John the Baptist (Sequinette Jaynesfield) wedged between the Cackling Blondes in Jaynesfield’s Fancy Phone Numbers (via Anthology Film Archives)
The porch goose, or as I mistakenly called it before googling for this article, lawn duck, is the unsung hero of lawn ornament kitsch. Sure, everyone loves a pink flamingo, which proclaims its bad taste proudly with that gaudy, garish pink rammed into a browning lawn at an awkward angle. That’s not even taking into consideration the pink flamingo’s association with our Prince of Puke, John Waters’s upchuck masterpiece. A lawn gnome is, of course, a classic—the original ugly-cute gewgaw whose staying power will far outlast our most recent tchotchke currency, the lababu. Is a reflective gazing ball, the cheap version of the Saudi’s irradiated orb, even worth mentioning? Other than being shoved into Jeff Koons’s sculptures, much tackier than being stuck in a suburban garden, there’s not much to say about this boring backyard choice. The porch goose, however, offers something more significant, more ridiculous, and more kitsch than all three lawn standards: dress-up. All over America, homeowners are carefully inching seasonal dresses over the long necks of their beloved plaster geese. I should know—one of my earliest fixations with Americans’ rotten bottom-of-the-cracker-barrel taste was a porch goose that my school bus would pass on my way to grade school. Each day, I stared out the window to catch the latest in waterfowl fashion. Some days, it was a jaunty tie; other times, it was a weather-appropriate yellow raincoat. It was curious, a little off-putting, and entirely aspirational. I wanted a lawn duck rather than the stiff bunny statue that still stands, unimaginatively unclothed, in my parents’ yard.
Despite this elementary school passion, I haven’t thought much about the porch goose since. However, all these cracked childhood cravings surged back when watching Sequinette Jaynesfield’s deliciously absurd Good Queen: A Fowl Revolt, as a part of a screening of her short films at Anthology Film Archives for their Cinema of Gender Transgression series. The porch goose in Good Queen is certainly much fancier than the barebones basics of my suburban Pittsburgh childhood. This goose was wrapped tight in strings of precious pearls, with an ostrich feather plume flanked by two pink flowers on her head, the waterfowl version of the gravity-defying powdered wigs popular with the decadent denizens of the court of Versailles. I don’t raise the imagery of Versailles for nothing; this high-class goose was, in fact, an inanimate member of the court, a stiff observer to the cake-devouring excess centered around Marie Antoinette, the chicken queen. Yes, in Good Queen, Marie is a chicken—or really, Jaynesfield herself in a perpetually-shocked yellow chickie suit, a goofy costume that I associate with the wacked-out Club Kid, Clara the Carefree Chicken. In her Robe à la Française and towering wig, Hen-toinette, too, is pretty carefree: observing the court doing the upper-crust français version of the Chicken Dance, waving her fan that reads “Bye Bitch,” getting a twerk-y lap dance from a black-haired go-go girl, and stuffing her beak with cake while being spoiled by her suck-up ladies-in-waiting who, with their sparkling genderqueer get-up, resemble The Cockettes. The latter pampered scene is set to the pitch-perfect glam sleaze of Roxy Music’s “For Your Pleasure.” What else but Bryan Ferry’s sultry croon should echo through the halls of the Sun King’s palace? However, this carefree chicken coop will soon be roasted as the revolution reaches its gilded hallways and those very same ladies-in-waiting will use that pearlescent goose as a bludgeoning weapon, bashing pauvre Marie on the skull. Lest you think Sequinette stops there, sans the bloody denouement like Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, don’t worry, Marie gets the chop in a scene that is as transcendently hilarious as it is cathartic. Sofia could never.
While featuring a dash of dialogue taken from W.S. Van Dyke’s 1938 Marie Antoinette, such as the impeccable, “Royalty loves an occasional roll in the gutter,” Good Queen: A Fowl Revolt reminds me much more of Tom Rubnitz’s chaotic boob tube channel-surfing turned jewel-toned psychosis filmmaking. While there is no direct reference like the eyelash-fluttering twins ripped straight from Rubnitz’s Strawberry Shortcake in the recent music video for Hunx and His Punx’s “No Way Out,” after the duo’s career change from elfin bakers to the only air traffic controllers left in this country, Rubnitz’s influence lies in Jaynesfield’s similarly saccharine candy color scheme and the pitch-perfect camp. This is the kind of camp that demands repeated viewing, explaining why Rubnitz’s films like Pickle Surprise still experience occasional bursts of baffled Internet virality decades later.
