I understand from the film itself,and various articles I found on the web that this house system goes back decades. Even Laurence Senelick's 'The Changing Room' - the closest thing that we have to a definitive book on drag performance rushes quickly past the film and does not give the background information that one would have expected from it.
Julian Fleisher's 'The Drag Queens of New York: An Illustrated Field Guide' with its flow chart of influence that pulls together Julian Eltinge, Minette, the Warhol queens, and the 90s club scene - and postdates the film - ignores the houses completely. Anthony Slide's 'Great Pretenders' says nothing. The textbooks on drag performance say nothing of these vogueing houses. This film came out 12 years years ago, and was a revelation even for people who knew something of the drag scene in New York.
