Jinkx Monsoon will be on Logo TV at 5 pm on April 13, in a film by Alex Berry.
Jinkx Monsoon will be on Logo TV at 5 pm PST on April 13, in a film by Alex Berry.

"Not many 23-year-old boys make such a good 40-year-old woman," Jerick Hoffer says in Drag Becomes Him as he is transforming into Jinkx Monsoon. He's in his apartment on First Hill. The year is 2011. Jinkx's starring turn on RuPaul's Drag Race is two years away. The person holding the camera is aspiring Seattle filmmaker Alex Berry, who's uploading footage to YouTube as he goes.

Jinkx Monsoon on her way to a gig.
Jinkx Monsoon, in the film, on her way to a gig.

At the time, Berry thought he was creating a web series. "We made everything up as we went along. We didn’t plan anything or think anything out. We just let it happen," Berry says. The result is relaxed and unpretentious, revealing footage of a performer who was about to blow up in pop culture.

A year later, after auditioning precisely once, Jinkx got onto RuPaul's Drag Race, and everyone in Seattle thought, "Oh, isn't that cute, a drag queen from our own town, hope she doesn't get eliminated too quickly." And then Jinkx did laps around the fancy drag queens from LA and New York, blowing their timid little minds, teaching the youngsters who Little Edie was, singing better than everyone, jumping into the air and landing in splits, and winning the damn thing, which comes with $100,000.

After that jaw-dropping, much-deserved win, Jinkx didn't disappear into digital celebrity. She toured the world onstage, sometimes performing with Drag Race cohorts and sometimes performing an original show written with Richard Andriessen, The Vaudevillians, that was funnier than anything that happened on Drag Race. These days she hangs out at parties with people like Kathy Griffin.

The documentary is Alex Berrys first feature.
Drag Becomes Him is Alex Berry's first feature.

Berry realized he had a wealth of amazing footage, and he pulled it off YouTube and began to assemble in into his first feature. "I really like intimate, closeup, personal shots," he says, explaining the unique emotional texture of the film. "I really like the camera to feel like a character—like a person watching. I move the camera a lot so that it feels like a person, I don’t use tripods or dollies."

To fill out the emotional dynamics of Jerick's unlikely life story, Berry interviewed Jerick's family members. In the film, Jerick's mom explains why she named him Jerick. "I knew he was going to be famous. And I thought it was going to be football. So I gave him a really cool football name."

The story of this off-beat Portland kid who used to sneak out of his grandma's house (with her clothes and wigs) to perform in underage clubs before moving to Seattle to go to Cornish College of the Arts before going on TV at the age of 25 amazes me every time I think about it.

Jinkx was nominated for a Stranger Genius Award in 2014.
Jinkx was nominated for a Stranger Genius Award in 2014. Photo by Kelly O

Also amazing is the transformation itself, the bizarre, alchemical, beyond-words fluctuation in the universe when the shy boy who was just sitting there pulls on the wig and becomes a brainy, witty, witchy, intoxicating, gorgeous anachronism.

Jinkx admits that the transformation is just as startling up-close in the makeup mirror as it is for everyone else: "I'm looking in the mirror and I don't see Jerick anymore. I'm like: Who is that woman looking at me?"

Berry says there was a difference between shooting the two personas. "Jinkx is very on-fire and energetic and sharp and witty, and Jerick is more… he's very quiet and he has a very introverted side to him. He's much more relaxed. He's Jerick."

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In 2015, Jinkx Monsoon's fans gathered at Cinerama, the best movie theater in Seattle, to get a first look at Drag Becomes Him on the big screen. Jerick's family was there. Mama Tits was there. Every gay man worth his salt in Seattle was there. Jinkx performed, singing "Ladies Who Lunch" from Company with rewritten lyrics. It was hilarious.

Before the film started, Jinkx cracked, "It's kinda like a Pretty Woman story but I haven't found a billionaire yet. Maybe that was RuPaul and I fucked it up."

The film is fantastic: funny, full of life, intimate, and astonishing. It's an amazing story, told simply. If you weren't there at Cinerama to see it on the big screen, well, now you'll get a chance to watch it at home in your underwear. Drag Becomes Him was produced by Seattle filmmaker Basil Shadid and it airs on Logo TV at 5 pm PST, 8 pm EST, on April 13.