Peaches Christ sits in a silver-upholstered barber’s chair and poses before a space-age backdrop, surrounded by bright studio lighting. Her hair springs upward like one huge flower blossom, creating a platinum-blonde halo above extravagant blue eye makeup and pouty dark red lips. Her tailored dress is an iridescent lavender. Its high collar frames facial expressions ranging from indignant to distracted.

The photographer, a slightly-built young man with a stubbly goatee and head of unkempt black hair, stands on tiptoes to peer down into the viewfinder of his mounted camera. A deluge of high-pitched beeps assails the ear as the camera works to capture Peaches playing the part of an over-the-top B-movie starlet. In between shots, while sipping from her soda can through a plastic straw, Peaches readily admits “My entire goal with any kind of photograph is to make other drag queens jealous.”

Peaches is the center of attention, as usual. It is a role with which she has become quite familiar.

She is perched atop San Francisco’s underground world of drag performance and filmmaking. For 10 years she has fostered a loyal cult following with her bawdy on-stage persona and a run of well-received short films. But the future of Peaches Christ and her ultra-talented alter ego, Joshua Grannell, is a storyline yet to unfold. Prompted by his previous cinematic success and a desire to appeal to larger audiences, Grannell is putting the finishing touches on his first feature-length script. Though Grannell, as Peaches, has starred in much of his earlier work, Peaches won’t be a part of his newest film venture. So in the midst of his biggest challenge yet, Grannell must now balance his role as underground icon with his appetite for mainstream stardom.

“I feel a real freedom with what I do. I’m pursuing this feature film and it’s my number-one priority right now, but I still feel really free to just conceive of the weirdest show in the world,” says Grannel. “And I’d be able to put it on and pretty much know that a few hundred people will show up. And that’s just amazing to me sometimes when I think about it.”

Grannell grew up in Annapolis, Md., where he played the part of the weird kid. He was obsessed with movies and horror, and reveled in the humorous side of violence on the big screen. He organized extravagant haunted houses that he’d put on in the woods, holding auditions for the neighborhood kids for roles. His dad played a re-occurring part as the chainsaw guy and his mother sold tickets. He loved to put on gory makeup and go down to the beach where his mom was hanging out with her friends. He would roll around in the sand, dripping with fake blood, while the ladies screamed in horror. Though Grannell’s parents were often concerned with their son’s peculiar fascinations, they remained supportive and taught him a lesson he took to heart: always be good at whatever you do, and do what you love.

Grannell loves movies. He loves watching them and he loves making them. During his first few years in San Francisco, Grannell became enamored with performing and promoting Peaches. In the process, he got sidetracked from his passion for filmmaking and eventually experienced a breakdown of sorts. Depressed, because he wasn’t making movies and sick of feeling limited as an artist, Peaches became the cliché bitter drag queen.

“I was miserable. It totally revolved around the fact that I wasn’t doing what I really wanted to be doing,” says Grannell, 32. “I went through this whole thing where I hated Peaches. I remember putting on pantyhose and feeling all this self-hatred. It was total drama.”
As motivation, Grannell created a new pre-Halloween event in 2001 and issued a press release announcing a new film would premiere at the first ever Russian River Massacre. Grannell didn’t sit down to write the movie until the Monday before the show. Born out of that inspiration was “Season of the Troll,” a short film made in one week on crappy video cameras and a budget of $20 that sparked a trilogy of drag queen horror flicks.

Grannell calls his first feature-length script (which is premised in his short film, “Grindhouse”), the big transition. It’s the big plunge, an attempt to break out from the underground. Grannell has been writing and work-shopping his script for the last year, and plans to ask “lots of people for all sorts of money.”

“I really believe in this script,” says Grannell. “Whether it’s for $10,000 or $3 million, Grindhouse is going to be made into a feature-length film.”
Grannell feels he has proven himself as a filmmaker. His self-financed shorts have been accepted into international film festivals and inspired a retrospective of Grannell’s films that has shown as far away as Belgium. In search of a peaceful place to finish his feature script, he left late last month for a week of quiet at his parents’ home in Maryland.

