The House of Impossible Beauties by Joseph Cassara

We’re seeing a resurgence in bathhouses and sex parties and things that were happening in the 1970s before AIDS. Yeah, I keep thinking about Prep and the access of Prep and how that is changing queer culture. I was trying to find as much information as I could and just steep myself in everything and just absorb it, so that when I went to the page later I felt comfortable enough with what things looked like and what things sounded like.Īs it stands today queer culture and life is completely different than what you portray in your novel, but some of the themes you touch on - family, self-acceptance, violence, love, and tragedy - feel timely. I also listened to a lot of music of the time. Outside of the documentary I just started creating an archive on my laptop, just a folder - I would add photos to it that I would find online or links to articles with interviews that people had done about their experiences at Paradise Garage, for example.

JOSEPH CASSARA: First it started with the documentary Paris is Burning: besides watching it a thousand times, trying to look for different things each time that I was watching it, sometimes I was looking for the setting, others I was looking at the clothes, other times I was just watching for the speech patterns in the characters. ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You didn’t experience the queer scene in ’80s New York, yet you manage to resurrect it with such vivid detail here - tell me about the process behind creating the world of House of Xtravaganza.

The House of Impossible Beauties by Joseph Cassara