; "I've Never Been to Me" byCharlene, "I Will Survive" byGloria Gaynor, "Finally" byCeCe Peniston, and "Mamma Mia" by ABBA. On 23 August 1994,Fontana Island released the soundtrack on CD.[63]
Original music for the soundtrack was composed byGuy Gross, with choral and instrumental arrangements byDerek Williams, and released separately on CD.[64]
In April 2024, Elliott announced that work on a sequel was underway, with the original main cast reprising their roles.[65] After Stamp died on 17 August 2025, Elliott toldThe Guardian: "[Stamp] agreed to do the sequel a few years ago and we've been particularly busy over the past year."[66] In September 2025, Elliot revealed that, with the blessing of the cast and financiers, Stamp spent the final months of his life pre-filming all of his scenes with "a nine-camera array of the entire script".[67]
On 14 November 1995, the film was released on VHS. On 7 October 1997, it was released on DVD with a collectable trivia booklet.
In 2004, a 10th Anniversary Collector's Edition was released on DVD in Australia with the following special features: a feature-lengthaudio commentary with writer/directorStephan Elliott, threedeleted scenes, twofeaturettes: "Behind the Bus: Priscilla with Her Pants Down" andLadies Please, cast and crewbiographies, the original Australiantheatrical trailer, US theatrical and teaser trailers, and a number of hidden features
In 2006, it was re-released on DVD in Australia with the following special features: a feature-length audio commentary with writer/director Elliott, "Birth of a Queen" (featurette), deleted scenes, tidbits from the Set, "The Bus from Blooperville" – Gag reel documentary, a photo gallery, and US theatrical and teaser trailers.
On 5 June 2007, it was re-released in the United States as the "Extra Frills Edition" DVD. This edition includes the same special features as the Australian 2006 re-release. On 7 June 2011, it was released for USBlu-ray.
On August 24, 2024, it was announced that Imprint Films will release a 4K collector's edition of the film, restored from the 35mm print. It will host both new and legacy special features, including the 2015 documentaryBetween a Frock and a Hard Place that details the lasting impact of the film.[68]
