True (or False) COMO Royalty
- Photos by Jonathan Asher Photography
Meet the Queue Queens behind True/False Film Fest.
It is easy to spot the glamorous Queue Queens while waiting in line at the True/False Film Fest. Their intricate outfits, which they often spend months curating, make it obvious to even newcomers who they can go to for assistance. What you don’t see behind the outfits and their helpful, cheerful disposition is the amount of time, energy, and money it takes to be a Queen.
Though they’re offered opportunities to see films for free after the festival at Ragtag, the queens work 8 to 10 hour shifts and miss the majority of the showings while they assist attendees. They act as “mobile information stations” and peacekeepers as they hand out “Q cards” and hold down the queue for those who have not yet purchased their tickets. They do it all for the love of True/False and what it does for Columbia’s community. This is why every Queen, without exception, mentioned how excited they were to be back downtown to show non-natives what COMO is all about.
Without further ado, meet (some of) your 2022 True/False Queue Queens!
Rochara Knight
Rochara Knight is one busy woman. By day, she works as the program director at the nonprofit St. Raymond’s Society in Jefferson City, which serves pregnant women and new mothers in need. The rest of her time is spent working as the executive director at her “second home,” Talking Horse Productions, and as an entertainer. This includes acting, serving in production, and singing and songwriting for her band, Rochara Knight and the Honey Doves. At the time of this interview, she was recording their first album.
She has been a Queue Queen for seven years and fell into Queening after her first year of volunteering for True/False. She worked events such as “Reality Bites” as she learned more about the different areas of involvement, looking for the best fit. As someone who loves costumes and getting dressed up, she was drawn to the Queens as soon as she saw them. As she inquired about the role, the King of Queens himself, Ron Ribiat, told her to put him down as a reference. She was immediately hooked after the first year and can’t imagine doing any other position again.
Her favorite part of the fest, aside from the people she meets in the queue, is the Mobile Funk Unit. You can always find her — and many others — singing and dancing along as they come down the street.
She is pictured here in one of her favorite costumes. It was inspired by nature because the film fest that year was entirely outdoors. When she chose the dress, she saw similarities in Greek goddesses, and Artemis was the perfect fit. From there she had only one question:
“Where do I get a bow and arrow?!”
Carolyn Magnuson
Carolyn Magnuson is considered by fellow Queens and many others to be an icon of True/False. In 2018, they created and unveiled a papier-mâché puppet of Carolyn during the March March Parade, joining the puppets of the co-founders of the festival, David Wilson and Paul Sturtz. She fits in among these ranks because Carolyn has been Queening for so long she’s lost count, but it’s been at least the past 16 years.
The 82-year-old is a retired educator who has found that being involved with True/False and Ragtag Cinema has brought some of her biggest moments of joy since retiring in 2006. She remembers when she first read the application: It said they were looking for someone who is bodacious and out there, and she immediately thought,
“I can do that!”
She is so pleased with how the Queens have evolved and adapted to their role throughout the years, and she always enjoys the surprise of others’ costumes. Hers is classic and a constant. When creating her costume, she wanted to dress as true royalty. That’s why you’ll find her every year in a red cloak with the True/False logo stitched to the back. It comes complete with a crown, of course.
Her favorite memories are about the people she helps, especially those that come back remembering her. She remembers one time specifically when a woman was having a difficult time communicating as a non-English speaker. They worked through the language barrier together, and the next day she came through the queue just to find Carolyn and gift her with a doll as thanks. It’s moments like that that always keep Carolyn coming back.
Melissa MacGowan
Melissa MacGowan was recruited for queening by King of Queens, Ron, in 2013. He reached out about the opportunity saying it would suit her personality, and for her, it was an immediate yes.
She describes herself as “gleefully unemployed,” and currently she enjoys creating and selling jewelry at Artlandish Gallery. Like all queens, Melissa takes pride in her costume and the work that goes into it.
She never buys a complete costume, always building the components piece by piece and sometimes sewing the outfit entirely herself.
Her favorite costume has been an apron she created out of fabric that had the periodic table on it. She leaned wholeheartedly into the science theme that year, completing the outfit with goggles.
One of her favorite memories is helping to create and unveil the puppets at the March March Parade. She vividly remembers the surprise on everyone’s face the first time, which made the hours that went into the papier-mâché projects worth it.
Robin Morrison
Last but certainly not least, we have Robin Morrison — Queen of Queens. The COMO native has spent 10 years as a queen and eight of those years in charge of the team. Her 20 years of management in restaurant and retail, as well as the team she currently manages at Central Bank, gives her the perfect background for this role. Her commitment to the role is strong; she takes a week off work each year to focus on the festival.
As Queen of Queens, she does a little bit of everything: recruiting, scheduling, training, coaching, comforting. Throughout the festival, she gets roughly 80,000 steps because she makes rounds to each queue repeatedly, checking on the queens and assisting them in any way she can. For her, it’s a joy because True/False is her favorite weekend of the year and she loves
“the way people come together to build something bigger than the individual.”
For the past seven years, she has been in pink from head to toe, motivated by the idea that she’d be impossible to miss. New accessories and additions to the costume come all the time, as “a queen’s best friend is Amazon.”
One of her favorite features of her costume and memories from the festival is a small, square cherry fabric patch in her pink fuzzy cloak. The patch came from a vendor at the festival, who would take patches out of attendees’ clothing and replace it with a patch of their choosing. She chose the Cherry patch because it reminds her of Wisconsin, where her family has vacationed for generations. That patch represents two of her greatest loves: her family and Queening at True/False.
She always warns newcomers that the world comes crashing back down after the magical week of the festival, but she hopes that they’ll be back for more, just like her.