Phillip Raymond Ford is a stage and film producer, director and entertainer who served most of the 1980s as "honorary straight man" in the legendary San Francisco drag troupe Sluts A-Go-Go. He is best known as the producer and director of Vegas in Space

Vegas In Space

Vegas in Space is a 1991 science fiction/comedy film, directed by Phillip R. Ford and released by Troma Entertainment, about three male space travelers who must become women in order to complete a secret mission on the all-female planet Clitoris...

, the celebrated cult film starring the Sluts A-Go-Go, which created a sensation at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival

Sundance Film Festival

The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...

, appeared at festivals worldwide, was broadcast on USA Network's Up All Night with Rhonda Shear and was featured on Entertainment Tonight

Entertainment Tonight

Entertainment Tonight is a daily tabloid television entertainment television news show that is syndicated by CBS Television Distribution throughout the United States, Canada and in many countries around the world. Linda Bell Blue is currently the program's executive producer...

and the E! Entertainment Television Network.

With Doris Fish, Miss X and "Tippi", Ford created and appeared onstage with the Sluts A-Go-Go in a string of notorious theatrical nightclub spectacles including The Miss Solar System Pageant (1984), The Happy Hour Show (1985), Nightclub of the Living Dead (1986), Box Office Poison (1987), Sluts A-Go-Go Still Alive! (1989) and Who Does That Bitch Think She Is?: An All Star Tribute To Doris Fish (1990). He directed such stage plays as Phillip R. Ford's Dolls, 1993's sensational send-up of Valley of the Dolls

Valley of the Dolls

Valley of the Dolls is a novel by American writer Jacqueline Susann, published in 1966. The "dolls" within the title is a slang term for downers, barbiturates used as sleep aids....

starring Connie Champagne at the On-Broadway Theater in San Francisco (for which he directed eight short films), a remarkably dramatic The Bad Seed

The Bad Seed (play)

The Bad Seed was a successful and long-running Broadway play by Maxwell Anderson adapted from the novel of that name by William March, and was in turn adapted by John Lee Mahin into an Academy Award-nominated film of the same name directed by Mervyn Leroy. Staged by Reginald Denham, it opened...

(1987) at Theater Rhinoceros and the vivid one-woman tribute, Simply Stunning – The Doris Fish Story (2002) featuring Arturo Galster, based on the life and work of his mentor and collaborator Doris Fish. As an actor Ford has appeared in San Francisco in the title role in Behind the Candelabra – My Life with Liberace

Liberace

Wladziu Valentino Liberace , best known simply as Liberace, was a famous American pianist and vocalist.In a career that spanned four decades of concerts, recordings, motion pictures, television and endorsements, Liberace became world-renowned...

(2002) a play adapted by Jennifer Blowdryer from the memoir of Liberace chauffeur/paramour Scott Thorsen. He also appeared onstage at the Plush Room in TenderLoins (1994), sang using his own voice as Mrs. Miller

Mrs. Miller

Elva Ruby Connes Miller , who recorded under the name Mrs. Miller, was an American singer who gained some fame in the 1960s for her series of shrill and off-key renditions of then-popular songs such as "Moon River", "Monday, Monday", "A Lover's Concerto" and "Downtown".Singing in an untrained,...

 in The Sick and Twisted Players’ The Cool Ones (1994) and acted in the universally reviled motion picture Virtue (1999).

Ford began making films at the age of fifteen and his first professional film short, Rollercoaster to Hell (1982), was featured on KTVU's Creature Features

Creature Features

Creature Features was a generic title for a genre of horror TV format shows broadcast on local U.S. television stations throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s...

. He has served as a Guest Lecturer in "Contemporary Cinema" at his alma mater, San Francisco State University

San Francisco State University

San Francisco State University is a public university located in San Francisco, California. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers over 100 areas of study from nine academic colleges...

, from which he holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Film Production

His writing has been featured in the anthology Good Advice for Young Trendy People of All Ages (Manic D Press

Manic D Press

Manic D Press is an American literary press based in San Francisco, California publishing fiction , poetry, cultural studies, art, narrative-oriented comix, and alternative travel trade paperbacks...

, 2005) and in Straight to Hell #65 - The Manhattan Review of Unnatural Acts.

External links

"The Strange Case of Vegas in Space: Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of a Midnight Movie Masterpiece" article

New York Times review http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/132956/Vegas-in-Space/overview

Phillip R. Ford on imdb http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103192/

Vegas in Space on imdb http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0285832/

Troma Entertainment http://www.troma.com/

San Francisco Chronicle - 'Generosity amid the glitter' http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/08/27/DD18735.DTL&hw=doris+fish&sn=001&sc=1000

Vegas in Space mash-up video (Italy) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMkglmC-4L8

Devildead fan site (France)http://www.devildead.com/critique.php3?FilmID=816

Bright Lights Film Journal Vegas in Spacehttp://www.brightlightsfilm.com/17/08d_vegas.html