Fenton Bailey, one of the architects of the RuPaul’s Drag Race franchise, has written a book. When I first picked it up, I was expecting a typical memoir. Sure, ScreenAge has plenty of remembrances from a life lived well, but it’s so much more than that.

ScreenAge is one-third a monograph on how TV has changed our lives and our world, one-third queer history lesson, and one-third memoir. Somewhat surprisingly, Bailey allocates nearly as much space in the book to discussions about Andy Warhol and his impact on our society as he does to stories about growing up in England, moving to New York City for college, the band he was in when he was young, or even Drag Race.

At first, this seemed odd to me as I read ScreenAge, but after finishing it, speaking to Bailey at length for this cover story, and poring through his answers to my questions, it made sense. In his own way, Bailey is a Warhol for our times — for the Screen Age.

While some may be surprised by this comparison — and the author himself may either love it or shun it immediately — there are plenty of similarities between the two endlessly creative minds.

Bailey has a keen eye for the unique and the underappreciated, just as Warhol did. The TV producer’s body of work reflects his ability to turn the common, the maligned, and the misunderstood into art. He elevates people who are usually looked down upon or seen as obscure and elevates them to the level of the extraordinary via documentaries, shows, and movies.

His many quotes and opinions are thought-provoking, poignant, and controversial (something I believe he relishes). They’re also crying out to be shared and reshared, which is right out of Warhol’s playbook.

Like the legendary pop artist, Bailey is a master of his craft, though he may not receive the recognition he truly deserves. Despite his many accomplishments, which include five Emmy Awards, his genius is often only recognized later, and perhaps only through someone else’s work.

Bailey shined a spotlight on Tammy Faye Bakker long before Jessica Chastain won an Oscar for her portrayal of the televangelist. He recognized the brilliance of Britney Spears years before the Free Britney movement took over. He saw the star that is RuPaul before many knew what drag even was.

He has been ahead of the curve for decades, and is only just now getting the attention and accolades he’s long deserved.

METRO WEEKLY: What was the impetus to write ScreenAge?

FENTON BAILEY: We now have premium television, but aside from that, I think television’s had a bad rap, and I’ve often felt defensive in explaining why I went into television. Even from the point of view of Randy [Barbato] and I met at film school and the intention was that you were going to go and make films, television was looked on as some sort of ghastly illegitimate child.

It’s not dissimilar in some ways, to growing up and realizing that you are gay. You sort of get this sense, this pervasive sense that somehow that’s not a good thing and that things aren’t going to turn out well.

And I saw a parallel between those two things. As long as it has taken me to come to terms with being gay — that sounds like some sort of disability. Embrace it and come full circle to the realization that nothing is wrong with me, and there’s nothing wrong with being gay. I think in the same way nothing is wrong with television. On the contrary. It’s been this magical transformation of our society and has allowed people who were invisible and people on the margins to be seen — the gay community especially.

It was thinking all that through and then thinking, “Gosh, there aren’t that many books out there that argue that television is a good thing.” There’s tons of books that say it’s the bane of culture and the end of our civilization. Lots of doomy screeds against television. But it’s hard to find books that are positive about television.

MW: You have a way of thinking about things and seeing things that is unique to you and unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The way you just described that, making the connection between being gay and ostracized and TV. Is that the through line that connects all your work? Is it sort of the championing of the lesser known? What would you say it is?

BAILEY: I talk about this in the book a bit. [Film critic] Elvis Mitchell once said to us, “You seem obsessed with characters who need to be seen.” And at that moment, because he’s kind of brilliant, [we] didn’t really have a good answer for him. Again, that felt like a bad thing. Like, “Oh. If you have a need to be seen, that means you’re kind of a show-off. That means you’re kind of superficial.” That really what counts isn’t visuals. What really counts is substance and words.

I feel that as a society, we have all these hidden prejudices that we inherit to varying degrees of subtlety. But actually, in a media age — and we do live in a media age — the need to be seen is more than just a need to be seen. It’s the need to be seen to exist. And that if you aren’t seen, you don’t exist.

