Lipstick City
Lipstick City (2016)
Created, starring, and written by: Shea Couleé
In Lipstick City, drag artist, singer-songwriter, fashion icon and consummate performer Shea Couleé takes us to another world.
In this world, Black femmes have wealth and sophistication but also access to a glamorous, banjee underground network of queens who will enact vengeance on any man who betrays.
Lipstick City is a revenge film a la Hustlers, where Shea showcases her bougie and banjee fashion while also celebrating the Chicago drag community, set to an original score of fierce house beats.
When Shea Coulée approached me about wanting to make a film, I pledged to do everything I could, which ended up not being much. Her initial idea was far more ambitious than I had the capacity to support at the time. She needed a real budget, far larger than anything I or the OTV team had fundraised for.
So Shea called on her loved ones and community for support. Kelly Schmader came on the produce, a challenging task to schedule and keep notoriously independent drag artists on a collective path. Dan Polyak, Shea’s partner, designed graphics and edited the project once it was shot. Costume designer Tiger Lily also baked sweets for the fundraiser the team hosted at Berlin. To show the art of drag by putting on her makeup before their fundraiser, Shea and Kelly even did a livestream for the OTV Marathon on ACRE TV, a local livestream channel for artists, years before livestreaming went mainstream.
They raised nearly $10,000 and filmed the piece in locations in Chicago’s gayborhood, with support of local businesses who donated spaces and other essentials.
To get a polished look, the creative team spent a lot of time making sure all performers brought their A-game and took it seriously. “We really sold them on the fact that it wasn’t just going to be a film on our iPhones so they had to look their best,” Dan said.
The result is one of the most ambitious short films released by a drag artist at the time, distinguishing Shea as a unique talent in an increasingly crowded field. The next year, Shea was cast on RuPaul’s Drage Race in its first season on VH1, in what many fans believe is the season with the most talent.
“I think the quality of it and the celebration of the community is very unique and that it will stand the test of time, become like a historical, cultural artifact,” Kelly said.
In all, Lipstick City, while clearly a celebration of Shea’s talent, is also a celebration of a community, a collective effort, from production through its release.
“We had a pretty good reception from the community: people who contributed to the film and core individuals who were there throughout the entire process, supporting the overall vision and direction for the film. And they were very apparent in supporting it within its release!”