LEARNING CURVES

A Conversation With Burlesque Documentarian Deirdre Timmons

By Scot Bastian

In 2007, Deirdre Timmons followed the experiences of ten students enrolled in Seattle’s Academy of Burlesque under internationally acclaimed instructor Miss Indigo Blue. A Wink and A Smile is a lavishly filmed musical documentary that plays like a cross between The Full Monty and Moulin Rouge—a sexually charged exploration of female empowerment with song and dance.

On Screen (OS): Define the term burlesque.

Deirdre Timmons (DT): For me, burlesque is musical theater that involves stripping. If you talk to Miss Indigo Blue, the head of the Academy of Burlesque, she’d say, “Somebody with some clothes on, something happens, and someone walks off the stage with less clothes on.” I think it’s a combination of vaudeville, and cabaret, and stripping, and I think there’s usually some comedy thrown in there.

OS: What motivated you to make a film about it?

DT: I went to Sundance [in 2007] and I’d never been to a film festival except a couple movies at the Seattle International Film Festival. I watched probably twenty films, and about half of them I thought, “I can never do that,” or, I couldn’t do that now. But the other half, I thought, “I could do that.” I could do that and that and that. But what I wanted to see, I couldn’t find. I wanted to see musicals and I wanted to laugh and see some reality in there and I wanted to see something sexy and fun—and there’s just a dearth of that kind of filmmaking. So when I came back to Seattle I said “I’m going to make a movie, what’s it going to be?” I spoke to a woman who was a student at the Academy of Burlesque and I knew, the minute she said she was doing burlesque. It’s fairly shallow really. I just wanted something fun, and musical, and sexy, and sweet, and sort of female-based. That’s important to me. Somebody might want to make films that might be a lot more alluring to a male audience, but I wanted to make something that might appeal to me and my girlfriends.

“I think what attracts a lot of women and men to it is that they don’t feel they’re too fat to get on stage, or they’re too old to get on stage. They can just be who they are.”

OS: I assume that it is mostly women who want to be burlesque performers. What attracts them and what do they get out of it?

DT: It’s mostly women, but there are “boylesque” performers in town. There are boylesque students—not in this film. We just let whoever signed up for the class sign up for it, and it happened to be all women this time. Some of the most dramatic performances in Seattle are men. But by and large it’s women, and what I think attracts women to burlesque is as unique and varied as the women. In the film we have women who do it because they simply want the experience. We have other women who do it because they want to become more comfortable with their bodies. We have other women who are doing it because they want to play around with power and how to present themselves on stage. It’s kind of all over the map. For sure, in the film each woman has a different reason for doing it. Some are really simple: “I just want to be pretty.” “I just want some glamour inside.” “I just want to push some of my own erotic envelope.”

OS: Are there people who are very against it as sexist? Is that view represented in the film?

DT: I haven’t run into anybody who’s wildly opposed to it. The women do not go all the way down to nothing. The performance is very narrative-based, very comedically based. It’s not, and it doesn’t feel, objectified. They don’t attract the trench coat crowd. The audience is at least fifty percent female in burlesque houses. It’s more about fun and beauty and the glorification of the female and the male form than it is about stripping. You’ll see, on stage, women and men that are all sizes, all shapes, and all ages and all races. There is no “right” burlesque body. There is no “better” burlesque style performance. I think what attracts a lot of women and men to it is that they don’t feel they’re too fat to get on stage, they’re too old to get on stage, or too—anything. They can just be who they are and they will receive audience appreciation because they just got up there and they did it, and they’re proud of it, and they were entertaining, and they loved every minute of it. We had one student in our class who’s fifty-one, and it was her fifty-first birthday present to herself, this class. She was amazing!

OS: Is it hard to find performers that will let you film them?

DT: Yes, because everybody and their dog wants to film women taking their clothes off. And, ultimately, these women have to protect themselves and their privacy. I had to talk to a lot of producers in town, and a lot of performers, before I had gained their trust and explained to them exactly what I wanted to do.

OS: Can you tell me something surprising in terms of the difference between your expectations and the reality of making this film?

DT: I think the women opened up more than I was expecting. That was surprising to me. It went very personal, very fast, with the subject matter—which was really nice. It was probably the most exhausting thing I’ve ever done. I don’t know whether that was surprising, or not, but it was really exhausting. There was a lot of drama. There is this whole process when you learn burlesque. You get taken down to the essence of who you are, then you build yourself back up. I think a lot of the women went through that, and a lot of the crew went through that too.

OS: What else was surprising?

DT: Okay, this is a really stupid thing. This is so “my-bad” or “duh” but it was a lot more “sexual” than I thought it would be. I mean, these are a group of women who decide to take a class to strip. There is this huge sensual element to it. But, for some reason, I just thought they’d all want to be doing this for glitter and glamour purposes. But it turns out that there is this huge erotic element to the film that I kind of wasn’t expecting—and I don’t know why.

OS: That surprised you?

DT: It did! I just thought they wanted red, glittery lips and rhinestone pasties. It really is an extension of their sexuality, and that surprised me, for some reason. This is very much a feminist film—about women taking back their bodies. And that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to make it. I wanted to portray some reality to women and how they feel about the issue of getting up on stage and removing their clothes and not just a sexual portrayal of women objectifying themselves. There’s a lot of feminist theory behind it. Why does feminism preclude celebrating the female form?

A WINK AND A SMILE (2008)

Deirdre Timmons – Director

Miss Indigo Blue – Leading Lady

Marie-Joelle Rizk – Director of Photography

Elena Windgate – Assistant Director

Peter Waweru – Camera Operator and Acting DP

Christian Hansen – Camera Operator

Matt Sheldon – Sound Recordist

KC Lynch – Production Assistant