The screening of a stop-motion short film is, perhaps, not the most likely place to find drag queens, designers, socialites, and editors on a Friday night in New York City. Yet the viewing party of “Brim Broome Boulevard,” written and directed by PJ Magerko-Liquorice, brought together a colorful crowd that reflected the project’s artistic daring.
Upon arriving at NeueHouse on East 25th Street, guests were immediately immersed in surrealism when greeted by nearly identical actors, donning dark wigs and headsets, in the role of overly eager PRs. The subtle blending of performance and reality continued through the night.
The subterranean theater filled with anticipation. Over the course of a year and a half, Magerko-Liquorice collaborated with exceptional artists to realize his vision. Jackson Wiederhoeft of Wiederhoeft, a finalist in this year’s CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, created sublime costumes. Photographer Jordan Millington Liquorice, PJ’s husband, creative-directed the film. HouseSpecial in Portland, Oregon, served as the studio. Stop-motion is an infamously laborious mode of movie-making, yet one nearly as old as cinema itself. The first full-length stop-motion film, Ladislas Starevich’s The Tale of the Fox (1937), premiered eight months before Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). In subsequent decades, filmmakers like Tim Burton, Wes Anderson, and Arthur Rankin Jr. have returned to the medium for its special whimsy and imaginative opportunity.
“Brim Broome Boulevard,” which will be shown throughout the country in festivals over the coming months, employs the plot device used in many familiar children’s stories: a colorful land (Wonderland, Narnia, Oz) can be secretly entered by a child, who is in need of escape or education. A shy trick-or-treater named Jasper stumbles, à la Alice or Dorthy, into a magical department store, presided over by a campy shopkeeper, voiced by the drag artist James Mansfield. The Bergdorf Goodman-esque boutique offers the young boy all the sartorial tools necessary for expression and invention. By positioning clothing as the primary means of metamorphosis echoes cinematic transformations like My Fair Lady, Pretty Woman, Devil Wears Prada, and countless others.
After the film, writer Kristen Bateman, who is herself a chronicler on the transformational aspects of clothing, spoke with Magerko-Liquorice about his process and inspirations.
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