Deja Diamond hosted Nellie’s Drag Brunch on Sunday at Nellie’s Sports Bar. 

(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)

Sometimes, when you think you know what to expect from a movie, it doesn’t match those expectations. What do you do then?

I’m not talking about the unmet expectations of fans, like those who complain that Kubrick’s “The Shining” made sweeping changes from Stephen King’s novel, or start a social media campaign trashing the latest “Star Wars” or “Marvel” film because of a plot twist they don’t like. Those are complaints about content, about a story not going the way it is “supposed” to go.

I’m referring to the expectations we have when we walk into a movie thinking that it’s going to have a particular tone, a specific style, a familiar formula – essentially that it is going to easily fit into a comfortable box, and stay there. What happens when it doesn’t?

That’s the question I found myself asking as I watched “Maddie’s Secret,” the directorial debut from gay actor/comedian John Early, which is now screening in a limited theatrical release. It’s the story of a humble housewife whose doting husband persuades her to turn her love of cooking into a career as a virally popular “food influencer,” only to find that her sudden success triggers traumatic feelings from her childhood; clearly a contemporized hybrid of the melodramatic “woman’s pictures” of Old Hollywood and the “Afterschool Special” style cautionary dramas of ‘70s/’80s TV, it has all the earmarks of being an exercise in “camp” – especially since Early himself stars as Maddie.

To put it plainly, it’s an over-the-top old-school melodrama combined with modern-day satire of online social media fame, with a gay man in a dress playing the lead. What could be campier than that?

And it is campy, make no mistake. Yet at the same time, somehow, it isn’t. From its opening scene (which shows us Maddie as she jogs to her dishwashing job at the headquarters of an LA test kitchen/content studio named “Gourmaybe”), we expect things to get wacky. The ingredients are definitely present for it, like her aggressively butch co-worker/BFF Deena (Kate Berlant), who is clearly nursing a serious “girl crush”; bitchy TikTok star Emily (Claudia O’Doherty), who demeans her and ridicules her ambitions of being a chef; and boss Zach (Connor O’Malley), a womanizing corporate “bro” who enthusiastically embraces all the toxic traits we associate with that description.

As the story opens up beyond her workplace, there are more elements that feel ripe for the kind of histrionic humor we might expect from a film by John Waters, or the stylish old-school parody of Charles Busch, or even the radicalized sexual transgression of Bruce La Bruce: Maddie’s adorably bearish husband Jake (Eric Rahill) could be made into a goofy caricature with a food fetish, and her estranged, abusive mother Beverlee (Kristen Johnston in a deliciously grotesque performance) is easily monstrous enough to be at the campy center of any “hag horror” from the ‘60s.

And when we finally discover her “secret” (spoiler alert: it’s an eating disorder that returns when the pressures of being a popular social media chef bring up old feelings about her relationship with food), it’s easy to imagine a different filmmaker taking the whole thing in a thoroughly savage direction; the potential for tasteless, excessive, and deliberately juvenile comedy might be limitless, in the hands of a director unafraid of being branded “offensive.”

It’s hard not to see all these possibilities on hand as we watch Early’s film – which he also wrote – and (for myself, anyway) hard not to hope they all play out to maximum outrageous effect.

They don’t. Instead, “Maggie’s Secret” does something so unexpected that it feels, at first, like a mistake: it decides to play things straight.

It’s still a comedy, make no mistake, but it’s not the kind of comedy we think it’s going to be. It doesn’t go for over-the-top anarchy; it doesn’t go for the bitch-slapping catfight between rival divas, or for the running parade of filthy double-entendres, or for the absurd “gross-out” humor that might have emerged from its scenes of binge-and-purge overeating. Well, okay, maybe it does go for that last one, a little bit.

What all this comes down to, perhaps, is that the film gets its laughs – and there are quite a lot of them – without making fun of itself or, more importantly, its characters. The comedy here is built into the story; it comes from its send-up of social media influencers, corporate content creation, media tie-ins, and all the other interlocked microcosms of our “new, now, next” digital culture; it comes from the foibles and fumbles of its characters as they pursue their objectives in the story, from the qualities and quirks of their personalities, from their simply being funny because they feel like being funny; and yes, it sometimes comes from the obvious cliches of form that we recognize, the plot formulas and sudden revelations and shocking twists that have emerged time and time again in these kinds of domestic melodramas, but it does so good-naturedly, in a way that feels like laughing “with” the movie than laughing “at” it.

