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Aug 15, 2022

Going to Movies in the Spring of 1997: Brendan Fraser Swings, Chris O'Donnell Bulges, Devon Sawa Goes Wild, and There's a Gay Kiss


 In the spring of 1997, I was living in San Francisco, Gay Heaven: bohemian, bizarre, frightfully expensive, and a big responsibility.  I was the representative to thousands of gay men still stuck in homophobic small towns, dreaming of freedom, so every moment had to be a celebration of gay culture, history, or community.  It was exhausting.  Fortunately, every neighborhood was gay, to an extent, so there was no mandate to "never leave the Castro!"  I saw 11 movies in the theater that spring.

January:  Gridlocked: because I felt nostalgic for Los Angeles, where every highway is always gridlocked, 24/7.  It's actually a gay subtext buddy comedy about a cop and an actor researching a role (Dominic Purcell, Cody Hackman, top photo) who encounter a real-life hostage crisis. 

February: Lost Highway, because a pretentious UC Berkeley film major invited me. I'm willing to sit through two hours of incomprehensible David Lynch sex-and-death, if there will be a bedroom afterwards.


March:
Jungle 2 Jungle: because a silver fox invited me.  I was well past 30, but I suspect that the Silver Fox preferred them younger.  Way younger.  Tim Allen brings his 13-year old raised-by-savages son Mimi (Sam Huntington, left, recent photo) to New York, where he Tarzans around in a loincloth, getting into mishaps and meeting  The Girl of His Dreams.  Today it seems jaw-droppingly racist, but racism, like homophobia, was ubiquitous in the 1990s, so we didn't notice.

March: City of Industry, because I felt nostalgic for Los Angeles.  Ok, it's blasphemous to say it, but I preferred West Hollywood to San Francisco.  This is a standard gangster drama.





April:
8 Heads in a Duffel Bag, because who wouldn't want to see a movie with that title?  College student Andy Comeau accidentally picks up the wrong bag at the airport (security never picked up on the eight heads?), which puts a damper on his plans to marry the Girl of His Dreams.  David Spade and Todd Louiso play his buddies, who are grilled for information.  If you ever wanted to see either of them shirtless, this is your chance.

May: None


June:
Batman + Robin.  Chris O'Donnell's second appearance as the Boy Wonder won him two Razzie nominations.  They just didn't like Robin's bulge-enhanced outfit, but it's true to the blatantly bulging 1960s Robin, Burt Ward.  

June: Hercules, because it's Hercules, the original man-mountain.  Unfortunately, the plot is all about meeting, winning, and saving the Girl of His Dreams.

July: Men in Black, because I was interested in the phenomenon of the "men in black," who show up after your UFO sighting, behave strangely, and ask bizarre questions.  Like one refers to "my husband," in an area where, according to the witness, "Gay Liberation had not made the slightest inroad."  Here Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones play agents who zap your memories to keep you unaware of the various aliens living on Earth.  The Girl eventually joins them.

July: Wild America.  Three dreamy teen idol-types (Devon Sawa, Scott Bairstow, Jonathan Taylor Thomas) hit the road to take their shirts off and buddy-bond.

July: Kiss Me, Guido:  A homophobic straight guy accidentally gets a gay roommate (he thought that GWM meant "Guy With Money") and has to overcome his repugnance.  Then he gets a job on a soap opera, but he has to...ugh...kiss a guy!  Most of the plot involves him agonizing over that...ugh...same-sex kiss.  Dude, gay guys have to kiss girls all the time.  I kissed five girls back in high school, before I came out.  It's easy -- just close your eyes and pretend she's Robby Benson (sigh).  Or in your case, um...Barbie Benton?


July:
George of the Jungle, because I remembered the 1960s Tarzan spoof ("Watch out for that tree!"), and because of Brendan Fraser (sigh).  Of course he meets the Girl of His Dreams, but meanwhile we can watch him swing through the trees (or crash into trees) in a loincloth.  

2 comments:

  1. Fraser worke out to perfection in "George of the Jungle" but I prefer his look in "The Mummy"

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  2. I always tell people the 90s were basically the era of "Oh, we still have all-white country clubs, but we'll pretend not to be racist."

    I have to wonder what notorious homophobe Chuck Dixon (who was writing the batbooks at the time) thought of the Batman movie. I mean, Robin is too old to be Batman's son, and an adult when his parents die, so...Batman's rent boy? It raises too many questions (Dark Crisis does call out Dixon, by the way. Fake Batman telling Tim that Bernard is "just a phase" which even sounds like Batman reassuring Barbara that "the thing with the alien" is just a phase. Except, Chuck, you're the first person to write Dick and Barbara as a couple in the main universe, and if you go too far back, she...well, good thing her dad can arrest her, I guess.)

    But there's so much lore we can imply from the Schumacher movies. Alfred's granddaughter being Barbara Wilson. Wilson is kind of an important name in Teen Titans history.

    Also, Disney's Hercules completely ignored the source material. Hera is the villain, and this version of Hades (normally the only sane god) trying to take over Olympus is what Hera did in another myth. Hades most certainly would not release the titans: they hate him too. Philoctetes is neither a satyr nor Hercules' mentor: That would be Chiron, the centaur. Philoctetes lit his pyre. And while Hercules did defeat the hydra, his nephew and lover Iolaos cauterized the hydra's wounds so more heads wouldn't grow back.

    I liked Men in Black. I never saw the sequels.

    All those shirtless scenes hot different now.

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