In 1982, you could see several gay-themed movies:
Or Partners, about two cops, one straight, the other gay but closeted, assigned to go undercover as a gay couple to catch a serial killer. Sounds like Cruising, but it's a comedy.
The straight cop was Ryan O'Neal, the prettyboy star of Love Story (dying girlfriend), Paper Moon (con man adopts a little girl), and What's Up, Doc? (academic falls for free-spirit)
The Gay Cop was John Hurt, who played both Quentin Crisp and Caligula, but claimed to be straight in real life.
Left: I always thought the Gay Cop was played by "John Heard," who played the gay soldier Billy in New York Shakespeare Festival production of Streamers in 1976, seen here in a humiliation-nudity scene in Between the Lines (1977).
Later he played Tony Soprano's pal, corrupt detective Vin Makazian, on The Sopranos.
Back to Partners: it was written by Francis Veber, who also wrote La Cage aux Folles (1978), and would go on to its American remake, The Bird Cage (1996)
And directed by William Burroughs, who went on to direct Frasier and Will and Grace.
What could go wrong?
Left: Ryan O'Neal
I repeat: What could go wrong?
"Fitting in to the gay community" means becoming the most flamboyantly femme stereotype Straight Cop can manage before being too overcome by disgust to continue. Except Ryan O'Neal was homophobic in real life, and his own disgust leaks through in every. single. scene.
To make matters worse, every. single. gay man. he meets starts pawing and groping -- gay men are all desperate to bed straight men, and they have no self-control -- which disgusts him even more, making it almost impossible to keep his cover.
Gay Cop is one of those eternally depressed queens that we see frequently during the period: "never being happy doesn't mean being sad"; "if only we didn't hate ourselves quite so much."
He has a gay appeal that makes me feel
There may be something sad about the boy -- Noel Coward
Gay Cop originally kills himself due to the existential angst of being gay, but the test audience didn't approve, so he gets to live.
And every gay character is the most limp-wristed, sashaying stereotype this side of The Boys in the Band.
Darn thing got horrible reviews; even homophobic critics thought it was too homophobic. And Ryan got a Golden Raspberry Award.
This is all common knowledge; Partners is described, and savaged, in every history of the portrayal of LGBT people on film, from The Celluloid Closet to Hollywood Pride.
I never actually watched -- the outrage would be too much -- so I was not aware of this scene. A muscleman is ineffectively covering his privates, showing the world that gay men have p*enises, that they are in fact men.
Who was this guy who so blatantly displayed his manhood in a movie designed to deny it?
The rabbit hole of internet research began.
More after the break
When you search for Partners online, you're likely to get The Partners, a 2012 tv series about bromance between a straight guy and a gay guy (David Krumholtz of Numbers, Michael Urie of Ugly Betty) which causes tension with their respective partners. Michael's is played by Brandon Routh, previously Superman. It got very bad reviews, and was cancelled after 7 episodes.
But the d*ck shot in Partners comes from Steven Reisch as "Counter Boy," a suspect whom the fruity leather-clad Straight Cop and his morose partner take to the beach. Stripping off his clothes, he invites Straight Cop to join him in a fruity frolic.
Next they bring the trio into the police station, Counter Guy in a blanket. A smirking cop strips him and takes them past rape-whistling inmates to their cell. "After you, miss," he smirks.
The only biographical intel I managed to piece together on Steven Reisch has him born about 1950, and graduating from Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin about 1972.
Northland College is in the far north of the state, straddling the Michigan Upper Peninsula. I looked up a wrestling team photo.
Steven's acting misadventures began with a role as Parnelli the Cabbie in Episodes 1.5 and 1.6 of The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo, the Dukes of Hazzard spin-off with Claude Aikins as the corupt sheriff.
I couldn't find screenshots, and Sheriff Lobo is not available for streaming, but here's Brian Kerwin, who played the non-corrupt deputy, and would go on to date Harvey Fierstein in Torch Song Trilogy (1988): more constantly depressed gays, some of whom die.
Steven reprised Parnelli in Episode 2.6 (1979) of BJ and the Bear, about a trucker and his pet chimp, and then another character, Deke, in six Season 2 episodes (1981). Again, no streaming available.
Partners came in 1982. After that, Steven had guest roles in a variety of tv shows that I remember hearing about but never saw.
He played a hipster on the night-time soap opera Knott's Landing (1983).
A unnamed role on a 1984 episode of The Fall Guy, about a stuntman played by Lee Majors with heteronormative gusto:But the hardest thing I'll ever do is watch my leading ladies
Kiss some other guy while I'm bandagin' my knee
Bobby Indigo in an episode of The New Mike Hammer (1984), with Stacey Keach as Mickey Spillane's hard-bitten film noir detective.
Wait -- where are all the gay roles?
"Mate" in a 1986 episode of the tearjerker Highway to Heaven. I fast-forwarded through this episode until I couldn't take it anymore: homeless boy cuddling a cat, then comforting a dying boy, then a dying boy in a wheelchair. I never found Steven Reisch.
I'm tired. I've been at this all afternoon.
Next came episodes of Remington Steele with Pierce Brosnan, Freddie Krueger's defense attorney in the first episode of Freddie's Nightmares, and The New Adam 12, with Peter Parros and Ethan Wayne reprising the classic roles.
Steven's last appearance in the IMDB was in 1990. The height of the AIDS crisis. I wonder if he died.
There's a Steven Reisch about the right age who owns a photography studio in Asheville, North Carolina. He says that he started as an actor, but got the photography bug, and opened a studio in Los Angeles in 1993. He specializes in headshots. Could he the Steven Reisch from Partners, an elderly gay man living his best life...in Asheville?
Wait -- he's straight. He posts about his daughter's one-year wedding anniversary, and he notes that he does some headshots of "beauties" but never "hunks." And one of those blurbs that wants to assure you that the subject is heterosexual says that he "lives in Sherman Oaks with his wife Ivy."
Must be someone else...unless they cast a straight guy as the Counter Boy who showed his d*ck to the world.
Why would they do that?
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Left: the straight Steven's son in law. Kind of cute, but not worth an afternoon of research.
See also: The Out-Laws: Adam Devine has a crush on Pierce Brosnan. Don't you?
Workaholics Episode 5.5: Penis jokes and buddy bonding at a gay pride party
Cruising: Homophobic classic about sin, degradation, and d*cks in a doomed gay world
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