It was something like “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” The idea that, “Okay. You can be gay in the military. Just don’t be seen.” What a disastrous policy that was and all the harm it caused in myriad different ways. Denying a person their being seen is a pretty serious psychological way to erase them. So I think what connects all our work is that these are characters who I would say insist on being seen. Not because they’re show-offs, but because being seen is the right to exist today.

MW: What made now the right time to publish this? Was this a pandemic write?

BAILEY: The pandemic was very helpful, yes. We filmed Drag Race in the U.K. and the Down Under version, so I was spending a lot of time in quarantine. You would go and then you’d have to stay in your hotel for two weeks. That was convenient and helpful.

I think the “Screen Age” is a complicated thing. I don’t think it makes life simpler. That is a fact of life — that it gets more and more complicated. I’ve noticed over the last five years or so that there is this yearning to turn the clock back to what is perceived to be a simpler time. This war against wokeness is the rise of these dictatorial voices, whether it’s Russia’s Putin, Trump, or what’s happening in China. All of them have a desire to go back to traditional ways. It seems to me that you can’t turn the clock back and you can’t stick your head in the sand. People will try and there’ll be tremendous pain and suffering as a result, as is happening right now.

The ban on drag in Tennessee, I didn’t see it coming, but I also know it’s not going to stop. This is just the beginning. The book addresses that. My personal belief is that drag is the perfect medium for our times because it understands that things are really complicated and also there’s a wink in it. There’s a playfulness to it that I think is critical if we’re to navigate all the challenges we face, but it is serious.

MW: I initially thought this book was going to be a straight up and down memoir, but I found myself learning more about things connected to you than just your life. It’s part memoir, part queer history lesson, part art history lesson. What made you want to write it in that format?

BAILEY: That’s a good question, because you’re right. It does start off as a little bit biographical. More as a sort of mise-en-scène, I suppose. I don’t know if this is really the answer to the question, but I have always loved pop culture. So much pop culture has been on television. For me as a little gay kid growing up, that’s been my go-to. That’s been my security blanket. It’s in that world that I’ve found a space free from judgment and inspiration. My life has been all about pop culture, so everything I’ve been involved with making has had a connection to that.

I really wanted to join the dots, I suppose. Sometimes people say, “Oh gosh. Everything you do is so varied. You do a film about the Statue of Liberty, you do a film about David Wojnarowicz or Robert Mapplethorpe. You do a film about Britney Spears.” They’re like, “What on Earth connects these things?” But to me they’re all part of the same thing: pop culture. And of course I see Drag Race very much as a part of all that.

MW: I was expecting something later in the book that essentially never came. There was little to no mention of your partner in life and in work, Randy Barbato. He’s largely absent. Was that a conscious choice?

BAILEY: Oh, no. No. No. No. Randy is on every single page. We met at film school. I met him a few days after arriving in New York and in one form or another, we’ve been together ever since. At film school and then doing the Pop Tarts [the band they were a part of in the ’80s], and then doing World of Wonder. None of this would’ve happened without him.

The book isn’t really about our relationship and it isn’t really about, “And then we met this person and we met that person.” The book is about the ideas and me trying to articulate what it is about these things that I think are really important and significant. I feel we’re in a time when these things are not being understood or valued or respected.

In fact, they’re being identified as targets to erase. Randy read the book, he had a lot of input and he, along with a lot of other people… it’s not that they’re excluded, it’s just it’s about these ideas. And I do feel there is an urgency to articulate them because I don’t know that they are being articulated. My fear is that absent this, they will be destroyed.

I’m not a doomy person, but I do think what is happening with the radicalized right, with the fundamental evangelism movement, with the QAnon conspiracy theories is deadly and a real threat. A clear and present danger.

MW: In your mind, what can be done to turn things around for the LGBTQ community, or for America in general?

BAILEY: I think the challenge we face is this. Those of us on the rational side of things believe that facts and truth should matter. It’s almost like we’re playing a game of chess. There’s an agreed set of rules about how things should be prosecuted. I don’t mean people being attacked, I mean, how you move forward. The other side doesn’t believe in any of those things and they’re not playing this game of chess. They’re not playing by the same rules. So everything that we set store by — the truth and truthfulness — it doesn’t count.

