In 2000-2001, I finished my doctoral dissertation, got my Ph.D., and started looking for jobs in academe. A lot of those 2-3 day-long interviews where cowtown recruitment committees ask "with all of your research on gay populations, are you ever mistaken for gay?" and invite me to check out "all the pretty girls" on campus. One of them was in L.A., but I didn't have time to check out my old haunts or see my old friends. Not much time for movies, but I managed to see 10. Some of them may have been on DVD later.
August: Sunset Strip, because I was feeling homesick for West Hollyw ood. But it's set in the heterosexual part of town, near the Whiskey A Go Go, where a group of aspiring singers have dreams, have sex, take drugs, and die. Some of them were cute, like Jared Leto as a country rocker.
September: None.
October: Bedazzled: Brendan Fraser (sigh), who can't get a date for some reason, makes a pact with the Devil to win the Girl of His Dreams.
November: None
December: The Emperor's New Groove. Gay men usually stay away from Disney movies unless they can co-opt some kids to accompany them, since the parents in the audience assume that they are there to look for pedophile conquests. But I wanted to see a Disney evocation of Inca myth. Besides, one of the voice actors was Patrick Warburton (sigh), Elaine's hunky boyfriend on Seinfeld. I was pleasantly surprised: the story is about an Incan emperor (David Spade) who is turned into a llama, with no heterosexual romance anywhere, other then a couple of men with wives and kids. (There was one in an early draft, but it was dropped.)
January: L.I.E., because I had had many terrible experiences on the Long Island Expressway (only get on if if you don't mind waiting hours for the traffic to inch forward, stop, inch forward, stop, and stay stopped). It turns out to be a difficult-to-watch movie about the friendship between a boy (15-year old Paul Dano) and a pedophile (Brian Cox). Guess which one gets all of the beefcake shots? Guess which one is killed?
February: None.
March: Tomcats, because who wouldn't want to see Jerry O'Connell in anything, even standing still in his underwear for two hours? Well, especially standing still in his underwear. Here, a large sum of money will go to the "last man standing" in a group of friends (that is, the last man who avoids marriage). So the sexist goons try to trick each other into marrying (women). Notable for a scene in which Jerry is tricked into becoming a BDSM bottom (for a woman, of course).
April: Driven, because of Sylvester Stallone (sigh). He plays an elderly race car driver who comes out of retirement to help a new recruit win races and The Girl.
May: The Mummy Returns, because of Brendan Frasier (sigh). Except here he's a Family Man archaeologist with a wife, a kid, and a girl-crazy brother-in-law. Boo!
June: Moulin Rouge, because I love Paris, and who doesn't want to see a film version of Carmen? I walked out when they started singing contemporary songs. How can you be transported back to 19th century Paris when they are blaring "Rhythm of the Night" and "Lady Marmalade" at you?
June: Y tu mama tambien, because I heard that there were gay characters. There aren't. Two teenage boys and an "older woman" take a road trip through down-and-out Mexico while their girlfriends are away. Each has sex with his girlfriend, and with the older woman; at one point they have a three-way, and the friendship ends. As the "Men on Film" would say, "Hated it!"
July: Legally Blonde. An airheaded fashionista follows her elitist, arrogant ex-boyfriend into Harvard Law School in an attempt to win him back. She works on a murder case where her knowledge of fashion saves the day, gets a less-arrogant boyfriend, and rejects Boyfriend #1.
July: Hedwig and the Angry Inch. During the 1980s, an East German boy has a "sex-change" operation so he can be with his American boyfriend. The operation is botched, leaving her with a female gender identity and an"angry inch" for genitals. She becomes a punk rocker, and meets, falls in love with, and is dumped by the Boy of Her Dreams, who is a competitor punk rocker (a cute although grungy Michael Pitt). The attitude toward gender and sexual identity is uncomfortably old fashioned, but the songs are good.
There is another photo of Paul Dano in his undershorts showing a huge bulge.
ReplyDeleteI remember that scene from the movie, but I didn't feel comfortable posting a pic of a 15-year old's bulge.
DeleteI have not seen "Y Tu Mama Tambien" but don't the two guys kiss during the three way or something- not sure why this is considered a gay movie? "Bedazzled" which is not very funny has scene in which the main characters turns gay as gag
ReplyDeleteYes, they kiss during the three way.
DeleteThey also jerk off together earlier, and it's stated they do this regularly.
DeleteIt's bi-adjacent, that basically straight guys used to at least jerk off together quite frequently when they were young but that was left moribund by midcentury sexual repression (and even moreso the 70s and 80s moral panics), and when the gay community was gentrified in the 90s, it was declared to Just Not Exist.
So it would be bi movie not a gay movie- I'm sure boys still jerk off together but maybe not one talks about it
DeleteI did when I was a boy, but I'm referring to the strident anti-bi attitude of the 90s. Heterosexuals assumed all bi men were cheaters. (And bi women were open to threesomes.) Gays seemed to think the existence of bisexuals made being gay a choice? Obviously it's a matter of modal or progressive distribution (depending on if there are more bis than hets), none of which suggests choice, but genetic determinism was en vogue everywhere else as well.
DeleteIn the movie L.I.E. Paul Dano showed a definite gay interest in Billy Kay and vice versa. Did you take note of that Boomer?
ReplyDeleteI noticed the relationship.
DeleteL.I.E. was just, I find it interesting how arthouse movies make it a point to defy taboos just for the sake of being edgy.
ReplyDeleteTomcats is dumb, but physique is physique.
I don't know, the Mummy was a pretty good franchise until all that Scorpion King nonsense. (And now we're going to have the Rock returning to ancient Egypt with Black Adam.)
I get that things may be older than they think. (Hellacious dates to the 19th century, and is itself likely a play on bodacious, which is even older.) But there is no way all those disco songs were from then. Even if I could see a hooker saying "gitcha gitcha yaya dada".
To be fair, they also jerk off together, which is common, but definitely bi. At least bi-adjacent. (The thing back then was there was still this attitude that bi men just Did Not Exist, but every woman was bi. I'm convinced horny straight boys invented that idea.) But the whole point of Y tu mama tambien is the tie-ins, all the narrated stories along the way. There's also things like the irony of one kid's parents naming him Tenoch in a fit of nationalism while also having him circumcised (a prosthetic) in a bit of assimilation to USA customs.
I have never seen Legally Blonde. I imagine they get law wrong at every point?
I think we all remember "The Origin of Love" at least. Though the handjob scene was kind of disturbing because the character is still a teenager. Not The Dreamers disturbing (Michael Pitt boards with Parisian twins who are also lovers during the 1968 riots.), but disturbing.
"Legally Blonde" gets Harvard wrong, but then, so do most tv shows and movies: "I failed most of my classes in high school, but I got into both Harvard and the local community college. Which should I choose?"
DeleteTo me the best part of Hedgwick is when the they sing a "Wig in a Box ". He obsession with hot rock singer boy does not quite work or the the very theatrical ending in which they become one
ReplyDelete