Charles Busch
Charles Busch is an actor, born 1954.
Busch solved the casting problem by writing his own parts. From 1978 he was staging camp comedies off-off-Broadway and playing the lead roles in them himself, usually in drag, and he kept at it long enough that the theatre came round to him: his 2000 play The Tale of the Allergist's Wife was a Broadway success, and Psycho Beach Party began life as one of the earlier stage pieces.
The screen work came later and runs mostly at guest-star scale, which suits him. He is a specialist in the single scene that tips a film sideways: Countess Cousin Aphasia du Berry in Addams Family Values, a small appearance in a room full of ghouls, and Timothy in It Could Happen to You. In Psycho Beach Party he plays Captain Monica Stark, a part written to let him do the thing the beach-movie genre never knew it was missing. He has also written for television, and turned up as himself on Stars in the House.
Movies (3)
TV (1)
Books (1)
Where to start with Charles Busch
Only one film here has his sensibility running it rather than visiting it, so start there. Psycho Beach Party is a straight-faced parody of 1960s beach movies and slasher pictures at the same time, with Busch playing Captain Monica Stark exactly as if he were in a different and much better film.
Addams Family Values is the mainstream sighting and a small one, It Could Happen to You the straight supporting role, and Stars in the House catches him as himself. The stage is where the real body of the work lives, so treat the screen credits as an introduction rather than the collection.