For a long time, we’ve been thinking if we could just explain things, if we could just say, “Look. This is true. This is reasonable,” then we would be making progress. There would be a dialogue with the other side. The other side isn’t interested in that. You catch me at a point where, I suppose, after years of thinking about it, I don’t have the answer. What do you think?

MW: Like you said, I spent years thinking, “If I could just have a conversation about what being gay is or explain what transgender lives are,” but it’s not about that. I refuse to watch political debates, for example, because they used to be debates, and now it’s just two people saying whatever they want and there’s no point to the conversation anymore. My only hope is it passes. I think the crazy moves onto something next. In a couple years it won’t be banning drag and trans people in bathrooms, it’ll be something else. I don’t think any of them really care about this.

BAILEY: Well, I hope you’re right. I think George Santos represents a new level of insanity. It’s ironic also that he’s gay and that he’s done drag. We always thought there was a clear line between us and them but what we now see is that particular kind of madness — we as gay people are not immune to it.

But to me it is this reluctance to embrace complexity and recognize that life only gets more complicated. It’s interesting, too. Someone like Kari Lake and a number of other people, it’s interesting to read how they were before their radicalization. They were liberal Democrats, so you are even more surprised. How did they flip? I suspect what you’re saying — that it’s not because they actually believe these things, but it’s because they see a route to power and that that’s what’s important to them.

It forms the whole theory of the “Screen Age,” which is, in this complicated time, that everybody does need to be seen. That struggle and that fear of not being seen and feeling powerless because they’re not being seen is leading to some of this craziness.

Someone was saying, “Is this a good thing or a bad thing?” I don’t know. I don’t think the “Screen Age” has an inherent moral quality. It just is. Television came along and has completely changed our lives. And our lives now are about interacting with screens. On the one hand you can say, “Oh. That’s a terrible thing.” On the other hand, we’ve all been connected to people we would never have met or known in our lives. And that, to me, is a kind of magic. That is fantastic.

I have two kids, and I was doing an interview yesterday and the writer was saying, “Yeah. My son’s home from school and he’s sick and all he has done for two days is watch YouTube videos. And my wife is really upset about this.”

As a TV producer and as someone with kids, I’m like, “What do I do about that?” I let my kids watch TV. I let them watch pretty much what they want to watch, hoping they will learn about narrative and storytelling on one hand, and also learn about other characters and have compassion and empathy for people who are not like themselves and that at some point they’ll not watch quite as much YouTube.

MW: That leads me to another throughline. The ability to look at something that a lot of people see as bad, whether that’s being gay, screen time, or a certain character, person, whatever it may be — and not just follow that, but insist on turning it around and finding the beauty and the good in that. Where do you think that comes from?

BAILEY: I think TV has been disrespected as a medium. The critics love premium TV. But that is another iteration of the movies. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But I’m talking about, like, what are the sort of inherent forms of the medium? And I believe that pornography, reality TV, infomercials, public access — these are inherent forms of the medium. They’re killer applications, I suppose, of the “Screen Age.” Contrary to everybody saying how bad they are, culturally, they have enormous impact. Profound impact. And I explore the parallels between pornography and reality TV and the way they kind of co-evolved. Maybe it’s one man’s trash is another man’s… What is that expression?

MW: Treasure.

BAILEY: There you go. If you look at infomercials, there is no other world in which Richard Simmons and Susan Powter could have become stars. They tick every box of why they couldn’t be stars or why, for example, Hollywood wouldn’t let them in. But they are radical people. I would describe them both as gender nonconforming but also very incandescent characters.

MW: Someone’s going to win an Oscar for playing Richard Simmons one day. That’s my prediction.

BAILEY: You know what? That’s right. I love that. The Eyes of Tammy Faye, the movie version, won two Oscars. No disrespect to Jessica, who was amazing as Tammy Faye, but I don’t think that was a performance, that was a manifestation. I feel that those awards, in my heart, go to Tammy. Because she was so disrespected, so attacked for what she did, and her genius was not recognized. But now it is. And it can only be recognized in the guise of giving the ultimate award to a Hollywood actor. You couldn’t give it to Tammy herself and this was the way to do it.

