Charles in charge.

With a hot new off-Broadway play and a movie that drew throngs at Sundance, drag dramatist Charles Busch is moving from cult to culture

Prolific playwright and versatile actor Charles Busch thinks it's pretty funny that anyone would consider him a "player" in Hollywood. But with Psycho Beach Party, his new teen scream movie starring Dharma & Greg's Thomas Gibson; The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, his new off-Broadway play starring Linda Lavin (Alice) and Michele Lee (Knots Landing); and a recurring role on the HBO prison series Oz, that's exactly what he is.

Busch is best known as the writer behind the long-running off-Broadway musical Vampire Lesbians of Sodom and the drag star of his popular dramedies, including Red Scare on Sunset, You Should Be So Lucky, and Shanghai Moon. But he reveals he's actually been a member of the Writers Guild of America since 1989 and has been selling television sitcom pilots and movie treatments for years.

"The whole time I was sort of a cult figure on the stage, I was earning my living as a writer," says Busch. "I sold three pilots to CBS and got paid for it, but like most people who write for film and TV, most of my work never saw the light of day."

Which makes it all the sweeter for Busch that the first movie of his to get made is an adaptation of one of his plays. He Beach Party, the movie, as a spoof of '60s Gidget flicks with a dash of '70s slasher movies and ... a measure of Jodie Foster in The Silence of the Lambs. "Well," he amends, referring to his own cross-dressed performance in the film, "it's actually more like Susan Hayward doing Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs."

Busch laughs. "It's a character we added, as I felt I was a little long in the tooth to play the 22-year-old ingenue, Chicklet," he says. "Since someone is really killing off these kids in Malibu, we needed a sleuth, my character, Capt. Monica Stark."

To hawk Psycho Beach Party, which will be released theatrically this summer, Busch was even hanging out at the Sundance Film Festival this year. "Oh, my God--I had never even been to a ski resort before!" exclaims Busch. While he says he enjoyed the whole spectacle of the hip indie festival, he had a sobering moment while having his picture taken with the young cast of Psycho. He recalls, "There was this makeup girl who was talking with the cast and I heard her say, `Oh, I love Charles Busch and that whole era.' Era? I felt like Clara Bow or something."

But Busch has nothing to worry about In some ways a whole new em is beginning in his career. His menacing turn on Oz, in which he plays an effeminate but makeup-free inmate on death row, is certainly a departure from his usual glamour girl roles. And The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, which is running at the Manhattan Theatre Club, may transform him into the new Neil Simon. But Simon with a twist, as his version of middle-aged Jewish angst involves a surprise orgy scene in which Linda Lavin and Michele Lee kiss. "Staging that scene was so fun," he says. "I mean, Linda and Michele are both very worldly women and old friends--like they've been to all of each other's weddings--so it was amusing to see them squirm like teenagers. But they had fun with it, and Michele even said, `Oh, Linda's a great kisser!'"

And perhaps the most admirable thing about Busch's career is that he's never felt compromised by his success. "Movies are really a director's medium, but in all my projects I've had a lot of creative control," he says. "I always get to work with great people--in fact, for The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, I got my dream cast. That's one thing that might make it hard for me in the future--I'm pretty spoiled."

Che is a contributing editor for Time Out New York.