A SPECIAL KIND OF CAMP COUNSELING STARS OF 'DIE MOMMIE DIE!' RELISHED CHANCE TO BE BAD.

Byline: Evan Henerson Staff Writer

In the film ``Die Mommie Die!'' - which sounds like it should be a slasher flick - former ``Beverly Hills, 90210'' heartthrob Jason Priestley plays a struggling TV actor who moonlights as a gigolo. Veteran character actor Philip Baker Hall (``Magnolia'') is a wronged film producer, and ``Six Feet Under'' matriarch Frances Conroy takes on a pious maid.

And here's the real stretch: Charles Busch, the film's screenwriter and star, plays a once-glamorous songstress whose fading career and conniving family force her to resort to murder. That's right, the man who has been writing himself drag roles for the last 25 years plays a dressed-to-the-10s diva on screen. The film, produced by Anthony Edwards' Aviator Films, opens at the Loews Beverly Center Cineplex today.

This being a send-up of - or backhanded homage to - those oh-so-serious Joan Crawford and Bette Davis vehicles like ``Now, Voyager'' and ``Hush Hush, Sweet Charlotte,'' all of ``Mommie's'' performers were encouraged to chew the scenery.

``There were no limitations on our behavior,'' says Hall. ``For the last few years, I've been playing these very serious doctors and lawyers and secretaries of defense. Here were roles where we were encouraged to go as far as we wanted.''

Priestley, who toyed with his ``90210'' image with ``Love and Death on Long Island,'' also welcomed the opportunity to celebrate schlocky performance. For the second time, he's playing a good-looking actor of questionable performance ability.

``The whole movie is sort of bad acting,'' Priestley says of ``Die Mommie Die!'' ``You know, it's that mid-'60s, everybody's a little too earnest and trying too hard. In the late 1960s and early '70s, the modern era of acting that we're in now was really created. So this was really that last bastion of over-the-top, too earnest, every line delivered just ... like ... it's ... supposed ... to be.''

And is there an art to bad acting?

``It's very easy for me,'' says Priestley, laughing. ``I was much more nervous with 'Love and Death on Long Island' because that was just me doing it.''

Since concluding an eight-season stint on ``Beverly Hills, 90210'' in 1998, Priestley has appeared in films such as ``Eye of the Beholder,'' ``Cherish'' and several films in his native Canada. He made his feature directorial debut with ``Barenaked in America,'' a documentary about the Canadian rock group Barenaked Ladies.

An avid race car driver, he's also found himself in the tabloids due to a pair of driving accidents in 1999 and 2002, the latter of which left him with several broken bones and a concussion.

Even so, the prospect of doing an on-screen send-up of his ``personal and professional baggage'' was appealing to Priestley, who says he has learned not to take anything in his life ``that seriously.''

``I can just sort of make fun of it all and have a good time doing it. After awhile, you start to figure out that none of it matters,'' the actor says. ``I was 27 or 28 years old when I really sort of figured it out. Being on a show like '90210' where so much of the public personas were given to us - we didn't come up with them on their own. Luke Perry was all of a sudden this bad boy. Here's a guy with his wife and two kids who just stays at home every night. It was strange.''

And although his knowledge of melodramatic ``women's pictures'' won't rival that of Busch, Priestley says he has a familiarity with the genre that ``Die Mommie Die!'' is spoofing.

`` 'Valley of the Dolls' is one of my favorite bad movies of all time,'' he says. ``Part of what we do is being tied in to pop culture and understanding all pop culture references that go along with it. I understood the humor of the piece, I knew what Charles was going for.''

The film revolves around Angela Arden, once dubbed ``America's Nightingale,'' whose comeback attempt is being thwarted by her producer/husband Sol Sussman (Hall). Her daughter Edith (Natasha Lyonne) despises her, and druggie son Lance (Stark Sands) has been tossed out of college under questionable circumstances. Angela is also having an affair with Tony Parker (Priestley), an actor turned tennis pro who isn't what he seems.

First-time film director Mark Rucker shot ``Die Mommie Die!'' over 18 days in the early summer of 2002. That placed New Yorker Busch in Los Angeles at the same time the tour of his hit Broadway play ``The Tale of the Allergist's Wife'' was playing the Ahmanson Theatre. Busch actually wrote the stage version of ``Die Mommie Die!'' when he was in L.A. shooting the film adaptation of his play ``Psycho Beach Party.''

``The movie is much better. I never took the play very seriously,'' Busch says. ``But while I was doing it, I thought, 'Gee, this could be made very cheaply as an independent film.' With a screenplay, I was able to explore it a little bit more and make it more complex.''

Or, at least, as complex as a movie where a character bites the dust via a poisoned suppository is likely to be. Hall recalls his agent relaying the offer to play the tyrannical Sol Sussman, but being reluctant to describe the movie for fear Hall would reject it outright. Instead, he just sent the script and let his client decide for himself.

``The characters are so overdrawn and the situations are so stereotypically overdrawn that the job for us was to look for some sort of truth and let the extreme situation and the insanity of the characters sort of carry the moment,'' says Hall.

``At the elite artistic level, we don't give much of a nod to female impersonators,'' he adds. ``But Charles is more than that. He's a great writer and he is not only a female impersonator, he's a wonderful actor as well.

Currently working on the Boy George musical ``Taboo'' on Broadway, Busch expects ``Die Mommie Die!'' to generate a fresh round of film writers referring to him as a ``drag queen,'' a term he has tried to steer clear of.

``It's not who I am,'' he says. ``I don't dress up in real life and I'd feel kind of foolish in a costume talking as myself to people. But if people get confused and call me a drag queen, I can only blame myself.''

Perhaps a ``drag artist''?

``Drag legend would also be appropriate,'' Busch says.

Evan Henerson, [phone]

evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1) - Jason Priestley

on ``Die Mommie Die!''

David Sprague/Staff Photographer

(2) Charles Busch, left, plays a fading Hollywood diva and Jason Priestley portrays a struggling actor in ``Die Mommie Die!,'' a spoof written by Busch that was shot in 18 days.