There’s this two-part documentary that’s come out about George Michael in Britain. I haven’t seen it, but it’s basically saying, as a lot of documentaries lately are, that the media treated certain people appallingly. Britney Spears is another example. But the George Michael one focuses on his arrest in the bathroom for cottaging and all the shame that was heaped on him afterward, which he then turned around with this brilliant video. I write about it a little bit in the book.

To me it’s how these characters who get no respect and are considered to be working in the medium of trash, whether it’s pop music — which now does get respect, but it didn’t when I was growing up — or home shopping or televangelism. To me, these characters actually are fantastically heroic figures.

By the way, that sounds like I’m whining, I’m being a victim about it. I’m not. I’m just taking a different point of view.

MW: So is the idea then that something with a large enough impact is inherently important? Or even inherently good?

BAILEY: No, not necessarily. But I do think that it makes sense that things with large impact, we should write about them or evaluate them or talk about them. Wrapping them in silence doesn’t make them go away. It’s like King Canute telling the waves to go back. Television does exist. Home shopping does exist. Pornography does exist. We should talk about it because pretending it doesn’t exist doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. That’s the height of madness. It’s drag queens today, and in the ’80s, pornography was the target that the loony Right were at war with. Let it be said — at war with it, while they were the biggest consumers of it.

For a long time, trying to make the history of pornography was an impossible task. People just looked at you funny, like, “Why would you want to do that?” And, “Oh. No. We would never do that.” As if you were some sort of crazy person for even suggesting it. But vast amounts of pornography are produced and consumed. There used to be a… Well, there still is a pornography industry. Now you also have user-generated pornography, which no one ever predicted. But it speaks to the fact that people’s desire to express themselves sexually on camera is just a part of who we are. It’s not some terrible sin.

The sin isn’t refusing to talk about it, refusing to acknowledge. The sin is pretending it doesn’t exist while consuming it. It’s just so weird.

MW: One of the other things I loved most about this book is the devotion to, or real respect of all things camp. What is camp, why is it important, and why do you love it?

BAILEY: Camp is a powerful force, even a weapon and camp has been recognized, thanks to Susan Sontag’s essay, as a form or as a kind of aesthetic. But [it] has never really been taken seriously and has always been marginalized and somewhat undermined. I would say generally it’s categorized as a guilty pleasure, and yet I think camp is this really powerful form of expression.

A lot of people have said that it’s a very hard thing to define. But I actually think it is possible to define it, and that the key part of that definition is that it needs to operate undercover. Not dishonestly, but it is really important that camp actually not be respected, not be assimilated into the establishment because it is a fundamentally anti-establishment force and it has no respect.

And that’s how it does. It goes about its work. I think Andy Warhol, first and foremost, was a camp figure, which doesn’t mean swishy and fey, which he was, but not wanting the world to take him seriously so he can actually fuck with all of us. If you look at his work now with the benefit of hindsight, we can see that he created the modern world, but I think he predicted it and he saw where we were going. Someone said to me the other day, “Oh. What would he make of social media?” Well, he kind of anticipated social media. The Factory was a sort of early laboratory experiment, if you will, of a social media society.

I think he invented reality TV. I think he virtually invented Instagram. His tweet-sized aphorisms? There’s Twitter. I mean, try to think [about] what he didn’t invent. He recognized the magical power of the camera. Now that it’s here, what it could do. Although funnily enough, he didn’t have the most successful TV [career], but it was the thing he loved the most.

Camp needs to operate undercover, even to the extent of, say, Madonna in the Super Bowl when she did “Vogue.” That was the ultimate Trojan horse, I would say. One of them, anyway.

Camp is the DNA of all drag. Because on the one hand, drag is the art of pretending, but it’s also letting you in on the joke. It’s with a wink and a nod saying, “This is just a joke. This is just fun.” But actually, if you care to look, it has more profound meaning because it reveals the lie of a lot of our social structures and their inherent unfairness. But rather than complaining about it, rather than being victimized by it, it makes fun of it and it celebrates these things at the same time.

MW: Are you drawn to camp because it’s in line with this misunderstood, maligned quality that you love?

