Carole Pope performing at Pride celebrations in 2024.CBC Gem/Supplied
A new film celebrating the life and career of Carole Pope premieres this week on CBC Gem. Directed by Canadian filmmaker Michelle Mama, Antidiva: The Carole Pope Confessions promises an unflinching look at a living queer icon.
When asked why she wanted to make a film about Pope now, Mama’s answer is swift: “The real question is why had nobody done it yet?” she says. “We have a terrible habit of taking our heroes and mavericks for granted and waiting until it’s too late to celebrate them.”
The film features Canadian icons such as k.d. lang, Peaches, Jann Arden and Rufus Wainwright reflecting on Pope. Mama says that, when she asked these and other interview subjects if they wanted to be in the film, “everyone was a quick yes – there’s lots of love for Carole in some unlikely places.”
Pope herself told The Globe and Mail in an interview that, while other filmmakers had approached her over the years about various documentary projects, it took a personal friendship with Mama for her to finally agree.
Mama’s production company is called Gay Agenda and its self-stated mission is to “tell stories authentically.” Mama conducted three primary interviews with Pope over two years and the filmmaker was able to “get some moments of intimacy and vulnerability” from the nearly 80-year-old Pope.
The film premiered at Toronto’s Hot Docs Festival in April and has been touring the country at film festivals and screenings since, with Pope in attendance at many of the events. Antidiva won the juried Best Canadian Feature award at the Inside Out Film Festival and was selected to screen at the 50th anniversary of Frameline, an international LGBTQ film festival in San Francisco.
“Every audience has a different flavour, but there’s always some diehard fans with records to sign, some young queers earnestly trying to learn some queer history and then some straight classic rock fans who used to go to her shows,” Mama says of the audiences who’ve been attending screenings so far.
For her, “what’s so gratifying is watching Carole crack a smile – just a wee one – every time she comes out to a standing ovation for a Q and A! It’s like, ‘There you go, you deserve it, lap it up!’”
While other filmmakers had approached her over the years about various documentary projects, Pope says it took a personal friendship with the filmmaker for her to finally agree.CBC/Supplied
Pope, who fronted the rock band Rough Trade in addition to having a successful solo career, is best-known for Rough Trade’s enduring hit song High School Confidential. Controversial in 1980 for talking explicitly about female queer desire, the song is now a Cancon classic.
Thanks to a string of hits in the eighties, gold and platinum records, Juno wins and a stint opening for David Bowie, Pope and Rough Trade became household names. They are now in the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, and on Canada’s Walk of Fame.
Pope was one of the first out rock-and-roll stars in the world and that was obvious from the start of her career. Before the release of their hit records, Pope and Rough Trade became famous – or infamous – for their one-night-only, sold-out 1977 show at Massey Hall, Restless Underwear. The revue, a campy, sexy, S&M-themed, queer cabaret that featured performers such as iconic drag queen Divine, satisfied what Pope calls an audience “starved” for countercultural material: “They loved it,” she says.
Pope is particularly proud of the fact that Rough Trade “are responsible for Divine singing”; the drag artist would later embark on a brief musical career.
The only known footage of the show was taken by Pope’s brother Howard on Super 8 film, and the quality is not good. Mama confirms that she is “desperate to see any clip” after she was unable to find any usable footage of Restless Underwear for the film. The show has almost been lost to history.
Approaching her 80th birthday, Pope is not slowing down. “As long as I can sing, I’m going to keep doing it,” she says.
She is working on a musical featuring the music of Rough Trade that follows the true story of her brother Howard, one of the original members of the ACT UP movement – the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power – and his death due to AIDS. Pope calls it a “queer story that has to be told.” She is also completing a follow-up to her bestselling 2000 memoir, Anti Diva, which will be published next year by ECW Press.
Mama believes Pope “deserved a re-examination and reclamation of her place in music and queer history.”
Antidiva: The Carole Pope Confessions does just that by celebrating a 50-year career and preserving the stories of a legendary band and an incomparable Canadian queer icon.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct the given name of Carole Pope’s late brother, Howard.