The Queen of Ireland is a documentary that tells the story of the famous Irish drag queen Panti Bliss. It made its US premiere at the Seattle International Film Festival last weekend.
It was a moving and often hilarious documentary that followed Rory O’Neill and his drag persona Panti Bliss, through his career. It especially becomes interesting when Panti Bliss appeared on “The Saturday Night Show” in January of 2014 and called out some members of the Irish press, by name, for homophobia. That caused a bit of uproar and gave Panti Bliss a national (and international) profile. That unexpected attention also helped Panti Bliss become a public voice of a movement that helped Ireland become the first nation in the world to approve marriage equality at the ballot box.
It must be the dream of every documentarian to start making a movie about a person or character you think is interesting and they become a civil rights hero in the process of filming.
While in town for the screening of The Queen of Ireland, I sat down for an interview with Rory O’Neill, director Conor Horgan, and producer Katie Holly.
#LGBT equality panel at Seattle/US premiere of @QOI_Panti. Big thanks to @MayorEdMurray @PantiBliss @DrGaryJGates pic.twitter.com/u74l4f1qHM
— Irish Consulate W US (@IrelandSanFran) June 4, 2016
I was wondering if you guys could talk about what made you want to make this movie and tell Rory’s story and how it came to be?
Conor Horgan (director): Rory and I have known each other for about 20 years at this point because I used to do all of the photographs for the Alternative Miss Ireland pageants at home and about 6 six years ago, after Katie and I had made our first feature film together, which was both of our first feature films, we got together and we were talking about what we might do next and a couple of different things came up and Katie, knowing that I knew Rory, had the idea of approaching Rory and seeing if we could make a documentary about him.
We knew Rory at that point as being this absolutely fantastic drag performer and somebody who did get involved in speaking up for social justice and for equality, so that’s really where it all started.
What I loved about the movie, and I really did, so I’m really glad that we can talk about, was just that … I felt that I really, really liked watching you. I didn’t know much but I found that … There was a story that was a lot bigger than just this person I really like and it had a really great ending, of course.
Rory O’Neill: Well, that was lucky.
Conor: Very lucky.
Rory: When they started filming, none of that was on the horizon, really. There was no marriage referendum on the horizon, the Pantigate kerfuffle thing, none of that was planned. Conor and Katie were thrilled when I got into trouble. They were more thrilled when the marriage referendum happened, and then ecstatic when there was a good ending to the movie because it could have been a “no” vote and we could have been going down to my hometown the week after the vote, if it had been a “no” it would have been a very different ending to the movie. They ended up with a feel good movie by accident rather than design.
You would have had a movie made about you regardless, it was just that the Pantigate issue blew up and then the vote…
Conor: We had already been filming for about three years at that point, not full time I have to add, but we would occasionally get in touch with Rory and see what was happening and we’d go along to some events and film them, but we were just seeing how things might develop.
Rory: Almost none of that footage made it into the movie in the end. (laughter)
Conor: We got much, much better stuff when Pantigate hit and then everything that spiraled out of that and the Noble Call speech, which we filmed for our documentary, but put up on Youtube the next day and then that became a whole internet phenomenon of its own.
Were you guys surprised at how big Pantigate became because when I looked it up I was like, “This doesn’t sound like anything too controversial … This sounds like common sense. It doesn’t sound like something that would cause a furor.”
Rory: We were all shocked, but after the TV show, I had no idea there was any problem. Neither did the people in RTE, the TV station. Everyone thought nothing of it, until they got sued, and then everything that followed down after that came as a shock to everybody. We couldn’t believe it. Our libel laws are quite archaic and difficult to understand.
Conor: They are weighted on the side of the plaintiff. [crosstalk 00:03:39]
Rory: They’re weighted on the side of the person who complains, so it’s very difficult to … If you have enough money to go after somebody, it’s very difficult for them to defend themselves because the onus of … Not to get too technical. In most countries, the onus is on the person who claims to be defamed to prove that they were defamed whereas in Ireland the onus is on you to claim that you did not defame them, and that’s a harder thing to prove in court and there are jury trials so it can often come down to personality and vagaries of a jury. Nobody wants to end up in court on a defamation case in Ireland.
I was surprised at that … I didn’t think you said anything really controversial.
Rory: No. Well, neither did I at the time.
Conor: We also don’t have a First Amendment guaranteeing all kinds of free speech in our country.
I want to ask what’s going to come with the movie after today, after it plays this weekend.
Katie Holly (producer): We finished the film just in time for its release at home. We really wanted to get the film out at the end of last year because it was such a big year with the referendum in Ireland. That was our first outing [at home in Ireland]. This is the first festival that we’ve played since then. We just signed with a sales agent a month ago. The next the film is going to Australia, to the Sydney Film Festival and we sold to Transmission, who are an amazing distributor there, so they’re going to release it theatrically in the summer. Then we’re working on other festival dates and distribution plans.
I want to talk about your story, I guess. How did you create the Panti Bliss character? I know you talk about that in the film a little bit.
