Three Dollar Cinema: The Down and Dirty DIY of Queer Production

• Published in: Journal of film and video Vol. 70; no. 3-4; pp. 63 - 84
• Main Author: Nault, Curran
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Englewood University of Illinois Press 01.12.2018; University Film and Video Association
• Subjects: Analysis; Celeste, Mary; Cinema and Film Studies; College students; Culture; Digital media; Film and video production companies; Gay and lesbian culture; Gays & lesbians; Graduate studies; Grassroots organizing; Gulf languages; History; Influence; Jenkins, Henry; LGBTQ studies; Motion Pictures; Police; Political activity; Political aspects; Social networks; Subcultures; United States; New York; Chicago Illinois; United States > US; Texas
• ISSN: 0742-4671; 1934-6018
• DOI: 10.5406/jfilmvideo.70.3-4.0063

I met them below the bridge shortly after 9:00 a.m., bearing coffee and breakfast tacos: a motley assembly of misfit mediamakers, arty queers, and nonconformist nerds like me, all scattered among the trash-cluttered banks of Waller Creek in downtown Austin, Texas. This was not the first time I had visited the set of a CHRISTEENE music video, but it was my first day "on the job" as a cursory member of the "Workin' on Grandma" crew. After I delivered the breakfast buffet, director PJ Raval and performer Paul Soileau (aka CHRISTEENE) brainstormed shooting concepts and delegated the day's duties. My first assignment was to keep cinematographer Mike Simpson from tumbling into the creek—putrid as it was from the human waste that had accumulated there from Austin's barhopping hipster gentry and the city's attendant growing homeless population. I was a graduate student at the University of Texas who had been studying queer media subcultures from behind the distanced safety of my books, and this sordid scenario marked my introduction to flesh-and-blood queer production practice: standing protectively beside Simpson as he balanced precariously on a set of slippery stones at the edge of the foul creek, attempting to obtain the perfect angle on CHRISTEENE as she emerged from underneath the bridge, refreshed from a morning bowel movement. Months later, my production education would continue on the set of CHRISTEENE's "African Mayonnaise," an endeavor, as recounted later in this article, that would find me and the crew on the run from a well-orchestrated pack of Scientologists, a set of persistent mall cops on Segways, and finally, the encroaching police just outside the Barton Springs Mall.