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Hot Takes & Deep Dives

Lola Rocknrolla on Dean Johnson: '80s Genderf*ck Icon, Mysterious Death

Hot Takes & Deep Dives

Jess Rothschild

Tv & Film

4.5774 Ratings

🗓️ 19 January 2026

⏱️ 56 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Jess welcomes LOLA ROCKNROLLA, filmmaker of the brand-new documentary THE BIG JOHNSON, exploring the life and eerie death of DEAN JOHNSON: the 6'6", genderf*cky, rollicking rock-star frontman who helped define 1980s–90s East Village nightlife. Topics — the still-unsettled details around Dean's 2007 death, his bands Dean & the Weenies and The Velvet Mafia, being an HIV+ party promoter & more!


"The Big Johnson" screens at NYC's Quad Cinema January 23–29, streaming avail in February


⭐ IG: @jessxnyc | @lolarocknrolla13


⭐ Jess' docu-series on the rise & fall of SoulCycle — Cult of Body & Soul


⭐ Jess' docu-series on the history, mystique & lore of Fire Island — Finding Fire Island

 

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Welcome back to Hot Takes and Deep Dives, and I am here with the writer and director behind the brand new documentary about the life and mysterious death of this bombastic radical performance artist, Dean Johnson.

0:29.6

You are Lola Rock & Rolla.

0:31.6

Yes, I am. Hello, everyone. Thanks for having me.

0:34.6

How are you?

0:35.6

You know, I'm doing great because this is the

0:38.5

year everybody gets to meet my friend Dean, who taught me a lot of things about life and was a good

0:44.6

friend and bandmate for almost a decade. And I'm just very excited for everybody to meet this

0:49.8

glorious, glorious queerdo.

0:52.8

You know, I got to be honest, I had never heard of Dean Johnson,

0:58.4

and I had never heard of his band, Dean and the Weenies, and then he had a later bit, the second

1:03.6

band he was in is the band that you were in with him, the Velvet Mafia. Yeah, let's establish,

1:09.0

so you're the filmmaker behind this doc. The doc is called

1:12.8

The Big Johnson. Let's say that. I want to say a few things right up top. So the audience is totally

1:17.2

with us. The documentary is called The Big Johnson. It's going to be released at the quad cinema

1:23.6

right here in New York, right here in the village on 13th Street, this Friday,

1:28.3

January 23rd, it's going to run for how long at the choir?

1:32.3

It's only in that theater for a week, and then it goes to streaming Apple, Amazon, YouTube,

1:39.6

all of that stuff at the end of February.

1:41.9

But I'm actually going to do a small theatrical run around the

1:46.2

country starting, you know, we're starting to book dates in like New Orleans and San Francisco

1:51.6

and L.A. And we spent a year doing festivals and so it's played all over the place. So yeah, we just,

1:57.6

London was our last festival and that was really fun. So I heard about the screening that's happening this Friday, and you sweetly sent me a link so that I could actually watch it.

...

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