Topp Twins

Had a lovely unexpected evening out on Thursday at the premiere of the Topp Twins movie Untouchable Girls at the LGBT Film Festival in Chelsea. We realised we’d been completely remiss in contacting our Chrysler photographer friend Brian since being here, and when we finally made contact he invited us as his company’s guests to the film. Turned out he was the twins’ manager for a few years back in the 80’s and his company had been the independent financial backer on the film. We also didn’t realise the Topp Twins would actually be there!

There weren’t many New Zealand accents in the crowd, but they were certainly distinctive. We had an entire row of the theatre for Brian and about a dozen guests – we felt quite honoured! The twins came out to do a waiata before the film which was beautiful – they really do sing as one voice and a waiata is usually fairly beautiful anyway. The film was great! A mix of their lives growing up, their political stance in New Zealand in the 80’s, their being openly gay and Jools’ breast cancer.  We laughed, sang, cried and cringed (just a little) at some of the small town New Zealand footage – kids riding sheep at A&P shows and the twins busking on Queen Street – I wondered what end of the earth New Yorkers would think New Zealand was at!

The film received a standing ovation and during the question and answer session after the film there were a couple of questions about how they managed to have the lives they have in New Zealand, how the country accepted them and held them up as heroes and national icons ‘despite’ being gay – the American crowd were very much in awe of the acceptance. We felt quite proud to be Kiwis!

They tried to teach the crowd to yodel then Linda showed us how it was done! (See the video on my Flickr site.)

So I was feeling quite star struck by the end of the film – silly really because I’m sure I saw the twins live at some point, but when I got out and saw the throngs of people crowding around waving CDs and t-shirts and post cards to be signed I just had to get in there. They were lovely! Took a few minutes to chat about what we were doing in New York and pose for a picture. Their film t-shirt is black with an orange print on it but by the time I decided I just HAD to have one there were none left that would fit me … fingers crossed for another print run.

It was great to see the film – we missed seeing it in New Zealand as it was constantly sold out! Days later and I’m still singing Untouchable Girls (well the that phrase at least).