Steven Corfe writes:

This weekend was the closing weekend of the Frameline LGBT Film Festival, and a group of WOWers traveled up to San Francisco to support the screening of our film Sex Change Hospital and partake in the coinciding Gay Pride activities. SCH screened Saturday afternoon at the Roxie, and both of the subjects featured in the first episode, Vicki Estrada and Jim Howley, were there with family and friends. Not an easy feat for Vicki, one would imagine, sitting in a room with friends and strangers watching your penis being surgically transformed into a vagina on a 40-foot screen. As Jim said during the Q&A that followed, he usually has dinner bought for him before he lets people see him naked. But the subjects’ bravery was the common theme of the post-screening chat, along with praise for director Chris McKim for striking a balance between the science of gender reassignment and the emotional journey of the people undergoing it. I sat behind Vicki, and was touched to see her daughter (from Vicki’s earlier marriage, when she was Steve) hugging her during the painful parts of the film.

We emerged into the daylight just in time to see the Dykes on Bikes parade ripping past on Harleys; then it was up to the Castro for more vagina (Bruce LaBruce’s Give Piece of Ass a Chance) and penis (RuPaul’s Starrbooty). Having survived being mobbed on the street, RuPaul introduced her film looking statuesque and retro-fabulous in a shimmering gown and enormous white afro. “Now where am I going to sit?” she asked. “I don’t want to block anyone’s view.” The blaxploitation flick was non-stop hilarity, with enough ghetto glamour, trannies turning tricks, and porn-star penis to make your average fundamentalist choke on the spot. “In Loving Memory of Jerry Falwell” read the end card, the last laugh of the film. Ru extended the laughs a bit longer with her audience Q&A, and an audience request for her to repeat a line in character as the movie’s undercover hooker provided what might become the movie’s legacy line: “My name Cupcake.” It’s all in Ru’s delivery, of course, but expect the T-shirts soon. Post movie celebrations went down in daddy-leather bar Eagle SF, The End Up, and God knows where else, and everyone agreed that a gay old time had been had by all.

– Steven Corfe

(Photos by Chris McKim and Thairin Smothers, from top: Castro Theatre marquee; Jim Howley; Vicki Estrada, SCH production coordinator Kristin Rasmussen, SCH director Chris McKim, and Jim Howley; Steven Corfe and Randy Barbato; smokin’ WOWer James McGowan; dancer at The End Up; RuPaul and SF native Quartknee at the Starbooty screening; WOW guy Dwight Armstrong; a mammaltoe at Eagle SF; End Up host André; bellying up to the bar at The End Up; artist Clancy Cavnar at Eagle SF; gratuitous shot of WOWer Thairin Smothers at Roxie SCH screening)