Film

Pickup's Tricks

Director

Gregory Pickup

Year

1973

Pickup's Tricks is a beat documentary of Hibiscus and the Cockettes, who were pioneers of San Francisco’s underground queer theater in the early '70s. It is a multifarious blend of sexual anarchy; a raucous and unscripted mix of liberation and elation as rough and spirited as the lifestyle that created it. The film profiles Hibiscus, founding member of the Cockettes, the psychedelic drag queens that performed midnight musicals at the Palace Theater in San Francisco. The film includes a rare screen appearance of Allen Ginsberg, clean-shaven and costumed in "acute drag" as a Yiddishe Mama with a painted-on third eye. (pickupstricks.com)