OUT WITH IT / The Goodfellas of Portland

Just Out
Friday, January 23, 2004 VOL.21 NO.6

The week of Jan. 26 history will be made in Portland. No Fish! Go Fish! - that casual little dining establishment on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard - will premiere the first locally produced commercial starring a drag queen. (Not that I have to tell you, but it's Poison Waters.)

"It's a takeoff on a shot from Goodfellas," co-owner Sean Brown tells me. "Do you know the movie?" Do I know the movie? It's my favorite mob film; I've seen it three times. It's the scene, Brown continues, "where Ray Liotta takes his girlfriend from the car, and they cross the street, and they go into the restaurant through the back way, through the back kitchen and then the front kitchen and then into the dining room. It's a pretty famous shot." That it is. It's a scene film students will study for decades and all that, but, more importantly, it's so cool looking. The commercial is too. Granted, I've only seen the rough draft, but it already kicks ass all over Mattress World.

The production company, FUNLAND PICTURES, "did a fantastic job, very professional...I think we have a good shot at winning the Rosie Award this year," Brown says, referencing Portland's top honor for local advertising.

Sean's partner, John Doyle, sees Poison (well, the guy version, whose name is Kevin Cook) pretty regularly at the No Fish! Go Fish! cart downtown on Southwest Fifth Avenue and Yamhill Street when he strolls by for lunch. Doyle's ages-long dream of a drag queen commercial finally came to fruition, although at that special diva price. "I knew it was going to take long, but I didn't think it was going to take that long," meows Poison. Seems a six-hour shoot can cause a wee bit of impatience for some girls. "The commercial's like 30 seconds! I was just like, "I'm sitting here growing a beard - we gotta go!"

And the problems got worse from there. "I was totally distracted by the director and producer guy cause' he's totally hot," notes Poison. (Coincidentally, Brown pointed this out, as well) "But his wife was there the whole time, and she's totally adorable, too, so I couldn't hate her."

Well, that's good. "But you know what really irritated me?" Poison continues. No, what? "Everyone was eating all around me, and I hadn't eaten. I was starving! I'm in this restaurant, they're cooking all this great food, the extras are eating because that's what they're supposed to be doing, the crew, every time they took a break, they go dive into some stuff. Well, you know, I'm totally in drag...so I wasn't going to get all messed up, an I'm like, Damn it!" Wow, you should really sue. "Yeah, I had to go to Taco Bell." No! "I was like, 'This is so anti-climactic.'" But aren't you the star? "So you would think," she sniffs.

As for Matt Zodrow of Funland Pictures (who I communicated with via e-mail, so I couldn't really tell if he was hot), he notes this is the company's "first drag queen - but hopefully not our last."

As for the No Fish! Go Fish! owners, they want the spot, which they plan to air during Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, The Simpsons and That 70's Show, to bring "more gay people in here," says Brown. "John and I have always been very open about who we are, and our restaurant has always reflected that," but, he continues, "we don't have a big gay following.

"It's definitely a gay commercial," he laughs. "It'll be kind of interesting to see what the response is."