In August 1995 we took the plunge, moving from West Hollywood, just another gay neighborhood, to San Francisco, Gay Heaven. Living in San Francisco takes work: it's frightfully expensive, dangerous, and surprisingly cold, even in the summer. Poverty and homelessness are endemic. Besides, you have the responsibility of living as a stand-in for thousands of gay men stuck in homophobic small towns. Every moment has to count. Even doing laundry and buying groceries has to have some connection to the gay commuity. Even movies: no more hunting for subtexts or looking for muscles: "If it's not gay, stay away."
January: None
February: None
March: The Birdcage, an adaption of La Cage Aux Folles, about a drag queen (Nathan Lane( and his boyfriend (Robin Williams) dealing with their son's fiance and her homophobic family. All gay men are feminine and work as drag queens, got it.
March: The Celluloid Closet, about gay villains and subtexts in movies from the Golden Age to the 1990s.
April: Fear, with Marky Mark as a sinister stranger who intrudes into the "perfect life" of a heterosexual nuclear family in suburban Seattle. It's a dad's "no man is good enough for my little girl" jealousy gone wild, with no gay subtexts, but Mark taking off his clothes was draw enough, even in San Francisco.
May: Mulholland Falls. I don't remember why; maybe I was feeling homesick (Mulholland Drive is in L.A.), or maybe I was confusing it with another movie with a similar title. Nick Nolte, who is not at all attractive, plays a heterosexual cop.
May: I Shot Andy Warhol: a biopic of Valerie Solanis, who founded SCUM (The Society for Cutting Up Men), dedicated to the goal of killing all men. Strangely, she got some male recruits, but when she asked them to follow through with the goal and kill themselves, they balked. She also shot Andy Warhol.
June: The Phantom, based on the comic strip superhero who wears a purple leotard and is called "The Ghost Who Walks" by the superstitious racial-stereotype natives. In this version, Billy Zane plays the Phantom sans biceps and bulges, and of course gets The Girl. Yuck.
July: None
August: Basquiat, a biopic of the heroin-addicted, hetero-horny artist, whom I had never heard of before. There are hints that he was bisexual, and interested in Andy Warhol, but everything is closeted.
September: None
October: Bound, because it features a lesbian relationshisp between ex-con plumber Corky and gangster's girlfriend Violet.
October: The Grass Harp, based on a novella by Truman Capote, who was gay, so it must have a gay theme, right? Nope, it's pure Southern Gothic, starring Edward Furlong as a teenage boy sent to live with his eccentric aunts in a town overrun with eccentric characters. The town barber is played by Roddy McDowell as a swishy stereotype, but is not explcitily gay. Some reviews thought that Edward was playing gay, but he kisses a girl.
November: None
December: Mars Attacks: I expected a send-up of 1950s alien-invasion movies, but instead found a send-up of Independence Day, with government officials, various colorful small-town residents, and singer Tom Jones fighting the Martians.
"The Celluloid Closet" is a great documentary about the history of gay images in Hollywood based on Vito Russo's landmark book - its a must see if you are interested in cinema history and no it 's not just about villains and subtext.
ReplyDeleteVillains and subtexts were all there were during the Hayes Code. He does spend some time on the Pansy Craze of the 1920s, and Laurel and Hardy as a proto-gay couple, but then it's all lingering looks, dark secrets, and feminine villains until "Midnight Cowboy."
DeleteThere were also Mars Attacks trading cards in the early 60s.
ReplyDeleteWhat's amazing is, with fictionalized versions of Truman Capote, even To Kill a Mockingbird managed a thinly-veiled "caught" scene. But it helps there that Scout is young and naïve and an unreliable narrator, so her brother and their friend (who is Truman Capote) experimenting is just "strip poker with matches". (She also doesn't catch that Bob Ewell rapes his daughter.)
What's funny is, the whole reason Solanas was doing all that was because Andy Warhol didn't hire her. And I guess a lot of radfems at the time hated gays. Yeah, basically Andrea Dworkin was innocent of the prejudices we think of when we hear "radical feminism" today, but once you go beyond Dworkin, it starts getting all kinds of phobic pretty fast. Like, "pals around with NARTH" levels of homophobia in the case of Nikki Craft.
I don't remember them doing the Phantom, but the Shadow and the Spirit, sure.
Oh, there's a video on YouTube about the Schumacher Batman movies. (I do wish they'd made a reference to Barbara's last name in the movie. Just that Wilson is an important name in the Robin mythos.) And I'll say it: Bane is a leatherman. Plus, Bane actually is a Chuck Dixon creation, so I get to piss off a homophobe by saying that too.