BAILEY: I think I’m drawn to camp because it is America. America is camp. American popular culture is queer culture. American popular culture is camp, from Vegas, which is a city in drag, to the Statue of Liberty, America’s number one symbol. That statue, that massive statue is hollow. I’m not saying it’s fake. It’s an illusion. It’s a magical thing. And it’s also camp because the sculptor used the face of his brother. The statue’s a drag queen! So all these radicalized Right-wing people wanting to ban drag, what are you going to do? Tear down the Statue of Liberty? America is a drag culture. America is a queer society because the whole idea of a dream of becoming something you are not, that is drag. I’m going to fake it till I make it. That’s drag.

MW: I read the book and then I looked up your IMDB. It’s amazing how much you fit into the book, but then I realize how much was left out. Are there things you didn’t want to discuss or that didn’t make it in that you wish had?

BAILEY: Remember [with] movies when the whole idea of sequels started and people were like, “This is terrible. Superman 2 is not as good as Superman 1.” It was considered inappropriate to make a sequel. It was considered cynical and money-grabbing. I was thinking that I should write ScreenAge 2. There are a lot of things left out. Just in the course of talking to you and talking about the book, the ideas move on a bit. So I was thinking, “Yeah. I need to write a sequel.”

We made a series for the Oprah Winfrey network about Sarah, the Duchess of York. I really wanted to write about that, but couldn’t quite figure it all out.

And drag. It’s hard to even think of a time before drag. Drag has always existed, but I think the monarchy is an interesting scene through the lens of drag, the monarchy and the Roman Catholic Church. Quite interesting things to unpack. There’s three iterations of Drag Race.

MW: Drag Race Vatican City coming soon.

BAILEY: Right. There you go. Exactly.

MW: Reading this, I thought it was going to be about drag. That there would be a lot of Drag Race stories and behind the scenes, and it is very much not that book. Of course, it’s mentioned, but it feels like you spend more time talking about Andy Warhol than Drag Race. Was that a choice?

BAILEY: I do believe that I have been a small part of Drag Race. The stories of Drag Race, I feel, really belong to the queens and to Randy and Tom Campbell, who are in the book. And, of course, Ru.

It is biographical in the sense that I do have this really clear moment of seeing Warhol’s Brillo Boxes for the first time. Sometimes people talk about having epiphanies and seeing a painting and being transfixed by it. And I’ve often thought, “Oh. That never happened to me.” But actually it did. When I saw Warhol’s Brillo Box, I was like 10, 12 years old and it just transfixed me.

I couldn’t really look away and I loved it. I had a brilliant art teacher as a kid, and I made a screen print six-foot toothpaste tube. A lot of the things in the book have been in my life. They’ve always been in my life. And even drag actually. Me and my friend, when I was eight, using my dad’s eight-millimeter camera, we remade a mashup of the Poseidon Adventure and Sunset Boulevard. I got to play Gloria Swanson, of course. I can’t explain it. I’ve just been drawn to those things. I should have put those in the book.

MW: I love that. I wish I could see that.

BAILEY: I don’t know if it exists anymore.

MW: By the way, you mentioned The Village People. When I try to explain my taste in camp, I tell people to go and watch the movie Can’t Stop the Music.

BAILEY: Oh my gosh. Yes.

MW: That’s my number one.

BAILEY: I think my number one is Starship Troopers. It is so camp… But also it’s a film about the Holocaust, but from the other way round. From the point of view of the Nazis. Because the bugs are the entities that are being wiped out. I thought it was so amazing. And Can’t Stop The Music is amazing, too. I think that whole Village People idea was genius. I know we’ve got American Idol and it’s all about singing.

To me, perhaps because I can’t sing, pop music has never been about singing. It’s been about packaging and music videos and album covers and outfits and ideas. And the Village People was a great idea. Ahead of its time really. I mean, it was an all-gay boy band, right?

MW: Yeah. Very gay. Even at the time. Growing up, I caught that it’s gay, but it was only somewhat recently that I looked back and watched that movie and realized it was that all the time. The queer community didn’t embrace this and make it its own. It was sold to the world as that.

BAILEY: It was in plain sight, but it was sort of hiding. Trump wouldn’t have danced along to it and made it his theme song on the campaign trail if he knew. I mean, how stupid can you be not to know that in 2016? But there you go. It was undercover in a sense.