Rory: I had done some drag in college. It was much more arty, nutty sort of stuff. Then when I went to Japan in my early 20s, I met an American drag queen there and we hit it off immediately. He’s actually here today. He’s from Atlanta, Georgia. I had no plans to be doing drag when I went to Japan the first time but I accidentally met this American drag queen and we really got along. We ended up then doing drag together as a double act. It was at that point that I decided I didn’t want to be in the nutty, crazy, arty drag I had done as a student and decided to do something different. That this was sort of a proto-version of Panti, who is based on an American aunt of mine. A little bit of Dolly Parton and a lot of Maggie Smith in a movie called “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” 1968, amazing film, amazing madame. Those are the three major influences. Maybe a bit of Firefox thrown in.
I thought you’re act was really cool, from what I saw in the film. Then when Pantigate happened, did that galvanize you to become more outspoken?
Rory: Not really because I think I’ve always been quite mouthy. It just, it changed the temperature around with me, so I became a little more conscious of how I was outspoken or exactly what I was outspoken about. The whole thing amplified Panti’s voice even more. It became a little more of a responsibility. I’m not quite as carefree about exactly what I say anymore because I can’t be.
Because you’re now speaking as an activist?
Rory: Yeah, people put an awful lot of weight on what I say nowadays, in a way they didn’t five years ago. Everything is taken very seriously, so I’m just very aware of that.
That must have been a big shift then, having to go and choose what you say a lot more carefully.
Rory: Yes. I made a conscious decision not to worry about it too much in the context of my live shows because I figured if you paid your money to come and see the show, you must vaguely know what you’re going to get. That’s a very intimate space, no matter how big or small the theater is, it’s quite and intimate exchange between me and the audience so I feel like I made a decision not to worry about it in that context, but in any other context, yeah, you’re forced to consider it in a way that I didn’t consider it before.
How has that changed your performances at all?
Rory:I h ave tried not to let it. Like I said, I consciously decided not to consider it too much in live shows, but it’s almost inevitable that there has been some change in a way, just because I’m aware people hear what I say differently than they used to.
Panti Bliss and Conor Horgan.
Right. Is there … Maybe you could answer this, how did the, besides becoming the activist, how did the story that you wanted to tell change from when you started filming three years ago.
Conor: I think, in all honesty, when we started we had a character more than a story. In fact we really had two characters because Panti and Rory, whilst they’re very close and cover a lot of the same ground effectively, in the film anyway, are two different characters. We were hoping there was a bit of a story and we had some really great archived footage of … Panti gives a State of the Union address at Dublin Pride every year and there was a particularly incendiary one in 2009, which is the year before we started filming where Panti, we actually used a bit of it in the film, and Panti is striding up and down saying, “Any asshole can get married but you can’t. Get angry about that.”
When we went into it, we were looking for more of that and having gone to all of the Alternative Miss Irelands and a lot of the underground clubs that Rory’s friend Nile and Rory ran in the ’90s, there was always going to be a hugely entertaining element. These two strands were just there, in a sense, for the taking. Then the whole world started changing around and that was, as Rory said, absolutely thrilling, most unexpected, but we were very happy that the film was developing. We were also very happy as Irish citizens that this thing was taking place in front of our eyes. It was just a really exciting time to be in Ireland and to see Ireland changing as quickly as it has done.
I was thrilled to find that Ireland was the first country, I think, in the world where …
Conor: By popular vote to prove equal marriage.
I think that we in the US were real hesitant here to approved marriage equality. Everything was so done gradually and we legalized marriage equality here in Washington by popular vote. We were like the fourth state in the country and it was all going really gradually. I think that seeing it happen in Ireland, let the rest of the world know that it can pass in the ballot box too.
Conor: Sure, if you’re going to happen in that well known, conservative country or one that has been a really Catholic and quite conservative country up until relatively recently, it can happen anywhere in the world.
I just want to ask if there’s anything that you want people to take away from the film or anything that I didn’t ask about that people should know?
Conor: What I just said. (laughter)
That was incredible that that happened.
Rory: Change is really possible and sometimes change comes from unexpected quarters.
Yeah, for sure. What about you Katie?
Katie: I always really like, there’s something that Rory says, or Panti says, on the day of the referendum when he’s asked about what would he say to people that voted “no”, “do you forgive them?” It’s like, “I don’t have to forgive them.” Also the idea that actually if the referendum was to happen a week later, that probably more people would vote yes. I really like the fact that the film captures maybe an element of seeing the country embrace something like this and that the sky didn’t fall in.
A personal experience that I had, a relative of mine went to see the film, brought someone with them who I knew had voted “no” and apparently after the screening they were very quiet in the car arm and asked, “What’s going on with you?” Because up and through the film, the referendum happened in May and then the film came out in October and the person was like, “I just wish I’d seen that film before I voted. It would have made me vote a different way.” I think that’s something that it’s good to know exactly that change is possible but that it … That people can embrace it in so many ways.
Conor: I would just say that what I would like you to have asked me is how did we make a film that is about such serious and historic and world-changing events but also manages to be so much fun? My answer would be, “We put Panti in it.” (laughter)