Karina on SpoutBlog

As SXSW 2009 approaches we’ll be asking filmmakers to spill the superficial details about their films, to tell us all the deep personal details of what makes them tick, and –– new this year! –– reveal who they had to sleep with, in the incestuous conspiracy-minded secret society that is the wider SXSW community, in order to get their film programmed at the festival.

28 year-old Katie Turinski makes her filmmaking debut with Sissyboy, an Emerging Visions documentary following a trio of Portland-based drag performers, known for their “audacity, ambivalence and social commentary.” This is, apparently, not your daddy’s drag queen movie: in the trailer, the Sissyboy crew is described as “a group of faggots who don’t fit into their normal lives” putting on “an afterschool special for adults.” Turinski answers The 5 Questions We Ask Everyone below; the Sissyboy trailer is above.

Tell us about your movie. Who did you work with, why did you make it? Give us the reductive, 25-word or less, “It’s like [pop culture reference a] meets [pop culture reference b]!” pitch, then explain what the quick and dirty sell leaves out.

Sissyboy is a big, loud, beautiful mess of glitter, booze, and cynical drag queens. At least on the surface. But it’s also the story of 12 talented artists with razor-sharp wits and a fetish for exposing the more ridiculous aspects of society by BECOMING those ridiculous aspects of society. They’ve been called “gender terrorists”, “performance art revolutionaries”, and the “kind of drag queens your mother warned you about”; but underneath all the spectacle is a group of amazingly insightful and sensitive individuals who have found an outlet for their self-expression that often leaves their audiences simultaneously delighted and horrified. Sissyboy is a chronicle of the group’s last year of existence through first-time filmmaker Katie Turinski’s eyes.

Do you have a day job/a non-filmmaking occupation that raises money for your filmmaking efforts? Tell us about it.

My full-time job is as an assistant editor for an advertising agency in Portland, Oregon; I’m very lucky to be working in an industry that’s based in story-telling. However one of the greatest challenges in making this film was that it had to be done entirely during weekend and evening hours, and mustering the energy after a 10 or 12-hour workday to go and shoot a performance or begin to wade through the 65 hours of footage I’d accumulated in the year I followed Sissyboy wasn’t always easy.

Have you been to SXSW before? If so, tell us about your funniest story from the experience. If not, what are you looking forward to re: the festival and/or the city of Austin?

I have never been to SXSW, nor have I been to Austin before. I hear everything’s “real big” there. But honestly I am really just looking forward to simply being amongst such a concentration of talent and experience. I’m hoping to have a lot of fun while I’m there and to soak it all up like a sponge.

Let’s get hypothetical: You’re on death row. The night of your execution, you’re allowed to watch any two films of your choice. What would you pick for your last-night-on-Earth double feature?

Wow. This is a tough one. I think my last night on earth double feature might have to be Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise and the Maysles brothers’ Grey Gardens.

There’s been some criticism that the only way to get into SXSW is by being a part of an “incestuous scene where everybody knows everybody.” So who did *you* have to sleep with to get in? (Metaphorically or literally: are there any SXSW filmmaker(s) past or present that you’re close with personally and/or professionally, and how have those relationships helped or hurt the process of producing your film and getting it seen?)

HA. I actually have no ties to the SXSW scene, and feel a little bit like I won the lottery or something. Since i’ll be one of the new kids on the block down there I’m really excited to find out what the scene is all about and there are certain people i’m anxious to meet/see.