Twisted Creativity

Image courtesy of Bobby Sheehan

Bobby Sheehan talks about Joey, Basil and his new film

The inspired collaboration between downtown cabaret and drag artist Joey Arias and master puppeteer Basil Twist serves as the spine for this dynamic exploration of unfettered creativity and expression. Arias and Twist conspired together to create the performance spectacular known as Arias with a Twist, a show that brought them some of the biggest success of their careers and continues to tour since its original production in 2008.

Bobby Sheehan, a close friend of Joey Arias’ gives us a sneak peek into his new film, Arias with a Twist: The Docufantasy. Sheehan serves as the Director and Screenwriter of this one-of-a-kind film.

: Image courtesy of Steven Menendez

Sold out over 6 months in NY. Toured around world. Where do you plan to go after Tribeca Film Festival?

We’ve been invited to dozens of festivals literally all over the world. We are being very selective about which festivals we attend or send the film to. We have committed to a festival in Tel Aviv and San Francisco in the very near future but we do not have an overall festival strategy as of yet. We just signed with Submarine as our sales agents and we will make a plan with them regarding all other festivals during Tribeca.

Describe your collaboration experience between yourself, Joey and Basil.

They both have such tremendous creative energy that is contagious to anyone around them so collaborating with them like being in a huge creative sandbox with your best friends creating things without any rules. Never a dull moment would be an understatement.

You interviewed people from all aspects of art (fashion, music, design, etc…). What was it like interviewing a fashion legend like Thierry Mugler?

There were so many wonderful and talented people who lovingly participated that by the time I was able to schedule an interview with Manfred (his very preferred new name) it was just another pleasurable experience of talking to someone about how fantastic Joey and Basil are.

Joey is widely known for his incredible ability to transform himself for the shows. Can you give us a glimpse of this unique process?

Wow…I sincerely believe Joey has some kind of chromosomal voodoo that allows him to transform…like of like a surreal butterfly. I’ve seen him transform on the spot and I’ve also seen him evolve over the course of the thirty years that I’ve known him. Transforming is ‘kind of’ like breathing for him.

Some may say Joey is a “drag queen” but seeing the collaborations, amount of time and creativity he puts into his shows, I would say he is more like a performance artist. Can you expand on this idea?

Joey is so not a drag artist – not that there is anything wrong with being a drag artist – because he approaches all of his characterization/personas as living pieces of art. When he first started channeling Billie Holiday it was all about getting on that vocal tonal frequency and not putting on a dress with some pumps. If Joey had an idea for being Santa Claus that would not be driven by a desire to be a fat old white dude with a beard. It would be about sharing love and giving people gifts so his female costuming isn’t about doing drag – it’s simply the wrapping around the gift inside.

What did you find most challenging while filming?

Keeping up with the pace of the mushrooming factor of people who wanted to be part of the film. My first instinct was to capture the unbelievably cool theatrical experience created by Joey and Basil because theatre pieces once they run their theatrical lives are gone forever or awakened by revivals. The play was also SO cinematic that every creative instinct in my body was screaming at me to film! Once we did begin the process of shooting the theatrical piece and that train left the station we were all brought on a much longer (and wonderful) ride than any of us anticipated. As soon as we opened the idea of getting into both Joey and Basil’s backstory the love floodgates burst open. What started out as a simple multi-camera documentation immediately became a year’s worth of shooting over 50 interviewers of incredibly talented artists and collaborators of Joey and Basil that brought us across America – New York (of course), Nashville, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Seattle, and Europe – France (Paris, Charleville-Mezieres & Maubeuge), Sweden, Brussels and Germany. Although keeping up with the evolution of the film was challenging, I can honestly say it has been one of the best creative experiences of my life.

We hear there are archival, never before seen footage in this film. How did you manage to get your hands on them?

As an extension to the prior question; the out-pouring of love and support for Joey and Basil made the process of finding archival footage effortless. Before I could even ask people for footage they were offering up whatever they had. As a documentary filmmaker I can honestly say I have never experienced finding archival gold without pounding away at rocks. The golden nuggets were delivered to our doorsteps. A few wonderful for instances: Courtney Harmel had incredible footage of Joey at Fiorucci – his daytime headquarters – where he would hangout with people like Andy Warhol, Klaus Nomi, Grace Jones, Divine and Keith Haring and Courtney has wonderful footage of this and she also has very bittersweet personal footage of close friends lost to the plague known as AIDS. Joe Tripician who was a video artist has great performance footage of Joey’s various bands from back-in-the-day. Kenny Scharf has unbelievable footage of fellow artists – Klaus Nomi, Ann Magnuson, John Sex and several others, doing all kinds of performance art including a video art piece that Kenny and Keith Haring co-created that I think no one has ever seen – until now. To add to this goldmine were the Basil Twist collaborators, which include Cheryl Henson who donated incredible footage of her father Jim Henson who was a enormous inspiration to Basil. The list goes on and on.

A lot of the material in the film has never been seen other than within a friends and family context. As it should be, the Joey Arias and Basil Twist friends and family tree keep on sprouting new strange fruit.

Arias with a Twist: The Docufantasy is currently running at Tribeca Film Festival until May 1st, 2010. Click here for a sneak peek of the film.

interview by morin yousif

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