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Drag queens don’t look much better than their everyday counterparts. “Kristen Stewart is a fan…” Laotian American beauty Jujubee muttered to herself in Bleecker Street Media’s New York office, reading the script for the 2024 sci-fi/romance film. I like it. The first one RupaDrag Race contestant and new star of the tragic-comedy Stop! Where! Train! she was walking out of an office cubicle in a tailored blazer and fishnet when an alert PR took her to lunch. This time she was wearing all the clothes and makeup all day, including an early morning spot with her NBC Today co-hosts Jenna & Sheinelle.
I heard Jujubee and her friend Ginger Minj before I saw them, giggling like hyenas from the other room. When he entered the door, he said in cheetah form, and greeted me with a mega-watt smile that told me that I was now their audience. I was impressed with how “on” they were, but I can only imagine that it was worth it to continue. What was the press whirlwind like for them? “It’s been a lot of work but it doesn’t make sense,” Ginger admitted. “The tours were inspired by the way the film was made.” “We need to get to bed time,” added Jujubee as she began to slowly peel her boring nails. “But I’m very high on life and we’ve all been able to stay in the moment, and live in this media storm.” He immediately started crying.
Stop! Where! Train! it’s set in a similar region of America where railroads are the main means of transportation, “stormaganzas” are known (if not frequent) for extreme weather, and it seems that everyone is a lunatic committed to the worst. Even if you don’t believe that the idea of ”RuPaul as president of the United States” should be played for laughs, Adam Shankman’s queen-led comedy develops an infectious, witty comedy that’s hard not to succumb to its charms. The film works in the same tradition of satire as The Naked Gun, Horror Movieand Airplane!where stable thinking becomes less important than stable world building and quick joke telling. It is a brand that is dedicated exclusively to RuPaul’s Drag Race, a reality show that devotes all its parts to fantasy and where beauty and spoof coexist on mobile devices.
The film follows Tess (Ginger) and DeeDee (Jujubee) who become conductors of the classic Glamazonian train, when they are suddenly fired from the Stank Rail. Natural disaster, presidential politics, musical numbers, paranormal activity and Sarah Michelle Gellar is coming. Christina Friel and Connor Wright’s acting is very busy, managing a number of gags per minute that become familiar after a few watches. While all the punchlines may not arrive, continuous dialogue means you don’t have to wait until the next punch line. The abundance of the famous queen Latrice Royale doing every job in America, the fun of the call and response of “give me straight / now give me gay” and the obscurity of Raven-Symoné who plays a character called “Shayna Gefilte-Manischewitz” are woven like comic kevlar.
Despite how common and successful it is Pull The race is on, and well-received support shows like AJ and Queen and We’re Here have been, Stop! Where! Train! still feels like the franchise’s biggest crossover event. It is a car that targets the masses and not their established group. “I was very clear with (the producers) that I was making a video for everyone, not just Drag Race fans,” Shankman said. “The show doesn’t exist without Drag Race, but you can say the same thing about Saturday Night Live: it’s their thing, and we’re ours.”
After guest judging on Drag Race, Shankman was given a script by producer Randy Barbato and asked if he would watch it. In its original form, the document had one major difference: it would be based on an airplane. Shankman recalled: “I don’t want to make Airplanes anymore!” Instead he advocated for it to be installed on a train, putting the same life-or-death focus on one boring and reliable mode of transportation for ordinary people. So unexpected turbulence, falling oxygen masks, and the risk of a crash landing appear in the background. As President Judy Wakell, Rupa he plays in the now-defunct U.S. Navy and the Railroad, haunted by the life of the girl he couldn’t save the “hot stuff”.
In the context of Drag Race, “Glamazonian” is the company that only gets chased by Acme in terms of industry cruelty. So the job of a “railroad manager” is meant to aid and abet the bad behavior of their wealthy clients. When the train takes off, the first class conductors (played by Brooke Lynn Hytes, Marty Lauter and Symoné), sing a song encouraging passengers to get their medicine out because they are not TSA-protected.
For the breathless drama and comedy, the actors are able to live in all the worlds in this film very well. As a duo, Ginger and Jujubee bring an easy if chaotic chemistry to their performances that have been honed in many performances together. Adapting their performance on film, however, came with some challenges. “Adam told us, you two are not in a drama, anyone else could be but you are in a drama,” Jujubee revealed. “I’ll never forget it,” Ginger added, “they kept calling us ‘Lucy and Ethel’ for the first few days because we were doing (flooding).
By going deep, the duo also managed to leave their mark on the film with a glorious remake. One of the film’s most memorable scenes is a standoff battle between the two that takes place 40 feet apart, as each queen struts, pulls her hair, punches her guts, and twists her nipples. “We were so tired that we were just doing funny things to each other,” Ginger said, “Then it occurred to us that this could be funny.” “(The first time we did it) nothing happened. He was just quiet. Then a few seconds later, (Shankman) came back and said, ‘Okay, that was great. Let’s do it again. It’s going to be bigger. We’re like, ‘Great!’ We have never heard of this before!”
“They took very good care of us,” said Symoné. “They were like, ‘we want you to look good on camera, but we want you to be comfortable, because you’re going to be in heels.
“It was great because we had a director who understood drag,” said Brooke Lynne Hytes, “so we were like, we didn’t worry about any of those little things (you) usually worry about when you’re working with someone who’s never worked with a drag queen.”
“The thing that I’m left with is that these actors are brave,” Shankman said, “these guys come in in the morning and be somebody, and then that other person becomes somebody else.” It’s the extra layer of twisted mind that was so amazing.
“I make movies for the joy of making them.” There’s nothing fun about releasing a video,” Shankman admitted, “I mean, the amount of internet hate you have to put yourself through on social media… Instagram. However, the energy surrounding this question seems to be a combination of two different concerns: people being replaced by machine intelligence and the long-term concern about the commercial value of a film full of culture that can make it shoot big time. Stop! Where! Train! it’s a crappy movie that was made for a small amount of money in 19 days. I found the movie to have some good parts but didn’t notice anything that seemed scary or disturbing. If anything, I was taken by the human effort that went into it.
Could Shankman work with drag queens in the future? “If someone gives me (hard writing), hell, yes, I would be happy to work with them in big projects because I think the opportunity to use this skill to tell more stories of people is right there. It’s an orchard and we can just pick the fruit.”
