Glitter, Guts, and Noise: Unpacking the Drag and Music Scene in ‘Death Drop Gorgeous’ [Interview]
R.C. Jara
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Death Drop Gorgeous is a defiant statement in the world of horror. This Providence-based slasher centers on the lives of downtrodden bartender Dwayne and an aging drag queen named Gloria Hole as they attempt to navigate the city’s seedy nightlife. Their efforts are made all the more harrowing by a masked killer who hunts gay men to drain them of their blood. The film moves with the guttural fitness of a grindhouse staple, quenching an audience’s thirst for gore while also spinning a deeply personal narrative about a group of outsiders struggling to fit in.
As with many of the films covered in Spins articles of the past, history and characterization play an important part in how music is utilized. The film’s distinct synth score and needle drops from local artists are vital to the identity of Death Drop Gorgeous. For this special edition of the column, I am joined by filmmakers Christopher Dalpe, Wayne Gonsalves, and Brandon Perras for a discussion on the various themes and real life connections that serve as building blocks for the story.
Spoilers abound from this point onward.
Dread Central: There seems to be a tension between different generations of performers in the film. I want to gauge your opinion on whether that tension still exists today, what it looked like in 2003, and where y’all think that divide goes from here?
Brandon Perras: When I first moved to Providence in 2003 I got a job at this bar called The Eagle. It was connected to a piano bar called JB Fitzgerald’s and they ran as one so I was barbacking for both of them. Every Friday night I would barback for two drag performers: Jackie Collins and Natalie Gaye. Jackie Collins would sing live and that was one of the biggest drag nights in town. You had other performers like Sabrina Blaze and Kitty Litter who were all in a similar age bracket. They ran the scene and were in their late 30s early 40s at the time. There were sometimes even older performers as well who did drag in the late ‘80s through the early ‘90s.
There weren’t as many young people in the scene my age. But then you had this explosion of younger people getting into drag that you can kind of trace back to RuPaul’s Drag Race. When that came out it really sparked this idea in young people that they were allowed to do it too. As this happened, you saw the drag genre evolve a little bit. You started seeing people do death drops and splits. It wasn’t all about show tunes like typical drag shows had been doing for years. Granted, this stuff was happening in NYC in the voguing communities where there was a little more variance in drag. Here [in Providence] it took the scene by storm and I think it scared some of the older queens.
As the years went on the older queens got pushed to the side when the new, younger queens took over. But the younger queens kind of forgot how hard it used to be for a drag queen in Providence. It used to be illegal to leave a bar if you were a man dressed as a woman. You had to have at least three articles of male clothing. I used to have to walk the drag queens down to Kennedy Plaza to take taxi cabs because they were getting beat up in the streets all the time. Now drag queens walk home drunk at four in the morning and there’s no problem. So I think there’s definitely this gap where older queens are like: “Hey we paved the way for you guys and now you don’t like what we’re doing. You don’t like this old school style of drag.”
Drag can evolve and should evolve, but the younger queens sometimes don’t understand their history or where they came from. So we wanted to throw that in the film. This has been happening worldwide. The last Drag Race UK there was a big petition about why there are no queens older than 32 on the show. A lot of younger queens were speaking to the older queens that are getting pushed out of this arena. So, I mean, it’s still prevalent today. We saw it firsthand in this city.
Christopher Dalpe: For sure. And I think the bars themselves, in small cities, are stages that are very limited. They’re the perfect battleground for where this kind of tension was growing. There was competition for who [performs] Saturday nights and Friday nights and who is getting sidelined to a lot of these other, less popular days and times. We watched the in-fighting that happened within our own community as people were like “well there’s not enough room for everybody anymore” all of a sudden.
DC: Chris, your character, Brian, is a victim of a contemptful killing by Gloria Hole. That’s another reason why I wanted to ask this question. It seemed to me like there was actual venom behind it and a lot of it is justified, I think. There’s not a lot of room for people older than 30 in a starring role in horror movies. Then here y’all have a drag queen who is just sick and tired of being cast aside. That tension sort of boils over.
CD: [Laughs] You know Brian is not the worst person in the world. But in the end his attempt at connecting with Gloria is kind of exploitative. He acknowledges that she’s dead and done and he’s trying to get as much from her as possible. I think that’s one of the insidious things about my character’s murder. He thinks: “Great, I’m gonna just use up what I can from [Gloria] before you’re dust”. And I rightfully get a high heel in my face.
