Rodger Mikhaiel | Lypsinka at "Boybar" in NYC 1993 / 1993

lypsinka at the boybar

by Douglas Messerli

 

Rodger Mikhaiel (filmmaker) Lypsinka at “Boybar” in NYC 1993 / 1993 [10 minutes]

 

Rodger Mikhaiel is an amateur filmmaker who intentionally/accidentally captured some of the seminal moments of the early 1990s gay culture in New York City. In this 10-minute film we have an over-the-top performance by the famous drag artist Lypsinka (John Epperson) who in the famed Boybar sings her heart out in a rendition of Charles Strouse’s and Lee Adams’ famous song “But Alive,” from their musical based on the original story by Mary Orr that was filmed as All About Eve, a Broadway hit, Applause (the script by Betty Comden and Adolph Green). Lee Adams, in 2024 still living at 100 years of age, never wrote cleverer lyrics, playing off of Stephen Sondheim's and Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story song "I Feel Pretty."

I feel groggy and weary and tragic

Punchy and bleary and fresh out of magic

But alive, but alive, but alive!

 

I feel twitchy and bitchy and manic

Calm and collected and choking with panic

But alive, but alive, but alive!

 

I’m a thousand different people

Every single one is real

I’ve a million different feelings

OK, but at least I feel!

 

And I feel rotten, yet covered with roses

Younger than springtime and older than Moses

Frisky as a lamb...

 

   And who might have imagined the lyrics?:

 

I feel half Tijuana, half Boston

Partly Jane Fonda and Fosse Jane Austen.

 

     Epperson not only gives us a credible performance of that number but after picks up several imaginary phones (in a time before the cellphone) to present an almost maniacal rendition of film-based conversations including melodramatic portrayals of figures such as Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Judy Holliday, and various other ingenues speaking out about their telephonic suffering from heterosexual and fellow feminine betrayal.

     Often film historians fail to see the value of these probably illegal recordings which attest to the gay scene that might otherwise be lost.

 

    As a publisher and creative artist myself, I truly respect the fact that artists, performers, and literary creators should be protected from illegal copyists and imitators. But I do truly feel that some of the current copyright laws block our attempts to perceive the full historical picture of what was happening in our society, particularly at a time when we need more than ever to reveal it. Films such as those shot by Mikaiel in his few years in New York City in the early 1990s ought to be revered and not slashed down as a copyright infringement.

 

Los Angeles, February 15, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2025).