Drag queens, comedians and gay icons walked a hot-pink carpet in Hollywood on Monday evening to celebrate the premiere of RuPaul\u2019s new movie, \u201cStop! That! Train!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis movie is about an escape from all the serious mishigas we\u2019re experiencing in the world right now,\u201d said RuPaul, who produced and starred in the film. \u201cIt is the perfect antidote to, oh my gosh, everything we wake up to.\u201d<\/p>\n
In theaters June 12, the movie is a disaster film parody that follows two train stewardesses, Tess (Ginger Minj) and Dee Dee (Jujubee), who lose their jobs on Stank Rail and start working on a fancy high-speed train called the Glamazonian Express. But when the Glamazonian is struck by lightning, it becomes a runaway train hurtling toward a severe and life-threatening \u201cstormaganza.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s about an hour and a half, and in that hour and a half, everything that could possibly go wrong goes wrong, and it\u2019s up to drag queens to save the day,\u201d said Ginger Minj, who competed in several seasons of \u201cRuPaul\u2019s Drag Race\u201d and \u201cRuPaul\u2019s Drag Race All Stars,\u201d winning Season 10 of \u201cAll Stars.\u201d<\/p>\n
The runaway train quickly becomes a national emergency, which escalates to the desk of President Gagwell (RuPaul). The movie is studded with celebrities \u2014 including Charo, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Nicole Richie and Lisa Rinna \u2014 as well as plenty of drag queens from RuPaul\u2019s popular TV competitions.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was so much fun to shoot, and kooky and chaotic,\u201d said Richie, whose character in the film is transporting her dead mother\u2019s coffin on the train.<\/p>\n
Rinna, a longtime fan of \u201cDrag Race,\u201d said that being part of this film felt \u201clike a fever dream.\u201d<\/p>\n
The premiere, which took place at the Harmony Gold theater, had a dress code of \u201cchoo-choo realness,\u201d which some attendees took more literally than others. On the carpet, Betsey Johnson climbed out of a colorful luggage trunk with the help of DD Fuego, who was on Season 18 of \u201cDrag Race.\u201d<\/p>\n
Symone, the winner of Season 13 of \u201cDrag Race\u201d who plays a train attendant named Ayshleiygh in the movie, arrived on the carpet with railroad tracks tied to her back.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe picked them up downtown, darling,\u201d she joked. \u201cJust from the Metro.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rachel Bloom, who plays a train traffic controller named Donna Dusk, showed up to the carpet in a latex train conductor outfit.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis movie\u2019s just about laughter for laughter\u2019s sake,\u201d Bloom said.<\/p>\n
Adam Shankman, who directed \u201cStop! That! Train!,\u201d said he drew inspiration from filmmakers like Mel Brooks, Paul Feig and the directors of \u201cAirplane!\u201d Jim Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like stupid, so when it comes to comedy, give me stupid,\u201d said Shankman, who also directed the 2007 movie \u201cHairspray.\u201d<\/p>\n
The evening also, naturally, put the spotlight on drag performers, who don\u2019t often have the chance to shine on the big screen.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a celebration of an incredibly talented group of people \u2014 it\u2019s about fricking time that they got to star in movies,\u201d Shankman said.<\/p>\n
Inside the theater, attendees sipped on canned Absolut cocktails and took their seats. Various \u201cDrag Race\u201d alumni including Bob the Drag Queen, Mon\u00e9t X Change, Trinity the Tuck and Nicole Paige Brooks were scattered throughout the audience.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am really happy to be here,\u201d RuPaul said as he introduced the movie. \u201cFirst of all, to be a part of this documentary means so much to me,\u201d he added, making the room roar with laughter.<\/p>\n
After the screening, the crowd moved to La Boh\u00e8me, a restaurant in West Hollywood, for drinks and dancing.<\/p>\n
Servers wore T-shirts that looked like the Stank Rail and Glamazonian Express uniforms and offered cocktails including the \u201ccosmopoli-train\u201d (a cosmopolitan) and the \u201chot flashback\u201d (a spicy vodka margarita). Attendees snapped photos in a train-themed photo booth in the restaurant\u2019s garden.<\/p>\n
Inside the restaurant, RuPaul was curating the music from a balcony above the dance floor. As he played songs like \u201cSmooth Criminal\u201d by Michael Jackson, \u201cPoint of No Return\u201d by Expos\u00e9 and \u201cInto The Groove\u201d by Madonna, he danced and twirled from his perch.<\/p>\n
When he put on \u201cHow Will I Know\u201d by Whitney Houston, he ran downstairs to shimmy with his fellow cast members.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love irreverence, I love to laugh, I love to make fun of everything,\u201d he said earlier in the evening. \u201cThat\u2019s what drag is.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are court jesters, and the court jester is really the shaman of any situation,\u201d he said. \u201cThey are what reminds our culture: Don\u2019t take it too seriously. \u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Drag queens, comedians and gay icons walked a hot-pink carpet in Hollywood on Monday evening to celebrate the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242567,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[26531,44161,31317,158,9,24,63,84479,122,124,123,29049,94816,94815],"class_list":["post-242566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-charles","tag-drag-performance","tag-fashion-and-apparel","tag-movies","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-parties-social","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-rupaul","tag-rupauls-drag-race-tv-program","tag-stop-that-train-movie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}