DC: Given that so much of that history ends up on screen, there seems to be an autobiographical angle in these characters. Specifically Dwayne, the character that Wayne plays.
Wayne, I want to get your perspective on the character because he’s a person that begrudgingly comes back to Providence and it seems like it has changed since he’s been there. The way Dwayne relates to other people in the community has changed and a lot of that comes through in your performance and in the writing.
Wayne Gonsalves: There’s a lot of organic reality to the story, especially with Dwayne’s character. I’ve lived in Providence for almost 20 years now. It’s almost hard to describe how the dynamic has changed between younger or older people, and to see how the city has changed itself. There are autobiographical elements in regards to the microaggressions that Dwayne deals with. Much of what he goes through in the film happened to me and they’re some of the things I have experienced in the community. We’ve come leaps and bounds over the years but there is still work to do.
CD: The “Tito” comment, doesn’t that come directly from your life at the bar?
WG: [Laughs] A lot of the names that Dwayne is called come from people never getting my name right.
DC: The “Tito” comment definitely jumped up at me as a Latine who has worked service jobs and has been around people who didn’t care to learn my name.
But on a more positive note, y’all put so much work into shouting out and giving love to your community, as well as showing people where you come from. I’m curious to know on the music side, how have you seen that change and how did y’all decide which people to work with?
BP: I moved down to Providence with a bunch of friends from Vermont who were in my band at the time. The reason we moved here is because the music scene was a total wonderland. They had these giant warehouse scenes where there was every genre of music you can imagine where every great touring band in the underground came through. Every night of the week it was like, which show am I going to go to? There were like 20 happening. And they happened in every nook and cranny. Any abandoned warehouse, factory, library, or VFW. You name it, there was a show there.
There were so many awesome artists and small business owners of Providence making this scene happen. Fort Thunder, the guys from Lightning Bolt and many other old school bands like Six Finger Satellite, Hydrogen Terrors, Ben from Load Records. And they were kind of creating their own little world. They had their own little sound coming out of the city too. You could listen to 3 seconds of a song and know which band it was. That distinct Providence sound.
As people started catching on, the shows got bigger and bigger. We didn’t have that many problems back in the day. It wasn’t until people died at the Station Fire nightclub in Warwick from fire code issues. After bands lit off pyrotechnics inside the club, the city found the excuse they needed to raid all of these warehouses and get everybody out. It took them a couple of years for them to finally do their jobs.
The most insidious part of all of this is that once people vacated all of these warehouses, there was a certain non-profit here that bought them out and some of the colleges stepped in to strip and gut the scene. With it, a lot of the noise rock vanished. Fast forward to now, the Providence music scene has a big, old-school hardcore throwback happening. Not like tough guy bro hardcore, it’s queer and different. It’s kind of sad because we moved here for all the cool shows. But I think there’s a spark of that still hanging on by a thread these days.
DC: So this cultural pillaging of whatever was left of the scene in your town, is that something you wanted to latch onto while you were writing the script for Death Drop Gorgeous?
BP: Oh yeah. There’s just so much talent that has come out of this city and these bands deserve to be showcased. There’s so much amazing, amazing music that has come out of Providence from any kind of genre. Noise rock was our specialty and I really wanted to get that in there any way we could. The rest of the guys, too. We wanted to show that we had an awesome, thriving drag scene and an awesome music scene that made Providence what it is. It’s always the fucking colleges that get all the recognition and, it’s like, get out of here. They had nothing to do with what put the city on the map.
CD: Right. And I feel like a huge part of the world that we were highlighting, a divey, sadder version of drag in general, was in direct opposition to what we were seeing on TV and mainstream media. That was a huge part. There was an old world of drag that we were watching disappear. But at the same time we also wanted to tell a queer story about our lives and a lot of us are music lovers who are at shows, in pits or in bands. And I think even just showing queer people in those contexts is really important. Maybe for folks who love music and are part of stuff will find relatable content in there. It’s important.
DC: For sure. Dwayne at the hardcore show wanting to fit in, but not quite fitting in, and getting looks? That was so relatable being a brown person going to shows.
WG: [Laughs] You really were a minority going to any type of metal or hardcore show. It didn’t seem like there was much of a community of color there, as well as a queer community going back 10, 15 years ago. There were always people who enjoyed the music but I would just never see many people of color at these shows. So I always felt a little singled out or a little different. It’s even part of how I met Brandon. I felt like I was the only queer person at a hardcore show and he was like staring at me and I was like “oh god, this guy is about to kick my ass”.
