The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is a 1994 Australian road comedy film written and directed by Stephan Elliott. The plot follows two drag queens (played by Hugo Weaving and Guy Pearce) and a transgender woman (Terence Stamp), as they journey across the Australian Outback on a tour bus named Priscilla, along the way encountering various groups and individuals. The film was based upon the lives of three actual drag queens—Cindy Pastel, Strykermeyer, and Lady Bump—who were to play themselves but were later replaced with what the studio considered "bankable" actors.

Priscilla, Queen of the Desert premiered at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival, in the Un Certain Regard section. Upon its wide release, it became a surprise worldwide hit and its positive portrayal of LGBT individuals helped to introduce queer themes to a mainstream audience. It received predominantly positive reviews and won Best Costume Design at the 67th Academy Awards. The film is one of only three films set in contemporary times to win the award for Best Costume Design. It became a cult classic both in Australia and abroad. The film provided the basis for a musical, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, which opened in 2006 in Sydney. A sequel, Priscilla Queen of the Desert 2, is, as of 2025, in the process of preparing to be filmed.

Plot Anthony "Tick" Belrose, using the pseudonym of Mitzi Del Bra, is a Sydney-based drag queen who accepts an offer to perform his act at Lasseters Hotel Casino Resort—managed by his estranged wife Marion—in Alice Springs, in remote central Australia. After persuading his friends and fellow performers, Bernadette Bassenger, a recently bereaved transgender woman, and Adam Whitely, a flamboyant and obnoxious younger drag queen who goes under the drag name Felicia Jollygoodfellow, to join him, the three set out for a four-week run at the casino in a large tour bus, which Adam christens "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert."

The trio proceed through remote lands bordering the Simpson Desert meeting a variety of characters. Early on, Tick reveals that Marion is actually his wife, as they never divorced, and that they are going there as a favor to her. They stop in Broken Hill, where they are subjected to homophobic/transphobic abuse and violence, including having their bus vandalized with homophobic and transphobic graffiti.

After they leave the main highway to save time, their bus breaks down in the middle of the desert. Adam spends the whole day repainting the bus in lavender to cover the graffiti. After a homophobic couple turn up but leave them stranded, a group of friendly Aboriginal Australians with whom they perform at a corroboree, help them get Priscilla to Bob, a middle-aged mechanic, in a small outback town. Bob is delighted to see drag performers in his small town and ultimately joins them for the remainder of the journey after his Filipina wife Cynthia leaves him.

Continuing their journey, they stop for repairs at the remote opal-mining town of Coober Pedy, where Adam is attacked by a homophobic gang. Bob and Bernadette save him. Bernadette comforts the shaken Adam, allowing them to reach an understanding. As they near Alice Springs, the others come to terms with the secret of Tick's marriage and resolve their differences.

Upon arrival at the hotel, it is revealed that Tick and Marion also have an eight-year-old son, Benji, whom Tick has not seen for many years. Tick is nervous about exposing his son to his drag profession and anxious about revealing his homosexuality. He is surprised to discover that Benji already knows and is fully supportive. While Benji is playing with Adam, he reveals that Marion has previously been in a lesbian relationship.

Tick and Adam and the group go on a trip into the outback, where Marion insists that Benji go back to Sydney with them so that Tick can get to know him better. Tick and Benji are talking by the river, and Tick hesitantly talks to Benji about what he does for a living, to which Benji replies "Mum says you're the best in the business." Before returning to the hotel to finish out their run of shows, the three travellers fulfill a long-held dream of Adam's, to climb Kings Canyon (Watarrka) in full drag regalia.

When the others are loading the bus to return to Sydney, Bernadette announces she has decided to remain at the resort with Bob. Marion has arranged for her to manage the hotel’s entertainment at the hotel during Marion’s absence.

The film ends with Tick and Adam performing in the same club featured in the opening credits, with the crowd (including Benji working spotlight) cheering on encouragingly.

In a post-credits scene, the dummy attached to a kite that was released earlier in the film is revealed to have travelled to Tibet and landed in a temple where a monk recovers it.

Cast

Production Development The film was based on the lives of three drag queens who performed as Cindy Pastel (Ritchie Finger), Strykermeyer (Mark Fitzhugh), and Lady Bump (Stuart Garske). Carlotta has also claimed to have inspired the film, in particular the character of Bernadette. Carlotta performed with Les Girls throughout her career, who are mentioned by name in Priscilla several times. In her autobiography she also recalls touring outback Australia in a bus with Les Girls and "props hanging out the back... way before Priscilla was ever thought of as a movie."

The original concept for Priscilla was to have Cindy Pastel, Strykermeyer and Lady Bump playing themselves, but this was scrapped once the film attracted a large budget, as it was decided "bankable" actors were needed. This ultimately led to the casting of three straight men with no background in drag, and as The Age wrote, "the people upon whose lives the mega-hit was based were overlooked". The three original queens were profiled in the 1995 documentary, Ladies Please.

