Hot Take?

To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Numar is an important movie.

It's definitely not a great movie. I'm not even sure that it's a good movie. It's an important movie, though.

Back when it was first released, I was in high school. There was only one actual city in the county I grew up in and that city had less than 5,000 people. Hell, the whole county, all 2,000 some odd square miles of it, only had about 50,000 people. Yeah, I grew up rural and it's pretty darn redneck, with the little good and lotta bad that brings with it. But...

To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar played in the local movie theater.

I got to watch a story about three drag queens traveling across the USA and being loved by a small town in middle America.

I got to watch this movie with my friends surrounded by a surprisingly large number of hetero couples who seemed to be enjoying themselves.

If I remember correctly, the movie was even #1 at the box office for a week or two. The movie wasn't just watched by New Yorkers and San Franciscans, you know.

Sure, there were better movies along similar themes that came out around the same time. Jeffrey and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert come to mind right away. I still find Jeffrey delightful and Priscilla is wonderfully heartwarming/breaking. Unfortunately, both movies did not play at my movie theater. The nearest independent theater would have been over two hours away and, at the time, I didn't even know it existed. I knew these movies existed, but I couldn't see them. I did see To Wong Foo, though.

(Funny that, with only one exception I know of, the three movies I mention all starred cis, hetero men. But it was the '90s and, as the song says, you take the good, you take the bad.)

How many weird kids with the weird friends who were trying to figure themselves out got to watch this movie and, maybe, see a bit of themselves up on the screen?

Yeah, it may not be a good movie, but I think it's an important one.

Oh, and if you haven't seen any of these movies, but want to, please be aware that the language and some of the ideas are very much of their time. There's a good chance that parts will make you uncomfortable. 30 years of (some) positive growth will do that to a culture.