CD: And then they made out like you’d never believe.
[Sounds of group laughter]
CD:: It was the hardest make out show ever.
DC: And out of that union came this beautiful movie.
BP: Wayne was pivotal. He was involved in this group called Paint It Pink who were booking all kinds of awesome bands at the gay bars. There were all these incredible shows at Wheels, or The Dark Lady, and The Eagle. It was just this awesome union of queer culture and the music scene coming together. Even someone like Kitty Litter would come out and lead the names of the bands sometimes.
WG: [Laughs] Seeing her read the name White Load.
CD: Those were the two words that she could read.
BP: All the weird metal bands with those crazy names. I loved hearing her try to pronounce them. She’d be like “I don’t know what the fuck this is but here it is”.
CD: If we’re gonna revive her career out of North Carolina we should just put her in a metal band as a lead. We can talk offline about this but this might be how we save her career.
BP: [Laughs] It was just this magical thing that happened. That convergence of scenes that happened for about two years was really incredible. And the drag queens would perform between some of the bands sometimes too. It was an awesome variety show every time.
WG: When you listen to the music on the soundtrack it’s definitely pivotal to that period of time. A lot of the bands and a lot of the music that was donated to our movie are all from bands that we’ve met and made friends with over the last 15 years.
DC: The film also has a distinctly synth pop sound. You’re reminded of a lot of those ‘80s video nasties when you’re watching the film. It’s perfectly grimy, I would say.
Given that you guys had a bunch of different Providence bands come through, how did you decide on the sound of the film?
BP: I think we definitely wanted to hit that ‘80s vibe. The structure of the film is laid out like an ‘80s slasher where we wanted to throw a band in there and have a performance. As far as the score goes for all the synthy stuff, our friend Kevin Boden has this project called Limmazene. It’s really crazy synthwave stuff that he was doing on his own time. He had reached out to us when we were looking for synth music and we were like “oh this guy is local and his stuff is really good”. We contacted him and he gave us some Limmazene stuff but he was also scoring special scenes in the film with that style of music. It was really great.
The other people that scored the film were Devon Hunt from this band Sexcrement, who is a metal drummer but he’s musical prodigy and can play every instrument, and his friend Kyle Paradis. The two of them scored the other half. Those three people gave us that synth love. Tim Fife from New Hampshire did a couple of synth tracks for us too. He’s scored all kinds of horror movies and is really brilliant.
CD: And then artists like Bright Light Bright Light really kind of took that lead of the vibe and were able to make custom, original work especially for the drag queen performances. Tonally it’s very difficult to have a pop song without having a real pop song. That was a completely different challenge of how to create the right sound for those specific moments.
DC: Was one of those moments Janet Fitness’s first song? The “two left tits” song?
CD: Yep! Two left titties.
BP: Yeah so, Bright Light Bright Light watched her lip sync to a Rihanna mix and then wrote lyrics and wrote the song over it. Then the drag queen Kimmi Moore did the vocals over it. That worked out really well. One of [Michael J. Ahern]’s best friends Jackie Kamel kind of did the same thing for the scene where Rosebud Cinanci is performing. It was a song [Mike] told us was not copyrighted because it was over 100 years old. But it actually was copyrighted. So Jackie had to go in to lip read and fill in her own lyrics. She did a really excellent job.
CD: That was wild. The song actually plays over the credits. It actually has kind of a folk western sound to it.
DC: I got the feeling that number must have been from some movie somewhere because it sounded vintage. It’s such a pleasure to know that lip reading on the go is a tool that y’all used in your movie.
CD: It’s reverse lip syncing! It’s insane! Talk about “deconstructing” drag.
WG: The sound of the original song was a bit old and I think the newer song matched it really well. I think it was an old Patti Page song.
BP: Yeah it was.
CD: Then the other song was Gloria’s failed performance. [Laughs] Wayne, how did “Gravy Daddy” come along?
WG: [Laughs] Yeah that one was like, we were having a board game night and trying to figure out what to do for that song. I had just read an article about how modern day pop songs are written for third graders so I was trying to come up with lyrics that could be written very simply and it’s literally like two lines: “Give me that gravy daddy” and “hashtag, I swallow”. We were trying to make it seem like Gloria was being as relevant as possible. We just came up with those lyrics while we were playing board games. I was just playing around on my phone creating weird sounds and we put those lyrics over it. Brandon, who was it that did that song?
