The plot follows two drag queens , played by Hugo Weaving and Guy Pearce , and a transgender woman , played by Terence Stamp , as they journey across the Australian Outback from Sydney to Alice Springs in a tour bus that they have named "Priscilla", along the way encountering various groups and individuals.
It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival and became a cult classic both in Australia and abroad. The film was based upon the lives of three actual drag queens β Cindy Pastel, Strykermyer and Lady Bump β who were originally meant to play themselves but were later replaced with what the studio considered "bankable" actors. These original queens were profiled in the documentary Ladies Please.
Priscilla subsequently provided the basis for a musical, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert , which opened in in Sydney before travelling to New Zealand , the United Kingdom, Canada , and Broadway. Anthony "Tick" Belrose, using the drag pseudonym of Mitzi Del Bra, is a Sydney -based drag queen who accepts an offer to perform his drag act at Lasseters Hotel Casino Resort managed by his estranged wife Marion in Alice Springs , a remote town in central Australia.
After persuading his friends and fellow performers, Bernadette Bassenger, a recently bereaved transgender woman, and Adam Whitely, a flamboyant and obnoxious younger drag queen who goes under the drag name Felicia Jollygoodfellow, to join him, the three set out for a four-week run at the casino in a large tour bus, which Adam christens "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert". While on the long journey through remote lands bordering the Simpson Desert , they meet a variety of characters, including a group of friendly Aboriginal Australians for whom they perform at a corroboree ; the less accepting attitudes of rural Australia in such towns as Broken Hill ; and are subjected to homophobic abuse and violence , including having their bus vandalised with homophobic graffiti.
When the bus breaks down in the middle of the desert, Adam spends the whole day repainting it lavender to cover up the vandalism. The trio later meet Bob, a middle-aged mechanic from a small outback town who joins them on their journey after his Filipina wife Cynthia leaves him. Just before they arrive at Alice Springs, Tick reveals that Marion is actually his wife, as they never divorced, and that they are going there as a favour to her. Continuing their journey, they stop for repairs at the remote opal -mining town of Coober Pedy , where Adam is almost mutilated by a homophobic gang before Bob and Bernadette save him.
