The American Cinemateque’s Salute To Bette Midler, 1988
I handmade 1500 three dimensional
souvenir program covers for The
American Cinemateque’s Salute To Bette
Midler in 1988. I painted, photographed
and printed the text, background, basic
face as well a photo from Bette’s high
school yearbook that one of The
Harlettes stole for me. Then, with I5
volunteers, glued on electronic parts,
camera flashbulbs, film strips and wire
for eyes and hair. I never felt like I
nailed her mouth so I ripped 1500 xerox
copies of a photo and glued that on too.
There were only two days to do all the
gluing. By the time I got to the last
hundred copies, Bette’s lips were
hanging off the end of her chin.
Gluegunning on wire hair.
May art assistant and party co-captain,
Pristine Condition, a former Cockette,
and me with a tenth of the Bette Midler
covers done. one of the most challenging
parts of the job was finding a place to
store them once they were assembled as
they couldn’t be stacked on top of each
other. Transporting them to the
Hollywood Palladium where the American
Cinemateque’s event was help a mile away
took 30 car and truck trips.
Gluing on Bette’s
eyeballs and mouth on
the last 100 covers. I set
up and assembly line and
smacked on whatever I had
left of circuit
boards, capacitors, fuses,
tin ribbon, pink house
paint, feathers, watch
parts and 35 different
kinds of wire.