It also never diminishes or ridicules the seriousness of Maddie’s eating disorder, nor the experiences that come for her when she (spoiler alert, again) ends up going into an inpatient facility to be treated for it; though these later scenes come populated with their own set of stereotypical characters, ready to be exploited, the movie may poke gentle fun, but it humanizes them, too, helping build the film toward an emotional climax that leaves us with the kind of satisfying uncertainty we don’t quite expect from a movie like this one.

Most significantly, perhaps, it never gets its laughs out of the fact that Maddie is being played by a man – and it’s this that makes Early’s film feel more profound than we expect it to be. It’s not a “drag” movie, or a cross-dressing comedy, or anything to do with Maddie’s gender at all. She is a woman, presented without exaggeration or irony, and she just happens to be portrayed by a male actor instead of a female one. There’s no joke involved, just an excellent performance.

This is an apt approach, considering that Early cites Waters’ 1974 “Female Trouble” as his inspiration for “Maddie’s Secret.” Though he sets aside the extremes of that classic in favor of nuance and kindness, he takes his cue from its star – the incomparable Divine, who never called himself a drag queen but considered himself an actor playing a part. Early does the same, and it makes his film into a kind of full-circle moment in queer “underground” cinema (if a premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, where “Maddie’s Secret” screened to enthusiastic response, can be called “underground”) which pays homage to the legacy of a past icon while picking up the mantle and carrying it in a new – and unexpected – direction.

That’s the thing about expectations: sometimes they are left unfulfilled – and in answer to my own question, as I watched this uniquely winning queer indie gem, what happens just might be something wonderful.

‘Bromantasy’
By Maire Roche
c.2026, G.P. Putnam’s Sons
$20/339 pages

“Danger” just happens to be your middle name.

Any fray, any tussle, anytime anybody needs help, they count on you to step in and save the day. You’re brave, smart and strategic, kind to old people, children, and small animals and, as in the new book “Bromantasy” by Maire Roche, dragons.

Of all the things there were to do – preserving food, keeping house for himself and his best friend Morningthall “Mo” Elmthorn, advanced skincare, and drinking at the local tavern down the road – the one thing Juniper O’Reilly couldn’t resist was a good brawl. It happened so often that Juniper honestly looked forward to it, though Mo wasn’t a fan.

Mo was more grown-up, calm, thoughtful, able, and Juniper loved him for it. He loved Mo, in fact, since they were little boys. He loved Mo in ways that they didn’t talk about, so they kept a wall between their bedrooms in their cottage.

Except for that one time.

They didn’t talk about that, either.

Instead, as they did often, on a warm fall night, Juniper and Mo went to the tavern, where mead was served and they could learn about the king’s weekly quests. There, Juniper could also find a good brawl, which is how he and Mo accidentally got into trouble: Juniper trounced one of the king’s men and was forced into a quest.

He didn’t want to fight dragons and he felt bad that Mo had been dragged along. He felt even worse leaving their farm, sleeping on the ground, wearing the same clothes every day, and not having enough skincare product along. A campfire added to the problem. A roving, lying prince, also in search of dragons, didn’t help. And though a quest was no place for a child, Juniper and Mo found a frightened little girl they had no choice but to protect.

A child with strange eyes, sharp teeth, and fire on her breath.

“And just like that, Juniper and Mo had a dragon.”

Bros + romance + fantasy = “Bromantasy.” It also could equal one of two other things: a romp full of humor, dragons, kings, princes, and adventure.

Or it could equal a whole lot of eye-rolling.

It’s a fact that this book is funny, in the way that a 1980s high school comedy movie is funny – meaning that it’s dippy, giddy, and very caricaturish but you’ll laugh quite often. The story contains everything you want in a fantasy romance (a “romantasy”), including human-like alternate species, a life-changing journey, and plenty of nudge-nudge-wink skirting around the attraction the two main characters have for one another. It’s a decent story, convoluted in just the right way. Purely, it’s an escape.

So why wouldn’t you want to read it? See above, and depending on your favorite reading genre. High-brow literature, this ain’t.

For the right reader, “Bromantasy” is a decent-enough vacation read, something not too taxing or hard on the brain. It’s for novel lovers, dragon hunters, king’s questers, princes, and romantics. For everyone else, this tale is just middling.

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