When Grannell first arrived in San Francisco a decade ago, fresh out of the film program at Penn State University, he immediately immersed himself in the experimental world of drag queens and performance art. His alter ego became a regular at Trannyshack, the city’s most debaucherous and experimental drag club, which just celebrated its own 10-year anniversary. Peaches quickly gained notoriety there, something she aggressively pursued.

In 1998, Peaches established Midnight Mass, a summer film series that continues to show at the Bridge Theatre (where Grannell is the general manager). At first, nobody knew who Peaches was or understood what exactly she was trying to do. Midnight Mass features some of Peaches’ favorite cult movies with live opening acts such as mother-daughter mud wrestling and drag queen roller derby. Through word of mouth and advertisements in the personals section of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the event quickly gained momentum. Midnight Mass is eccentric, obscene, and oh-so San Francisco. Peaches and her friends put on irreverent pre-shows that blend bawdy language and heavy sexual overtones, but maintain wit and charm. On February 25, Midnight Mass kicked off a 2006 road trip with its first-ever East Bay showing.

The carpeted staircase leading down from ground level at the Act 1 & 2 Theatre in Berkeley is dirty and worn. The hallway at the bottom opens up into a low-ceiling room littered with cardboard boxes, rolled-up movie posters and random props. A U-shaped, brown sectional couch is abuzz with various drag performers, all readying for their part in “Peaches’ Playhouse,” the live opening act for the Midnight Mass’s showing of “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.” The essence of hairspray and makeup hangs in the air.

Peaches, looking flawless, stands near a concrete support column. “Is it filling up out there?” she asks the theatre manager expectantly. “They better laugh.” Her teased curly black wig flies in all directions, hovering just below the fluorescent lights. She is clad in a short-sleeved, skin-tight gray pinstripe skirt suit that extends down to just above white patent leather platform high-heels. Vivid, red glittery lipstick is a thorough match for the brilliant red glitter bowtie. In her Pee-Wee Herman knockoff, Peaches is barely able to move her legs from the knee down.

A collection of blue-painted water, sewer and electrical pipes runs from end to end along the far wall of the dressing room. “This is when you know you’ve hit the big time,” exclaims Peaches. “Someone’s bowel movement literally a foot away, rushing toward the bay.”

The show is a success. Cock jokes, lewd innuendo and Peaches’ clever improvisation provide just the remedy for a crowd that presents itself initially as somewhat apprehensive. The humor is selfless and engaging, all the while maintaining an impertinent edge. Strictly speaking, it is perfectly Peaches, and vintage Midnight Mass.

Topping off Grannell’s burgeoning portfolio is the San Francisco Underground Short Film Festival, which he conceived and operates with friend Vinsantos. Grannell remembers getting rejection letters from film festivals, especially local ones, and then attending the events and seeing movies that weren’t as good as ones he and his friends were making. He wanted to create an outlet for young aspiring artists where they could have their films shown “with popcorn, and seats and a big screen.” The show (hosted at the Bridge) has almost become stressful for Peaches because they can’t show all the films they’d like to. Peaches confesses she and Vinsantos don’t claim to be choosing the best films, only those that “work for a really great, satisfying, fun show for this night.”

Though eager to meet other challenges, Grannell is and always will be Peaches. Midnight Mass is entering its ninth summer, and he can’t imagine coming this far and not seeing it through a tenth. After two successful shows in Seattle in 2005, Midnight Mass will debut in New York this spring. The midnight showcase is where Grannell truly blossomed creatively and still strives to create new and exciting performance art.

“I want to continue to evolve as Peaches and define where and what you can do with drag,” says Grannell. “And I’m going to continue to pursue being the horror filmmaker that I’ve always wanted to be. In some ways Peaches Christ is a huge liability for me as an aspiring professional filmmaker, and in other ways it’s been hugely helpful.”

In one underground world, Peaches Christ has risen to rule the roost; while in another, Joshua Grannell pursues stardom, undaunted.

“Weighing which wins is really hard to do at this point. I’m too far in it. I’m too knee deep. At this point, my only choice is to go for it, really.”