Once upon a time there were three little girls. Except they didn’t go to the police academy. Oh, and they technically weren’t even girls.

They were three drag queens, Coco (performed by Clinton Leupp), Evie (performed by Jack Plotnick), and Varla (performed by Jeffery Roberson), each with their own stage personas and enthusiastic followings.

But veteran TV producer-writer Richard Day, the Charlie to their Angels, took them away from all that and put them in a movie he’d written and was directing called Girls Will Be Girls. Made on a shoestring and filmed almost entirely in Richard’s house, the plot involves an old, never-was actress (Evie), her put-upon best friend (Coco), and their new roommate (Varla), an aspiring actress who may or may not be aware of the role Evie played back in the 70s in undermining Varla’s mother’s promising movie career.

left to right: Clinton Leupp, Richard Day,
Jack Plotnick, Ron Mathews, Jeffery Roberson

The result? Some of the raunchiest, most politically incorrect sequences and one-liners ever set on film, but also some of the funniest and most original (see our review).

The movie, which had a modest theatrical release in 2003, has seen its status as a cult film grow since then. It will make its television debut on IFC, the Independent Film Channel, on March 16th at midnight, and will repeat later in the month (including a “children’s matinee” on March 26th at 7 PM).

In addition, Richard and the Girls girls have moved online, recently introducing a series of original short “webisodes” for their website.

Ironically, Day saw the project as a television series all along. “I thought it was a hundred million dollar idea,” Day says. “The Golden Girls as drag queens.“

But others didn’t quite see the potential. Day pitched it to television executives all over Hollywood. “We couldn’t get arrested,” Day says. “The answer never came back yes. I like to say, ‘No one will ever look stupid turning down Girls Will Be Girls.’”

One person told them flat-out, “If we go out with that pitch, we will lose all credibility. No one will buy it.”

At one point, Showtime did commission two scripts for a would-be series. Day was worried that without the over-the-top element of drag queens reading the parts, the show’s bitter humor would “read” uglier than intended. He lobbied unsuccessfully for a table-read. Sure enough, Showtime passed.

“People who don’t get it always say the same thing,” Days says. “They say, ‘Why don’t you just cast women?’ But drag is about taking a female character and imbuing it with a male sexuality and a male aggression that creates a dynamic that’s hilarious. Drag exaggerates everything to a cartoon level. Drag queens don’t really look like women, so you don't take anything they say or do or that happens to them seriously."

While pitching the project to a gay television network, one executive asked, “How is this different from blackface?” Day says, “I thought to myself, ‘I could explain it, but I have the feeling no matter what I say, the answer is no.’”

Next page! "I look like a cheap drag queen in some tawdry homemade video!"