Trixie Mattel: Moving Parts (2019)

December 4, 2019 12:11 PM

Trixie charmed audiences and judges as winner of RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars. But the grind of performing and the pressure of the title proves that heavy is the head that wears the tiara.
posted by xingcat (3 comments total)

I thought, for such a small budget and only one camera operator, that this was a really moving documentary about the other side of drag we don't see from Drag Race, Dragula, or any of the other competition shows or videos of performances.

The documentary basically starts at the point where Katya exits "The Trixie and Katya Show" on Viceland due to stresses involved with her addiction, and follows Trixie as she tries to figure out how to navigate a two-person TV show without her creative partner, launching an album and a music tour, and watching Drag Race All-Stars after it's been filmed.

Overall, Brian Firkus (Trixie) is a terrific narrator of his own life, keeping a steady eye on what he wants to do with his career and understanding how people can hurt you without meaning to, and how to pick up what pieces you have around you and make something of them. I think it's worth a watch.
posted by xingcat at 12:15 PM on December 4, 2019 [2 favorites]

Saw this at the Tribeca Film Festival and really enjoyed it. Trixie is kinder to Katya than many others would have been in that situation. It was a lovely moment to see that they rebuilt their friendship by the end of the documentary.
posted by Julnyes at 2:09 PM on December 4, 2019 [1 favorite]

Finally caught this, and it's been a long circuitous route for this non-drag race viewer (I literally only knew of her and Katya's existence last month, thanks to YouTube algorithms recommending me their Netflix react show). It's been a definite rollercoaster, I feel like I've experienced the highs and lows at a much more compressed time frame. I had to stop and resume again after a bit, because I wanted to look up all these other things mentioned off handedly in this particular part of the world. And thanks to this docu, now I'm hooked on her music too.

(Btw, this docu is finally going to be on Netflix later this month.)
posted by cendawanita at 5:01 AM on March 16, 2020