I spent the fall quarter of 1979, my sophomore year at Augustana College, in Regensburg, Germany, so naturally I didn't go to movie theaters very often.
August: Meetings with Remarkable Men. A biography of the Russian-Armenian mystic Gurdjieff, who meets lots of remarkable men and opens an all-male commune full of gay subtexts. Apparently the real Gurdjieff was extremely homophobic.
September: None.
October: Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht, with Klaus Kinski as unattractive and excessively heterosexual Count Dracula. But I was seeing a movie in German, without subtitles, and I understood most of what was going on (being familiar with the story helped).
November: None.
In December I was back in Rock Island, where I met my first boyfriend, Fred, a ministerial intern. Our dates often involved movies.
December: Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The first ever -- and at the time we assumed the only -- film version of the iconic 1960s tv series. The first 15 minutes involve Captain Kirk watching in ecstasy as his shuttle slowly approaches the big-screen Enterprise. The plot then devolves into brash stupidity. Plus I accidentally went with a girl. Ugh!
December: All That Jazz: a sort-of biography of choreographer Bob Fosse, whom I had never heard of, with lots of symbolism about heart attacks and death. Iconic because I went with my first boyfriend Fred, who taught me how to find gay subtexts.
December: Being There. Peter Sellers, usually a comedic actor, as a man on the autistic spectrum who perceives events in a new and "refreshing" way. He becomes an advisor to the President of the U.S., and gets a girlfriend, although he is not interested in sex (she misunderstands his statement that "I like to watch.")
January: Windows: A woman is raped, but she is more traumatized by being the crush of the lesbian next door. But seeing a lesbian on the big screen was a big deal, regardless of the homophobia behind her portrayal.
February:American Gigolo. Every gay man in America went to this movie, to catch a glimpse of Richard Gere's chest, abs, butt, and penis. We didn't get offended by the homophobic slur, or the gay villain -- straight America hated us, it was a simple fact of life, just deal with it and find joy where you can -- like in Richard Gere's penis.
February: Midnight Madness. Five teams of college stereotypes -- jocks, nerds, evil frat boys, and so on -- play a sort of proto-LARP scavenger hunt game. Among them are David Naughton (top photo), then known primarily for Dr. Pepper commercials, and unknown Michael J. Fox.
March: Little Darlings. They are Kristy McNichol and Tatum O'Neal, fifteen-year old girls at summer camp who enter a contest to see who can get a boy to have sex with her first. Their targets are fellow camper Matt Dillon and counselor Armand Assante, respectively. One succeeds in having sex, the other doesn't. Who cares which? Teen idol Matt Dillon was much more feminine than Kristy McNichol (which is wearing more makeup in this shot?). So everyone assumed that he was gay (he's actually straight).
March: Nijinsky. We didn't know that the ballet superstar was gay (this was before you could buy books with lists of important LGBT people), and the movie didn't really out him. A very restrained affair with the predatory Diaghilev pushes him into insanity, while the love of a woman is his salvation. But we do see a lot of ballet bulges.
April: The Private Eyes. Tim Conway and Don Knotts, comedians of the "bumbling nebbish" school whom we remembered from childhood, play bumbling private investigators who solve a murder and meet a girl. But they walk off into the sunset with each other.
May:The Nude Bomb. Fred and I both watched the spy spoof Get Smart (1965-70), so of course we had to see the return of bumbling spy Maxwell Smart (Don Adams). He must stop KAOS from exploding a bomb that will disintegrate all of the clothes in the world, leaving men naked. Presumably women, too, but we get chest and butt shots only of men. Not that I'm complaining.
May: The Empire Strikes Back. Fred was not a science fiction fan, and had not seen the original Star Wars. But it didn't take much explanation to get him up to speed.
May: Die Laughing. Cab driver Robby Benson and the Girl try to capture a monkey which is threatening to destroy the world, or something. The plot was irrelevant. We went to see Robby Benson, unarguably the dreamiest teen idol of all time, in spite of his obvious deficit in the bulge department.
In June, Fred and I moved to Omaha (actually Gretna, Nebraska), so he could take a pastoral job at a church there. He told everyone that I was his "cousin," living with him while I was in college at Creighton. I lasted five weeks. In July, I took an impromptu trip to California, then returned to Rock Island to enroll in my junior year at Augustana College.
June: Urban Cowboy. John Travolta, then known for Grease, plays a cowboy transplanted from small-town Texas to Houston, where he meets a girl and rides a mechanical bull.
June: Can't Stop the Music. The Village People were a comedy disco group whose songs ("YMCA," "In the Navy") featured obviously deliberate gay subtexts, although they always claimed ignorance. Here they are completely heterosexual, rising to fame with the help of Steve Guttenberg, Caitlyn Jenner (still presenting as Bruce), and The Girl.
July: The Blue Lagoon. A heterosexist fable about two kids (Christopher Atkins, Brooke Shields) who grow up alone on a desert island and discover sex. Yuck. But we see Christopher Atkins' penis! Years later I would see it in real life, and he didn't even charge me. Although I did have to help his son move.
"All that Jazz" has more than gay subtext- there is gay dance sequence in a big production number "Take Off With Us" not too mention a lot shirtless male dancers.
ReplyDeleteThe first Star Trek movie is just conventional SF, more than the others.
ReplyDeleteAmerican Gigolo is proof of low standards.
I mean, Empire has a giant retcon n qr the end, so knowing the original may be more confusing. Everyone knows now. (I love how in the Knights of the Old Republic games, it becomes a running gag that EVERY Jedi is a compulsive liar.)
Can't Stop the Music is weirdly hetero. Especially since like, one of then is a Castro clone? Also, I love how it has Dazzler Syndrome: Disco died so fast that there were still companies investing quite a bit in it after it was dead. (Dazzler was a Disco singer mutant who could turn sound into light. Created in 1980. Later incarnations went punk. Does not explain George Perez essentially dyeing her costume indigo and putting it on Dick Grayson four years later.)
Blue Lagoon is a heterosexist mess. Terrible movie. But a penis. Which makes it R, which makes me wonder who this movie is for. (Turning Red left me examining puberty in cinema and other pop culture.)
Being there: As I remember (not perfect, too) the innocent man does not get a girlfriend. There is a lady who tries to seduce him. Not sure: perhaps he only goes along to her bedroom because she answers there is a TV inside. I cannot remember wether her act on the bed led to a lot of skin on the screen - perhaps I looked away just like the man...
ReplyDelete