For those needing a refresher course in the long struggle for queer rights and visibility as the Trump administration cracks down on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts, Corey Payette’s musical drama Starwalker is all-too-timely.
The veteran Canadian playwright and filmmaker with his latest feature has combined drag queens and musical song and dance to produce a rallying cry for continuing pride. “We can’t let the darkness envelop us. We need to continue to have joy in our rebellion,” Payette told The Hollywood Reporter ahead of a world premiere for Starwalker at the Inside Out Toronto 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival.
The musical drama has Dillan Chiblow playing Eddie Starwalker, a young man estranged from his family and indigenous culture and looking to survive on the streets of east Vancouver as a call boy. Eventually, Star, as he is known to his friends, finds a welcome home in The House of Borealis, a drag house, as a Two Spirit indigenous drag queen, or a runway performer that embraces both a feminine and male side.
Payette’s unique narrative structure for Starwalker has him combining a camp and at times dark drag queen aesthetic with uplifting songs and dance typical of popular musicals. “When you’re feeling oppressed and being oppressed, the most rebellious thing you can do is express joy. Because with everything that is holding you down, holding you back, you can get swallowed in that darkness and lose sight of the big picture,” he explains.
Payette, an artist of Oji-Cree heritage, spent around 15 years working to master indigenous storytelling through the lens of contemporary musicals. The result was Children of God, a musical drama set around an Oji-Cree family that has their children taken away to an infamous residential school in northern Ontario, and Les Filles du Roi, a feature musical co-written with Julie McIsaac and centered on young women sent to New France (now Montreal) as brides for settlers in 1665.
With Starwalker, Payette has exchanged historical stories for contemporary east Vancouver and gone beyond the heartbeat of the indigenous drum and the song of indigenous ancestors to add club soundtracks and drag queen stage performances. Payette’s latest musical feature film that he wrote and directed was originally developed as a TV musical series for then WarnerMedia via its Canadian Access Writers Program to advance the careers of artists from diverse communities.
But the 2023 merger of Warner Bros. and Discovery and a change in leadership was followed by the studio passing on the TV project. So Payette bootstrapped his way to directing Starwalker as a low budget feature film shot on a Vancouver set filled with racks of costumes and makeup tables so characters could achieve glittering runway looks on the club stage or in dressing rooms.
“It’s shiny, but the filmmaking is scrappy in the same way drag artists are scrappy, pulling together outfits and sewing them, trying to make something beautiful out of something ordinary,” the director says. As Starwalker and other drag queens strut about the club or dance on stage, there’s the contrast of their songs with lyrics penned by Payette speaking of love and loss and being marginalized and shamed because of their complex gender identities.
Payette had Dillan Chiblow in mind since 2019 to play Starwalker and wrote his musical songs around his main lead’s voice. The result on the big screen has the drag queen persona Starwalker, when grounded in Star’s indigenous culture, allowing him to discover the courage and self-forgiveness to return home.
“He’s on a journey to understanding why he (Starwalker) never shows up for people. He’s struggling so much, going back and forth, not being able to show up. That’s because no one ever showed up for him,” Payette explains. Jeffrey Follis, who plays Levi Borealis, and Stewart Adam McKensy, who plays Mother Borealis, are both seasoned drag performers very much at home on a club stage.
At the same time, Payette, besides showing polished drag queen performances in Starwalker, with his steadicam camera follows characters offstage and especially in dressing room scenes as each speaks of trauma and possibly finding love, joy, family and a home.
“For me, it’s not about making them perfect, universal characters. I’m looking for their flaws too, the little parts that make them unique. That’s where audiences can see them as real and feel like your friends, as people in your life that aren’t part of drag culture, but have qualities of people you feel familiar with,” the director argues.
Payette’s goal in revealing drag queens filled with the same hopes, dreams and disappointments as people everywhere, as they spill their guts and hearts to one another, is challenging how gender identity and expression is represented in the chaos and despair of our political age.
Here the musical film hinges on song and dance, including a final show-stopping number from Star where, returning to a park at night from where the movie’s opening scene took place, he delivers a heart-wrenching song about forgiveness and healing.
“It really is a circle. You can’t tell a song without that song having a dance, and without that dance telling a story and that story having a song. So when Star is connecting with his Two Spirit identity and celebrating that, it makes perfect sense that would come out in dance, in song, in story, because that’s what musicals have access to,” Payette says.
Much as Starwalker like most indie movies has been many years in the works, Payette sees his tale of rebellious queer joy possibly capturing the zeitgeist as transgender people face escalating attacks with a blitz of executive orders out of the Trump White House and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation from U.S. state politicians.
“We are all just people and we are so much more alike than we are different. When we can see each other that way, and see each other not as different, but as part of a whole, that’s where we will think of other people’s rights differently and we will be able to advocate for others in a more fulsome way,” Payette insists.
