Free documentary screening revisits a hidden Atlanta LGBTQ+ TV legacy
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Duffy Odum and RuPaul perform during an episode of The American Music Show. Screenshot: Courtesy of TAMS Archive/YouTube
A free screening on Sunday will revisit "The American Music Show," a public-access staple that helped shape LGBTQ+ culture in Atlanta and beyond I-285.
Why it matters: Shot in creator Dick Richards' Inman Park bungalow, the show ran from 1981 to 2005 and was credited as the first to put RuPaul on TV, along with icons like Lady Bunny and Jayne County.
- The People TV show's guerrilla-style shoots across Atlanta — from the Jackson Street bridge to Piedmont Park's old cruising trails — offer an alternative view of the city in the 1980s and '90s.
Driving the news: Atlanta filmmaker and writer Matt Terrell explored the show's archive at Emory University's Rose Library to create a "supercut" documentary of roughly 15 clips that tell the story of the show and its characters.
- Sponsored by Atlanta's Office of Cultural Affairs, the screening is free and runs 2:30–5pm on Sunday at Tara Atlanta. RSVP
Catch up quick: Richards produced each campy and chaotic episode on roughly $5, or the cost of a VHS tape, Terrell told Axios.
- The show once included a critique from a People TV board member — "public access has nothing to do with providing you and your minions a venue for passing in-jokes and sophomoric humor" — alongside celebrity endorsements of the show, according to an Emory researcher.
- Episodes featured underground drag shows, punk music, sketch comedy and even serious segments like a RuPaul field trip to Forsyth County to protest the Ku Klux Klan.
When RuPaul won his first Emmy in 2018 for "RuPaul's Drag Race," the first person he thanked was Richards, who had died of leukemia one week earlier.
- Richards, who also ran the Funtone USA media company out of his house, released music by the Fabulous Pop Tarts.
- The British duo went on to found World of Wonder, the production company behind "RuPaul's Drag Race."
Zoom out: Richards and his longtime friend Nelson Sullivan, a prolific chronicler of New York's gay and underground club scenes, were making must-watch content back when TikTok was just a sound that clocks made.
- The two friends built an Atlanta-New York pipeline of talent, Terrell said.
- When Sullivan died in 1989 of an apparent heart attack, Richards became the caretaker of the videographer's vast collection of VHS footage.
What he's saying: Terrell, who writes regularly about the larger impact of Atlanta LGBTQ+ history's overlooked moments, describes his work as "reclamation journalism."
- "Gay people have spent our lives consuming straight media," he said. "I'm trying to reverse the flow of that... and [treat] LGBTQ stories of Atlanta not as niche, but as part of the larger history of Atlanta."