How does a movie with a budget of 2 million dollars, afford the rights to well known songs like Cece Peniston's "Finally", for example?
shareCeCe Penniston has a lot of drag queen fans. She probably gave them perm.
shareI don't really know how these deals are done, but all of the songs included would have received a huge boost in sales as a result of being in the film. Of course no one would have known that before the film was released.
But this film was a great Australian success story and you can only wish good fortune to everyone that was involved in it, including those whose music was made years before and revived here.
http://www.oztvreviews.com/
My best guess is that the movie was shot for much much less and a large amount of the moeny would've gone to the rights. At the time the biggest star in the cast would've been Terence Stamp, at that point Guy was more known for Neighbours and Hugo had a couple of mini-series to his name, neither of them would've been that expensive. Terence might've been able to pull more money cos he'd been in Superman. Advantage of a small cast of unknowns, at best you're goign to pay them maybe a couple of grand each (I'd be shocked if anyone in the cast cos more than 50K). Also the outfits were very cheap, the iconic thong dress cost about 7 bucks to make. I'd bet that maybe half of the budget is on screen, the other half is in the soundtrack
shareThey're most likely was a great deal made with the artists, seeing as all of them have a HUGE drag following. I have in uncle and a couple of friends who did drag in our younger years and ABBA alone are treated like deities in the gay dance clubs. Cee Cee would be second, and Williams last, but all revered lol...fun times....
shareBecause Polygram entertainment bought the rights for Priscilla with the provision that they only use artists from their catalogue, which was fortuitous since it included so many camp classics.
Incidentally, before the deal Stephan Elliott had planned to feature the music of Kylie Minogue heavily on the soundtrack. I’m not sure that would have worked as well, I think it turned out for the best in the end.