When we made the film Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, we were talking to — I think it was Admiral Steinman and he told us a story about their song “In the Navy.” How the Navy got really excited about it and thought, “This is great for the Navy.” And they gave the Village People full access to a battleship to make their video with no idea. It’s just brilliant.

MW: That and the video Cher did on the Navy ship. The Navy is never going to let anyone do anything again.

BAILEY: No.

MW: Continuing this Drag Race conversation, it is only getting bigger — in terms of audience, in terms of franchise expansion, in every way possible. This is of course a blessing, but it’s got to take up more of your time as it goes on, thereby keeping you from other projects, right?

BAILEY: Well, it’s an amazing group of people at World of Wonder who work on the show. And my part of it is trying to set up the international versions. We’ve got Sally Miles who we’ve worked with for years and years leading that as well as people at World of Wonder. It’d be great to see Drag Race in Russia or China.

It does take up time, but I’m very happy to spend the time. It’s tough being in New Zealand or going to Colombia. It’s really hard. But it’s a great way to see the world as well. And I love it. So it doesn’t really feel like work.

MW: This is a new age of drag, and Drag Race is largely responsible for the leveling up. When you talk about drag at the clubs in the ’80s in New York, it was people with absolutely nothing and they put outfits together. Now, if you go on Drag Race, you’re spending $10,000 getting things made. Do you see this as a positive progression? Do you miss those crafty days?

BAILEY: Well, it’s always crafty. Spending a lot of money won’t win you Drag Race because at the heart it’s all about your imagination and creativity. You’re right. People do spend a lot, but there’s no requirement that they do and it’s not a guaranteed way to win. The inventiveness and sheer creativity is the real thing. And that’s, I think, consistently what wins the day. It’s not who spends the most money. It never has been and I don’t think it ever will be.

The Hollywood aesthetic, the expensive aesthetic, is not… Drag is not homogeneous. It really isn’t. I think inventiveness is what’s most valued.

Randy and I, when we were watching those drag shows at The Pyramid, it was almost like it was taking everything you saw on TV — the excess of televangelists or the nuttiness of commercials or the over the top-ness of Dynasty — and throwing it together and on the one hand taking the piss out of it, but on the other hand celebrating it and loving it. As a reflection of what’s on TV.

I think that’s the aesthetic, if there’s an aesthetic that overall defines drag. Even as I’m saying it, I know that’s not true. Because there’s a Hollywood kind of thing, there’s a punky kind of thing, it’s all those different things.

MW: For someone who has such a storied career and has done such crazy, amazing, interesting projects, do you ever tire of speaking about this one current thing? Of the focus on it?

BAILEY: No. Not yet. I’m very excited to talk about it.

I think [back to] being with Randy in the East Village in the ’80s. It’s funny to me how many things have been playing out still to this day. I mean, even Trump and Giuliani were kicking around in the… Not in the East Village per se, but in New York, and so it’s all just sort of rippling out.

MW: What is left unrealized for you? What is left that you are dying to do?

BAILEY: That’s a good question. All right. I would love to remake the ’60s Batman series. I would love to redo it, because… No tea, no shade to all the serious dark, psychological Batman movies that DC has made, but that’s not Batman to me. It just isn’t.

We were talking earlier about America as a drag culture and America’s love of superheroes, I mean, they are drag queens. Let’s not get it twisted. To me, the ’60s Batman series understood all that, and did it so well and perfectly and it’s just a shame that that iteration has never really been returned to. I suppose to some extent Marvel does in the MCU [Marvel Cinematic Universe]. The MCU is pretty camp. I mean, I think Thor: Ragnarok is the gayest film ever made by a straight person.

I mean, honestly, Bianca Del Rio would be the most amazing Bat Villain.

MW: She would.

BAILEY: Maybe the pitch is, Batman and Robin get sucked into a sort of alternate Gotham City thanks to the multiverse. Yes. That’s what happens. That’s my pitch to DC, that Batman and Robin get sucked into the multiverse and end up on some Gotham planet ruled by an array of evil drag lords or something.

Fenton Bailey’s ScreenAge: How TV shaped our reality, from Tammy Faye to RuPaul’s Drag Race ($39.95, Ebury Press) is available at all online booksellers, including Amazon, in hardcover and audiobook formats. Visit www.amazon.com.