The idea for the film occurred to writer/director Stephan Elliott when he was walking along Oxford Street, Sydney's "gay strip," just after the annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. The wind was blowing a plume of feathers along the abandoned street, and to Elliott it looked like tumbleweed in an old western. His mind began to race with thoughts of how members of the tightly knit gay and transvestite community would cope in a largely alien environment.

 "The basic comic premise is: three people, who may as well be martians, in the middle of this enormous country," says producer Al Clark. And for Elliott it was an opportunity to revive a grand old film tradition. "The film was a great excuse to bring back the Hollywood musical. Today, drag queens are emblematic of all the style, the glitz, the glamour and the pain of those extravaganzas," says Elliott.

 The combination of performance and glamour, underlined with real humanity, brings an entirely new dimension to the art of performance drag in THE ADVENTURES OF PRISCILLA QUEEN OF THE DESERT. "What this film does for the drag scene is what Sean Connery did for the secret service," says producer Michael Hamlyn. "It glamorizes it." 

 "It's more than dressing up in women's clothes or strict female impersonation," says Lizzy Gardiner, one of the film's wardrobe designers. "It's theater. Drag is our version of Kabuki." In selecting his Mitzi, Felicia and Bernadette, Elliott cast against type and was ecstatic at the results "The three boys showed no fear," he says. "They saw this as a remarkable opportunity." And that no-holds-barred commitment brought an additional layer of excitement to the film. For the actors, drag was more than costuming. It became a liberating means of inner expression. "It was such a release," recalls Hugo Weaving (Tick/Mitzi).

 "I realized that everyone has their own drag inside them and I wanted to get out there and find mine. It is such a liberating, therapeutic experience - and such fun." "In life, I think the reason you act in a particular way is because of the way you see yourself," says Guy Pearce (Adam/Felicia). "When you see yourself looking totally different, it actually releases another side of you. I loved it." Practically speaking, however, not everyone was as enthusiastic about the rigors of drag. "Playing Terence Stamp (Bernadette), whose casting Elliott described as using "one of the most beautiful men in the world and transforming him into an attractive older woman." "I wouldn't recommend the bras, the high heels, the make-up, the heavy earrings or trying to put on stockings with false nails," says Stamp in total deadpan. He has no intention of repeating the experience.

THE ADVENTURES OF PRISCILLA QUEEN OF THE DESERT was shot in 40 days in various locations in and around Sydney, Broken Hill, Coober Pedy, Kings Canyon and Alice Springs. In all, the cast and crew travelled 3,334 kilometers from the metropolitan heart of Sydney to the stark but beautiful desert of central Australia. The production often took on the guise of a road-train forging its way through the outback, camping out in remote and primitive areas with communication virtually cut off except by radio. There was a reason for such verisimilitude. "To make the film appropriately epic," says Al Clark, "we had to make the same journey that the characters do in the film. There was no sense of belonging, so instead there had to be a sense of mission."

 The locations were chosen precisely for their remoteness, providing realistic problems for the cast and crew who had to contend with the dust, the heat and primitive road conditions which wreaked havoc on the equipment, wardrobe and make-up. "Once we left Coober Pedy, that was it," says director of photography Brian Breheny. "We had to make sure that we had enough stock and stand-by equipment to last us until we got to Alice Springs." The intense heat and rough conditions were ruinous to many of the 38 individual drag outfits that were designed for the film, including extravagant head-dresses and wigs. This kept the wardrobe and make-up departments in a constant state of fixing and patching up.

 Then, in the midst of the wilds, the production's stock of condoms disappeared, causing unforeseen problems in giving the three central characters convincing bosoms. (The condoms were blown up and allowed to settle for a day to give them a realistic pendulousness). Freak weather conditions also plagued the production. "We had the annual rainfall of Coober Pedy in just one week and three years worth of rain in one day at Kings Canyon," says Michael Hamlyn. As a result, Priscilla and other vehicles had to be dug out of thigh-high mud. Roads became impassible and the production was cut off for two days, requiring adjustments in the shooting schedule. But Elliott took it all in stride. "I work better under pressure. I was exhausted by the end of the shoot, but the worse it got, the more challenging it became for me."

 Neither rain, nor sleet, nor mud deterred Priscilla from reaching her destination intact. "The shoot had the energy of a rock-video," says Breheny. "Everyone was up. The music was pumping, the costumes outrageous, and the situations bizarre." Says Stamp: "Stephan included a special fun clause in the contract negotiations, which he absolutely fulfilled. It was an incredibly fun film, with an extraordinarily talented group of people." "This film felt as though it slotted into a dimension which had been prepared in advance. To complete the last shot of the film and turn around and see the full moon in Scorpio that had just risen - it was the perfect end to the movie."

 By the end of shooting the ebullience level was so high that each and every male crew member donned drag and posed for the cast and crew shot. A true photo finish.