Jaynesfield’s films deserve this same kind of multigenerational approval—or at least a place in the larger, air-conditioned screening room upstairs at Anthology Film Archives, rather than being relegated to the stuffy ground-floor sauna, given second billing to Michael Roemer’s downer, Dying. While Good Queen: A Fowl Revolt may be my favorite of the bunch screened at Anthology for its delectible combo of extravagance and violence, not to mention that swanky porch goose, the other films offered no less camp glee. The first film of the night, Broken: Battle of the Goddesses (2019), is a dizzying three-parter, featuring a head-spinning array of glamorously gross characters, including a Chanel No. 5 perfume bottle scribbling lipstick all over her face, like Dennis Hopper’s Frank in Blue Velvet or a more restrained version of Dave LaChapelle’s famed video of Amanda Lepore; a sultry grub twisting to “Bridal Chorus”; a sexy human fly; and a frog graciously yakking up a hot dog as some kind of mating ritual. Only the saltwater-soaked moon, dragging herself from the surf, maintains a removed elegance without descending into the amusingly abject. Cello Screen Test turns down the kaleidoscopic brightness for a black-and-white stringed instrument nervous breakdown as a cello screams, cries, and dances in a backyard, set to the whiplash-inducing intermixing of Bette Boop’s giggles and Rasputina’s strings-raging “High on Life.” Not to be outdone, Queen Down is the ideal holiday viewing for the family this year, a holy resurrection of a spent Christmas tree lying in the garbage, a tragic sight familiar to New York City residents from January until, well, about July. This fallen arborous diva is given prodding encouragement (“Get up, girl!”) and chest compressions from two helpful queens, magically transforming into a queen herself, waving goodbye to her still-trashed comrades while stumbling away.
The action itself in Jaynesfield’s films is hysterical (I hope when I’m resuscitated, someone gives me a supportive, comforting tiddie rub too). The brilliant song choices, both within the films themselves and the credits, such as Junior Vasquez’s “If Madonna Calls,” role model Cristina’s sneering version of “Is That All There Is,” and Armen Ra’s whining theremin, also add a sense of subcultural world-making. However, the most delectable pleasures for me are found in the details of Jaynesfield’s elaborate sets. In addition to the much-lauded porch goose, I can’t stop thinking about the cake stand in the cleavage-dominated Rack Focus, which offers on its second tier, wedged between pristine pastel teacakes, cans of appropriately soft pink Fancy Feast cat food, like an afternoon tea at Grey Gardens. And yes, those busty broads in Rack Focus do take a spoonful of wet food, to their barely suppressed disgust. Mannequin heads—those blank-eyed beauties—make frequent appearances, whether covered in roaches in Steven’s Aunt’s Hat or hysterically filling out the background of the luxurious dining room of the Madonna Inn, in Fancy Phone Numbers, like a bunch of beheaded background actors. Being surrounded by heads while dining is appropriate, given the berserk mash-up plot of Fancy Phone Numbers, a silent film take on Oscar Wilde’s Salome, if the storied head-yearning seductress was played by aging anti-talkie queen Norma Desmond. It’s not just the mannequins. The other props that haven’t left my mind in Fancy Phone Numbers are the stack of books perused by Herodias Hedda Hopper (Hatya Smirnoff-Skyy), including trashy pulp fiction titles Hot Cop’s Buns and Tom’s Big Pole, which were selected over Joan Crawford’s esteemed entertaining tips/memoir My Way of Life.
Fancy Phone Numbers is Jaynesfield’s longest (at 23 min) and most ambitious film, made so successful due to the dynamic, charismatic draw of Pat N Leather, who plays Salome/Norma. Whether vamping in a zebra print outfit, huffing, puffing, and rolling her prominent eyes at her suitors, or getting gigantic fake lips during beauty treatments, transforming her into a Leigh Bowery lookalike, it’s impossible to take your eyes off of Leather. Also stealing the show in Good Queen: A Fowl Revolt, Leather is an instant screen-devouring presence, recalling Jack Smith and Andy Warhol’s superstars like Mario Montez. These underground filmmakers, as well as John Waters’s humor and recurring cast of actors and Kenneth Anger’s vibrantly colored pleasure domes, loom large in Jaynesfield’s shorts. With her staunch adherence to shooting in 16mm and Super-8, and, as she revealed in the post-screening convo with fellow drag queen, writer, bingo host, photographer, and friend of Filthy Dreams Linda Simpson, her ongoing attempt to get the aesthetic as close as possible to Technicolor, her shorts are not just camp delights but love letters to weirdo cinema. During the discussion, Jaynesfield didn’t shy away from the blunt economic reality of filmmaking, explaining she wasn’t sure what her next project would be, as it depends on landing some cash. Calling all oligarchs (who I’m sure read Filthy Dreams), the future of camp filmmaking depends on you! And it is certainly worthy of a hefty investment! Better than crypto!