- Once upon a time (like the mid-'90s), a party promoter named Michael Schmidt had a novel idea: drag queens dumping the lipsynching routine to sing rock and roll live onstage. No one knew what to expect when they first opened the doors to Don Hill's on the fateful night that SqueezeBox! was born in downtown Manhattan. With Mistress Formika presiding as hostess and den mother, the drag queens rocked New York nightlife in a way no one had ever seen before. But what began as a place for queer misfits who'd rather hear a guitar riff than a disco beat turned into a pansexual free-for-all. Straight or gay. Preppy or punk. Man or woman (or somewhere in between). All were welcome at SqueezeBox! as long as they were there to have fun. Though celebrities like John Waters, Debbie Harry, Liv Tyler, and Bob Gruen were regular fixtures, the movie stars, drag queens, punks, and everyone in between partied elbow to elbow, waiting for a glimpse of what would happen on stage. And what a stage. Not only was it graced by legendary performers like Deborah Harry and Jayne County-it was also where the Toilet Boys were born and John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask started working on Hedwig and the Angry Inch. But when big, bad Giuliani blew through New York nightlife to "clean it up," the party ended-with chins up and middle fingers in the air-after seven rocking years. more...
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About the film
It was 1994 and Rudolph Guiliani was just starting his first term as mayor of New York City. New York was in transition still suffering the financial hangover of the economic devastation of the 70's. A deal had been cut years ago to turn the porn palaces of Times Square into the family friendly mall that it is today. Downtown was in flux too. The music scene shifted from the Ritz and Palladium to the much smaller Brownies, Mercury Lounge and the marginalized CBGB's. In this vacuum, a group of gay rock and rollers sought to create a place where they would feel comfortable. As outcasts from both the gay and rock worlds, they wanted a place where rock bands ruled in a drag-centric gay environment. The only rule was there was to be no lip-synching. What happened for seven years at the corner of Spring and Greenwich every Friday night in Don Hill's nightclub was a virtual harmonic convergence of maniacs where rock bands, drag queens and performance artists were allowed to create and develop their wildest ideas for a crowd that was open to anything! more...
- Two months before the final SqueezeBox!, Lyle Derek, one of the original go-go dancers for the party, thought there was a story to tell and a moment not to be missed. He brought his two friends, Zach Shaffer and Steve Saporito, on board to produce with him, and with a rag-tag group of cameramen, they set out to document the last blow-out party in 2001. Then began the task of tracking down archival video and photographs. After mining through roughly 100 hours of footage and interviews and creating several rough assemblies, Erin Nesbit was brought in to help make sense of it all. As the story's task master, she required each element to be earned, and after a year of work the story had been carved out to where the heart and soul, of Squeezebox were vividly realized.
With story intact, it was time to bring in people who were going to add visual language to the film. Enter Sean Pierce and Dan Dome. Sean is one of the stars of the film, as lead guitar player of the Toilet Boys, and Dan has been part of every shoot and edit from the beginning of the project, so it was natural to turn to them to help us cross the finish line. From the very instant he had the rough cut and the raw materials, Sean set out a blazing pace of raw power and enthusiasm and began to dazzle us with graphics and imagery that made the story breathe. The result, we hope, is a film that will both entertain and inspire.