Dicks: The Musical is the best time you'll have in a movie theatre this year... if you can take it

Queeries is a column by CBC Arts producer Peter Knegt that queries LGBTQ art, culture and/or identity through a personal lens. 

Contains strong language.

Sometime around 1:30am on the first night of this year's Toronto International Film Festival, the festival's defining moment (at least for me) arrived.

At the Royal Alexandra Theatre, in the middle of a film's culminating musical number, choir singers planted in the audience stood up and started singing along to what was happening on screen. They belted out the lyrics "God is a f*ggot" as inflatable penises began to fall from the theatre's ceiling, and everyone present was treated to the all-too-rare feeling of pure, unadulterated joy. 

The movie that was playing onscreen was, of course, Dicks: The Musical. Opening the festival's Midnight Madness program that night, the film would go on to rightfully win one of TIFF's coveted People's Choice Awards, and is now spreading its unhinged version of joy in theatres all across North America.

Written by comedians Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson, Dicks is essentially an extreme queering (think John Waters-level queering) of The Parent Trap that follows allegedly identical twins (Sharp and Jackson, who do not look alike) who conspire to reunite their divorced and deranged parents (Nathan Lane and Megan Mullally, naturally). A full-blown musical featuring flying detached vaginas and "sewer boys," Dicks is directed by Larry Charles (Borat) and also stars the likes of Bowen Yang (as God) and Megan Thee Stallion (in her film acting debut).

It is unlike anything you'll see in a movie theatre this year (or any year, really), and everyone involved in the film would likely be the first to say that the movie is not for everyone. But for those who have the taste for Dicks? Be ready.

"The Toronto premiere was like 2,000 people at midnight," says Sharp. "But we've said to other audiences to treat it like that in your mind. If you go with your group of girls who are ready to have that mindset, it is such a fun movie to be out with people who are on the same wavelength of just 'let's have a good time at the cinema.'"

"We did a Q&A even last week, so we just caught the very end of the movie and people were quite literally screaming," Jackson says. "Screaming! And that is just really, really that is so wild and so fun to see."

Jackson and Sharp met roughly a decade ago doing improv in New York City. 

"There were not that many gay people around at the time, so we found each other," Sharp says. "And we did an improv show together at midnight for, you know, probably eight people. I think we both [said] to each other, 'You're funny.' And then after that, we started hosting a variety show and became friends. Then we were like, 'We want to write a two-man musical.'"

That idea would ultimately become Fucking Identical Twins, which they originally performed as Upright Citizens Brigade Show in 2014… in the basement of a grocery store. The show would run for a year and a half, and became legendary in New York's queer comedy scene. It was optioned by 20th Century Fox in 2016 before eventually heading to A24 (likely a much better home for it anyway) after Fox merged with Disney.

The title obviously changed, and instead of directing themselves and playing every part, the legendary likes of Charles, Lane and Mullally joined Sharp and Jackson as their director and onscreen parents, respectively. 

"It's hard to verbalize exactly what we learned from all of them," Jackson says. "There were so many out-of-body moments. There was a time when we were doing a table read and it was Josh, myself, Megan Mullally, Nathan Lane and Larry Charles. And then Nathan's like, 'Oh, Larry, by the way, Mel Brooks says hi!' And then Megan's like, 'Oh, I haven't talked to Mel in a few years.' And then they all just start telling Mel Brooks stories."

"And then Aaron and I are like, 'We haven't talked to Mel in a long time either!"

As for Charles — who, in addition to Borat, played a pivotal role in both Seinfeld (writing 18 episodes in its first few seasons) and Curb Your Enthusiasm (directing 19 episodes) — both Sharp and Jackson were in awe of the way he guided Dicks to completion.

"I feel like Larry was really big in developing the film and being like, 'This film should never hold back. If it doubts itself once, the people will smell it,'" Sharp says. "So he was always just like, 'Let's go there and make it work.' I feel like Nathan and Megan are both like that too. So the idea is that you should go for broke and if you're going to, you should give 110%. It was such an admirable thing to see, especially from people of that legendary status."

Sharp and Jackson seem well on their way to finding that status themselves, as does their Dicks co-star (and longtime friend) Yang. Sharp, Jackson and Yang all came up together in New York's queer comedy scene alongside other comedians like Joel Kim Booster, Matt Rogers, Patti Harrison and Julio Torres. They're all part of a pretty remarkable uprising in American LGBTQ comedians who are unapologetically bringing their queer sensibilities to huge film and television projects… and who are doing so while remaining good friends.

"I think people sometimes think we met through being 'successful – and I'm using air quotes hard here — comedians,' but it's like, no, we all were doing this shit for years for zero people and for negative money. So it has been fun to watch so many of these people get to do such cool shit. But yes, it is true. We're sort of a fun little cabal of freaks." 

"I do think we are all so lucky," adds Jackson. "We're all very different. We all have different styles and different points of view, and yet we all have just sort of this umbrella sensibility that we all like to play in. We're all absurd. Julio's sensibility is so different than ours, but it is absurd. I mean, he'll do stand-up for 20 minutes about colour. "

"It's so nice to have a community of support and people who have been loving you and we've been loving them for many, many years. And also we truly must say we are so grateful to all of the queer people that came before us and just truly bulldozed down the wall so we were allowed to play in the rubble."

We are all so lucky to be able to go a movie theatre this weekend and watch Sharp and Jackson and Yang play in that rubble, which is being put to gloriously good use with Dicks.

Dicks: The Musical is now playing in cinemas across North America.