BP: So it was my buddy Matt Burgess, whose solo thing is called Cig Oasis. He made that insane dubstep on Robitussin song.
DC: So Death Drop Gorgeous is actually much more than a slasher. You play around with this idea of vampirism in a way that’s unexpected. Touching back on the earlier topic of generational divide, there are these themes of youth, culture, aging out but wanting to fit in. It seems like Gloria is sort of uncomfortable with her place in the world. Jackie Kamel’s song, “Queen”, plays over that one really intimate moment that Gloria has in her bathtub.
How did that scene come together?
CD: In that one specific scene of Gloria dipping herself into a pool of blood, I believe Mike, our main writer, put in all caps: GLORIA IS THE KILLER. So that scene was pivotal. It revealed the true murderer, but it reveals what she’s doing with the blood more importantly. And I think that, cinematically, we needed to make sure that was really important.
BP: That scene was one of the earlier scenes that we filmed and it was the final nail in the coffin to make this movie happen. Seeing how intimate and crushing that scene is reminded us that there is a lot to this movie. It’s a microcosm of what happened to many of the older queens. The rug was pulled out from under them and now it’s like “how do I survive in this world?” That part was crushing.
What I will say is, lately there’s been a bit of a revival of people taking an interest in pageant drag and older queens. I feel like a lot of bridges have been rebuilt with younger queens and older queens in Providence.
CD: For the lyrics of [“Queen”], Jackie plowed through the script and then delivered the full thing pretty quickly. The song, like what Brandon said, sums up so much of Gloria’s story. Which, if you listen closely enough, is all there. Her refusal to be forgotten is pretty epic.
DC: It’s beautiful. That’s why when I watched it the first time it felt like a breath of fresh air for slashers and for horror. It made me feel like not only is this film about a particular place and time, it’s speaking across time and genre. I really love how Gloria’s story comes together.
Since we’re referencing the lyrics to “Queen” and this column is about tying music and character together, I want to know what your inspiration was for Gloria. Where does she come from?
CD: So Brandon already kind of hinted that there is a person who exists named Kitty Litter, a drag queen who had been working in Providence really since the beginning. She gets a lot of cameos in the film. There are posters of her in the background and a photo of her in the bingo hall. But this is a human being who I used to work for. I used to run a drag bingo to raise money for HIV and AIDS. Kitty Litter was this heavy smoker, rough, gruff voice. Kind of perverted, said a lot of awful things and has made a lot of people mad, but has also done a lot of good in the world. So our inspiration came from Kitty Litter.
To say that they are the same person would be inaccurate. But her best friend, Payton St. James, Michael McAdams who actually plays Gloria Hole in the film, took those notes and brought the character to life in such a new and meaningful and very powerful way. Payton’s performance as Gloria Hole is really what brings that character to life.
WG: [Laughs] She really is the De Niro of this film.
BP: And Payton is like a legit actor. She does the drag shows in P-Town, she was doing Illusions for a really long time. She does plays. And she brings this old-school drag queen archetype to life with so much brilliance on her part. It was a joy to watch her at all times.
CD: But yeah we wrote her as a straight-up monster.
WG: And Payton’s performance just gives her a heart.
DC: The script also focuses on some of the quieter moments in Providence. I feel like a lot of this love/hate attitude about the city is present throughout the film and I want to know how that came into play for you all.
BP: One of the things we tried to do with this film was to make the nightlife look like this grandiose, bright and colorful, bubbly scene. Regardless of whether it’s fantasy or not, this is how people feel in the nighttime. In the daytime, it’s just the doldrum of having a 40-hour a week job and things are kind of gray and boring. Providence doesn’t really come to life until the nighttime because there really isn’t much to do here during the day.
CD: To go off of that, one of my favorite shots that says a lot with a quiet moment happens during our opening. It’s when Dwayne is walking up to the nightclub and you have all of the rainbow flags that look faded and falling apart. It’s almost like the nighttime adds the magic but almost shrouds the good and the bad. You see the bar in its grotesque daylight.
Another quiet moment is our first kill. It touches on the sadder culture of drug use in our communities and the dangers associated with it. Also the loneliness surrounding the [Poundr] app Wayne uses. He’s so lonely throughout that entire film because everyone is on their stupid phones. I think the drugs, the sad reality, some of the quiet stuff is about the mundane reality a lot of people live.
