John Early Thinks Missy Elliott Still Doesn’t Get Enough Credit

In the surreal comedy Maddie’s Secret, in theaters June 19, John Early plays a food influencer struggling with an eating disorder as her career goes viral. But even Early, who cites Divine and Charles Busch as some of his biggest inspirations, isn’t sure whether the role counts as a drag performance. “I wanted the movie to feel like a fairytale set in contemporary life, and so it was very important to me that she be glowing,” he says of Maddie’s angelic aesthetic. “And I think achieving that required certain elements of exaggeration and modification that I associate with drag.” But at the same time, he adds, the makeup is minimal, there are no fake eyelashes, and — most importantly — there’s a groundedness to Maddie that feels different from the time he tried drag coming up in New York’s comedy scene in the 2010s. “Drag requires an attitude. You have to be stronger. You have to be wittier than I am. You have to be braver than I am,” he says. “But when I play a woman, in the context of a film set, it just almost feels like any other film performance that I do or any other thing that I make.”

Below, for Bustle’s Gay Gay Music Video Night celebration this Pride season, Early pays tribute to another formative inspiration with a magically playful streak: Missy Elliott.

I don’t think too much about my favorite albums or musicians, even though I am a very musical person. There’s music in my work, and I’ll go down rabbit holes when I need to, especially before I go on tour. But I always forget that music is an option in life. When I’m cleaning, I’m like, “You can listen to music, John. You can just put music on.” Or when people come over for dinner, I never think about what to play. But one of the only albums that, to me, is totally perfect is Supa Dupa Fly. I don’t think anyone’s ever made a cooler album. I love that era of Timbaland, Missy, Aaliyah, Ginuwine, and Magoo. It’s music that my sister and her friends were listening to when I wanted to be included in their sleepovers.

It’s hard for me to choose just one Missy Elliott video. Typically what I will do on Gay Guy Music Video Night is show nine of them in a row, because they’re some of the most artful, avant-garde, innovative videos ever made. I don’t know how much of the platonic ideal of Gay Guy Music Video Night I’ve actually achieved — I’m often the only person in attendance, but I can really go down a video spiral alone. I had a boyfriend who grew up in the woods in Vermont with just PBS and the creek, so there was a lot of education happening — a lot of “Let me show you Missy.” I really understand Gay Guy Music Video Night as a concept because I know how it feels to force a room to watch a music video that I find to be particularly beautiful and for people to probably resent me for it! I can never relax when I’m making people watch one — I’m always monitoring their reactions.

Obviously people love Missy — there’s a real lasting affection for her in the culture. But sometimes I’m confused when she’s left out of certain conversations. My instinct to show her videos took root in the 2010s. Nicki Minaj, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry — a really awful period in music, aesthetically. I thought it was ugly then and I think it’s ugly now. What I also didn’t like about those artists was that they seemed to be getting credit for being pioneers of making videos weird, as if it had never happened before. Like, How are we not talking about Missy Elliott?! And the thing is, she’s not provocative or weird for weird’s sake. There's more heart in it than a lot of the 2010s’ so-called “weird” pop stars.

“Beep Me 911” is a little undersung, but I love the Barbie-doll acrylic look, the kind of plasticy, helmet quality to the hair. There’s something very comic-book about it, along with the “Sock It 2 Me” video, too. And I love that classic filming trick where you lip-sync along to a slowed-down version of the song, then speed it up in post to create that twitchy, glitchy effect. She was doing that before *NSYNC! The video just feels handmade, which really fits with the music. Everything she’s doing is so intimate. The sound of Supa Dupa Fly isn’t slick. It’s a little sweaty. It’s groovy and funky and spacey, and “Beep Me 911” is so haunting. I love when Missy sings, I love the layered harmonies. There’s a real denseness to the 702 girls’ voices plus Missy’s. It’s just so f*cking chic.

I get very heated about Missy, as you can see, because I feel like she doesn’t get enough credit. I love her silliness and playfulness. It’s not self-serious. And that’s a poisonous quality of later music — people dabbling in big, stylized visuals, but with this kind of ego or this grandiosity: Unlike these other people, I’m an artist. Missy is just so much more back on her heels about it. She just is that. She doesn’t boast about it. She’s cool about it. And so I feel invited into it in a way that I don’t with these other people.