Charles Busch (2017)

Well, you've made my day. I still can't quite believe I wrote an entire novel. I'm very proud of it. Don Caspar was based on a few men in my life, and some of the most bizarre episodes are the most based on life! However, the furniture story is made up. But the scene where he took me to the apartment where the stolen furniture was stashed is 100 per cent true!

I'm doing a lot of writing. A couple of new plays, a book. No dates on when I'll be doing them yet. However, I'm constantly touring with my cabaret act and I'm loving that. I have a bunch of dates coming up. My website Charlesbusch.com is up to date on all of them.

That two person "Psycho Beach Party" must have been fun. Angela today? Well, you know, most of the stars of her era like Joan Crawford were fervently against speaking out about politics and religion. However, a lot of them were conservative Republicans. I like to think Angela, (really Barbara) who was so ignored and belittled, would have been more sensitive to the underdog.

I'm ecstatic. Thank you for askin'.

Without a doubt, Camille. I think she gives one of the greatest performances ever on film. I also like Ninotchka a lot.

I'm very flattered to be asked, but it seems to work best for me when I act in my own plays. I loooved doing that reading of Red Scare. Wouldn't mind doing a full production of it.

I became besotted with Norma Shearer as a child when I first watched "Marie Antoinette" on TV. It was on the four thirty movie and shown in two parts. I was always attracted to elegant women on the screen. Might be because I was raised by my Aunt who had some of those dignified but embattled noble qualities.

Roman, I've been working on my memoirs for the last couple years! Started and restarted it several times. Wrote eighty five pages single spaced and I was still only thirteen years old. I have a clearer idea now of how it should be. Back on it again.

Good luck tonight! I'll be seeing the play in two weeks! Lee is pretty much a completely fictional character. Marjorie, Frieda and Ira and even Mohammed are inspired in some ways by real life people, but oddly enough not Lee. But I have certainly come across outrageous, worldly women who have a questionable relationship with the truth.

I don't think it should be mandatory. I'd rather have a wonderful flamboyant woman play a role than a miscast, lesser talented actor in drag. But it does generally seem to work better in the plays I've written for myself when a fellow is cast.

I loved doing that show. So many great songs and I loved the whole concept of the women touring with the USO. I'd be willing to do it somewhere.

Absolutely. My friend Robert Osborne didn't become the host of Turner Classic Movies till he was sixty. And I'm counting on it!!!

There are always young kids who are fascinated by classic film, the American songbook etc. I was one of them. Naturally, I wish young people today would be more interested in cultural figures of the past, be it drag or singers or actors. With drag, since most contemporary actresses (of the past thirty years!) tend to be rather low keyed and not flamboyant, I think most young drag performers are influenced by bigger than life pop music personalities like Madonna and now Lady Gaga and Beyoncé etc.

Thank you. I first played Miriam Passman in a short piece that was part of a solo show I did in the mid-nineties called "Flipping My Wig". I think I was inspired by sifting through all of the postcards of performers playing at Don't Tell Mama. But no specific person.

No. Always wanted to see that movie. That movie was cast by the director, Bob King, in LA. I was in New York and he would run things past me.

During my death scene, the camera was supposed to slowly pan on my dead face. My eyelids kept twitching. I didn't even realize it. All of the principals were in the scene watching me. BD Wong told me the secret was keeping my eyes shut for ten seconds before they called Action. Tried it. Failed. Then Rita Moreno told me "I learn at Fox that the secret to playing dead is keeping your eyes wide open for ten seconds until they call action. Tried it. Failed. They had to move the camera quickly over my face.