Was that too heavy?
DC: No, not at all. We want that from creatives. These quiet moments are some of the most important to me in horror and particularly seeing the film through Dwayne’s eyes.
Dwayne has a confrontational moment with Gloria that I think adds to the film’s theme of loneliness. So I want to know, how was it getting into that headspace, Wayne?
WG: I think I was just channeling those times when you think you’ve made a connection with someone, but then you get that rejection. You know, moments where you think things are better between you and this other person but they’re just kind of dismissive of you.
BP: I think also with Wayne’s character, he’s the only character that has hope. But it’s like he’s walking into a burning building and everything is falling apart around you. Everything is a crazy, corrupt mess. But [Dwayne] brings hope and love into the movie.
CD: I want to go back to what you said about the love/hate relationship. You have to love something before you can hate it. So much of the movie is that. We’re saying “fuck you Providence!” throughout the whole damn thing. But if you notice, nobody’s leaving.
[Group laughter ensues]
WG: It’s just like arguing with a family member. You still love ‘em.
BP: Yeah we’re taking just a small glimpse of the queer community in Providence, but the messages ring so loud. This movie at the end of the day is about being an outsider within your own community. Everyone that made this film, I hate saying this, but we’re not your typical gay. Typical cis white gay culture has had its run for a long time so we made this film to show people that there’s an entire facet of the community.
We’ve had the best responses and biggest reactions of love from the trans community more so than the cis community. That was an interesting thing because we didn’t know how this movie was gonna land and where this was gonna go. But that response has been so great because this movie is for you. You guys are the ones that are on the back burner at all these fucking venues, all these fucking cubs. And that’s kind of how we felt too. But I think the trans community has it like 20 times worse. I’m glad that our movie is resonating with people and making people feel like we see them and that we understand what it’s like being an outsider.
CD: It’s almost like the cis gays found out we were making fun of them.
[More group laughter ensues]
DC: There is a lot of honesty in Death Drop Gorgeous. As we bring this interview to a close, we’ve touched on how the trans community latched onto this film. I want to get your opinion on what you want people to take out of this film you’ve created.
CD: Satire is so important to me. Things that are jokes can always have so many meanings. We didn’t just go in a traditional slasher route, we went camp and comedy for very intentional reasons. I just want to remind people of the power of satire and that you can convey a whole breadth of political and emotional messages while having fun.
BP: I love that. I have the same spiel I always give. People should watch this movie twice. The first time, people should just go in and have fun, go crazy with it. But then they should watch it for what we’re trying to say. I think another message that I want to drive home is: don’t be afraid to make your own fucking movie.
We did this for only $20,000. I know that sounds like a ton but you don’t have to do what we did. The new iPhones are better than half the cameras that are out there right now. You can literally film on your phone. Tangerine made it to the fucking Oscars on an iPhone. We edited our entire film on a free program called DaVinci Resolve, it’s amazing. Our lighting kits that we got were super cheap, about $150 each. We literally bareboned the fuck out of this.
We filmed the scene of Janet Fitness getting stabbed on stage at The Dark Lady, but we also filmed under my deck. The bathtub scene was done in our garage, we filmed scenes in my basement. You just have to be quick on your toes, but also utilize your community. You have a whole community of artists out there that would love a vehicle like a film to showcase their work. And, you know, one hand washes the other.
We have local fashion designers that donated to the movie. The top Janet Fitness wears is from Pretty Snake. All the local venues were super psyched to be a part of this. So you have a whole world out there that wants to help you. Don’t ever feel like it’s not gonna look like a Hollywood film, or it’s not gonna look right. Because if people are stuck on the corporate version of what a film is supposed to look like, then their lives must be pretty fucking boring. They’re missing out on a lot of cool films and I just wish people would just get over those fears. You’re gonna face a lot of opposition at first but don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Just do it. Make art and don’t give a fuck about what people are saying to you. As long as you’re not hurting anybody else, make your art.
The boys from Providence will return with Saint Drogo, a slow-burn folk horror film shot during the pandemic. They also have a third film in development. If you simply can’t get enough, please check out Monster Makeup LLC for updates.
Death Drop Gorgeous is available on DVD from TLA Video and is currently streaming on Shudder along with other major services.
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