Priscilla, Queen of the Desert had been conceived (mainly out of frustation) by filmmaker Stephan Elliott while he waited for a response from Phil Collins about his participation in the film Frauds. Elliott, in an effort to distract himself, wrote a script in just 10 days, but one which felt at the time to be "tricky" to pull off. Rebel Penfold-Russell, Andrena Finlay and Stuart Quin (the co-founders of the production company Latent Image) pitched Priscilla to various financiers at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival, without success; however, before Cannes, they had taken the project to Sarah Radclyffe at Working Title,Clark 1994. pp. 05–06. who took the film's concept to PolyGram with Graeme Mason, who suggested Michael Hamlyn as the British co-producer and, with the backing of the Australian Film Finance Corporation, were able to begin production of the film on a relatively modest budget of 2.7 million Australian dollars.

Elliott and the film's eventual producers, Michael Hamlyn and Al Clark, agreed to work for $50,000 each, a relatively low fee for filmmakers at the time, while the lack of funding meant that the crew agreed to receive takings of the film's eventual profits in compensation for their low salaries.Clark 1994. pp. 06–07 and 10. Due to the involvement of the Australian FFC, only one non-Australian actor was allowed to appear in the film, and Clark initially considered David Bowie, whom he had known back in the 1980s, and later briefly thought of John Hurt, although neither was available.Clark 1994. pp. 14–16.

Casting The idea of casting the actual drag queens upon whom the story was based was abandoned when the producers decided to seek out "bankable" straight actors without a background in drag instead. In May 1993, after travelling around the Australian Outback searching for appropriate sites to film in, Priscillas creators attended the Cannes Film Festival and Marche to advertise their project, hoping to capitalise on the selection of Elliot's first film Frauds, which was "In Competition" at the festival and despite the fact that they had not yet confirmed any actors for the roles. Their primary choice for the role of Bernadette was Tony Curtis, who read and approved of the script, but eventually became unavailable. They then approached John Cleese, who was not interested.

For the part of Tick, they had initially wanted Rupert Everett and for Adam they wanted Jason Donovan.Clark 1994. pp. 38–41. However, at a pre-production casting meeting held at Cannes, Everett and Donovan did not get on well with one another and were found to be openly hostile toward the production staff. In light of this, it was readily agreed that they would not be suitable for the partsClark 1994 pp. 52–55. and the search for their three leading men would resume. However, Donovan would go on to play Tick in the West End musical adaptation of the film.

After unsuccessfully lobbying Colin Firth to play the role of Tick, producers eventually awarded the part to Hugo Weaving. Initially considering Tim Curry for the part of Bernadette, they cast Terence Stamp, who was initially anxious about the role because it was unlike anything that he had performed previously, although he eventually came on board with the concept.Clark 1994. pp. 58–64. Stamp himself suggested Bill Hunter for the role of Bob, who accepted the role without even reading the script or being told anything about the greater concept of the film other than the basic character description, while Australian actor Guy Pearce (who had previously appeared with Donovan in the Australian soap opera Neighbours in the late 1980s) was hired at the eleventh hour to portray the sassy but spirited Adam.Clark 1994. pp. 64–65.

Filming

The Imperial Hotel in Erskineville, Sydney was the filming location for the opening and closing scenes. The Imperial Hotel has hosted drag shows since 1983, and continues to be an icon for Sydney's LGBT community, with its restaurant renamed "Priscillas" in honour of the film. Many scenes, including one where Bernadette encounters a butch, bigoted woman named Shirley, were filmed at the outback town of Broken Hill in New South Wales, largely in a hotel named Mario's Palace (now simply the Palace Hotel), which Al Clark believed was "drag queen heaven".Clark 1994. pp. 24–25. Some small scenes were filmed in the All Nations Hotel.

They also decided to film at Coober Pedy, a remote rough-and-tumble opal mining town in south-central Australia which featured prominently in the film. The executive producer, Rebel Penfold-Russell, appears as the marathon runner.Clark 1994. p. 31.

Initially, they tried to get permission to film upon Uluṟu, but this was rejected by organisations responsible for the monument, such as the Uluṟu Board of Management, as it would have been in violation of Indigenous Australian religious beliefs.Clark 1994. pp. 13–14. Instead, the scene was filmed in Kings Canyon (Watarrka).Clark 1994. pp. 69–70. Dialogue from the scene was rewritten slightly to accommodate the new location.

Post-production With filming over, the director and producers began editing the footage, repeatedly travelling to both London and to Los Angeles, which had then just been hit by the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Scenes were deleted on the advice of early viewers to shorten the film.Clark 1994. pp. 110–111.

Release Box office The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert took $18,459,245 at the box office in Australia, which is . It was the fifth highest-grossing Australian film in Australia of all time.

Being an Australian film, not an American-produced Hollywood blockbuster, Priscilla was released as a minor commercial product in North America and other English-speaking nations.O'Regan 1996. p. 88.