“Jackie is just speeding away/thought she was James Dean for a day/then I guess, she had to crash/valium would’ve helped that bash”

Life and art were indistinguishable for Jackie Curtis. The playwright, actor and drag artist was constantly on a stage of his own making, sometimes for two to three days straight thanks to the input of copious amounts of speed. A New York native, Curtis sought the glamour of Andy Warhol’s Factory scene as a high schooler, bringing in plays conceived in amphetamine fits and starring in some of Warhol’s early films—Flesh and Women in Revolt—with fellow drag star Candy Darling. While Warhol’s films and Lou Reed’s tribute in song may be Curtis’ best-known efforts, Craig Highberger’s documentary Superstar in a Housedress reveals the actor’s ultimate impact on the New York avant garde scene as well as gender-bending stars such as David Bowie.

The film is at its best when it evokes the fluidity embodied by Curtis and her fellow stars. “One thing that was delightful was that you never knew how Jackie was going to show up. When he would come to Jane’s New York apartment he might be dressed as a woman or as a man. You never thought twice about it. You sort of envied someone who was able to casually cross that barrier back and forth, and live his life as a kind of performance art,” says friend and film narrator Lily Tomlin.

By representing gender identity as a performance—a surface established in the moment, subject to constant change—Curtis questions our assumptions about what it means to be man or woman. Even in drag, his gender was thinly veiled; as he explains during one of his performances, “I don’t wear falsies, I don’t wear fake eyelashes…I’m just me.”

Curtis’ plays were madcap, drug-fueled farce. The titles were as grand as the performers: Glamour, Glory and Gold, Heaven Grand in Amber Orbit, and Vain Victory: The Vicissitudes of the Damned. In them, drag queens and nude actresses would parade on stage, simulating sex and exploding into frenetic bursts of song and dance. Their dialogue was a mélange of B-movie trash and advertising buzzwords, amplifying and lampooning the noise of the surrounding culture.

Other drag queens fill the film’s reminiscences, anchoring it proudly with outrageous stories and recounted misdeeds. Holly Woodlawn, Alexis del Lago, and Rose Royalle are among those who remind the viewer that, for all the fluidity the film espouses, their lives aren’t a fashion choice, but rather an expression of their deepest character. Their self-creation is inspiring; particularly when one considers the disdain, and even hatred, their appearance must have engendered. In many cases the scars of their own genesis are still visible in their dingy backgrounds—Royalle is interviewed in a public toilet before a performance—and defensive pride.

The joyous noise inevitably gives way to a familiar, muted ending. Drugs were ubiquitous from the beginning, fueling the art, and gradually shouldering it aside. The finale retains the appropriate spectacle, though, with a coffin stuffed full of Kool cigarettes and martini shakers, a magic wand tucked beneath the elbow, and a gravestone covered with enough glitter to be visible from afar as it receded into the distance, much like Curtis himself.