Check me out over on Pax Romano's blog for "Homos Who Love Horror and the Non-Homos Who Love Them," Billy Loves Stu.
Pax loves horror movies even more than I do (is that possible?) and this month he is celebrating Pride and Horror with interviews and guest posters and all sorts of wonderful things.
If you've never visited Billy Loves Stu, you should. It's always a good time. Pax is a fellow Jersey boy and all-around good guy. And by the way, if you don't get the title of Pax's blog, I suggest a full course of Wes Craven movies to remedy that...
This week's Gayest Thing is also quite possibly the Worst Musical Ever Made. Thanks to my dear Stephen over at Post Apocalyptic Bohemian, who posted about producer Alan Carr's (Grease) birthday yesterday, I was flooded with memories of this 1980 stinker directed by none other than Rhoda's mom and paper-towel pitchwoman, Nancy Walker.
The story is preposterous (a song writer wants to create a Disco 'Super Group') and the musical numbers are just plain ridiculous. The only reason anyone saw this movie was to ogle the literally hundreds of half-naked men in pools, gyms and various dance floors, grinding away at one another without a single mention of the words "gay," "homosexual" or "fabulous." The very closeted 19 year-old me was in awe. The very openly gay me of today is simply appalled. Just take a look at this number, called "Do the Shake:"
Giant pornstaches; belly shirts; leather vests; short-shorts; showers and locker-rooms abound, but not once is it suggested that any of these fellows might be gay. Puh-leeze!
Is it any wonder that most of the people in this movie have fallen into obscurity? Of course, reality TV has brought Jenner back into the edges of the spotlight and insanity has kept Guttenberg from falling completely out of our collective memories. Walker passed away in 1992, and while Can't Stop the Music was her only feature film, she directed several episodes of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "Rhoda" and "Alice."
If you love bad movies, half-naked men or Disco, you must add Can't Stop the Music to your Netflix queue. I only wish the folks at MST3K had been able to take a crack at this infamously bad musical, even if it actually failed to "launch the 80's."
Thanks to my dear Stephen at Post Apocalyptic Bohemian, I am reminded that today marks the birthday of probably the single most identifiable gay icon of the 20th Century, Judy Garland.
As someone who spent his adolescence in the late 70's, I've never fully embraced the whole Judy thing. I mean, I get it. She was a beautiful and talented young woman tragically exploited and enabled by the studio system into a spiral of self-destruction. A story we see again and again in real-life Hollywood. Does no one learn from the past?
According to LGBT mythology, the Stonewall riots were an almost direct result of Garland's death. The Stonewall was supposedly packed with fans who had come to mourn the loss of their heroine when the infamous raid and resulting riot took place.
I think this is the thing: Dorothy never really feels like she belongs, throughout the whole movie. When she's home in Kansas, she's dreaming of somewhere far away. But when she ends up somewhere far away, all she wants to do is go home. She makes new friends; has a glamorous makeover; kills two witches and exposes (well, her dog does, anyway) a fraud, while helping her new friends discover they've already had their fondest wishes, all along. Is there any one of you out there that cannot relate to at least one aspect of this story? I doubt it. No wonder gay men embraced this movie (and Garland) so much. And let's not even mention the Ruby Slippers...
Personally, I think Garland's best performances came well after The Wizard of Oz. I am especially enamored of her in Meet Me in St. Louis, in which she sang several of her signature songs:
And then of course, there's this from 1950's Summer Stock:
If you're a Baby Boomer, I hope you get it. If you're a Gen X'er or younger... well, you have no idea what you missed.
