#itgetsbetter

Remember when our Vice President, Joe Biden, was talking about what a riot Will&Grace was and then President Barack Obama told America that gay marriage was awesome and a year later we could get married in California?  That was fun.

This blog was founded four years ago on the notion of exposing the cryptic, closeted homosexuals abounding in horror.  Since then, things have been moving quickly.  When a lesbian hosting the Oscars is seen as the "safe choice," we've come a long way indeed.

I think I stopped writing as much as I used to because I'm in a place in my life where, thankfully, I no longer have to look for subtext to feel like I'm a part of something.  I'm perfectly comfortable with where I fit in the world.  I'm getting old.  I have no patience for basic, self-hating gays (bret easton ellis).  I have no patience for having to root through stories to find the gay hidden in the bramble (marvel movies).

From James Whale and Dwight Frye to Stephen Geoffreys and Mark Patton, horror has always been queer.    We shouldn't have to apologize for it or justify our place at the table.  Just look at The Conjuring!  I'm haven't seen it yet, but it made all the money and Vera Farminga looks like this in it...

...the proof is in the FaggotyAss Pudding.

During my self-imposed hiatus from diegesis, a film was released that exemplifies how we no longer have to live in shadows; a film bold enough to assert that gays aren't spineless, mincing victims or homicidal sociopaths.  This film, ladies and gentlemen, is ParaNorman.

Norman is a sweet boy.  An outsider, he doesn't have a lot of friends and spends most of his days watching old Italian horror movies on V/H/S and talking to his grandmother (played by ELAINE STRITCH).  It's like a Polaroid from my own childhood!  Over the course of the film, we see Norman socialize and learn to accept himself despite being different.  Along the way he saves a town from three hundred year old ghost zombie bullies and realized that everyone feels different at one time or another.  He grows up.

"You can't stop bullying, it's part of human nature."

Here's the kicker: ParaNorman prominently features an openly gay character!   Mitch is a popular and handsome kid who all the other kids look up to and he just so happens to have a boyfriend. Mitch isn't sad, spineless or cruel.  He isn't angst ridden or martyred in the end.  He just exists alongside the other characters.  When I saw this movie in the theatre chock full of children, no one laughed at the reveal.  This was a real moment, not played for laughs and the kids completely accepted it.   ParaNorman is the future.

This generation's answer to The Goonies. Paranorman is made with so much love you can feel it in every frame.  Its animated characters are consistently more layered human than most real-life actors.  Life is hard.  The world is a scary place.  Awful things happen every single day.  Everyone feels like an outsider - especially bullies.  How we handle insecurity and how we treat one another is what differentiates us from the Real Housewives of New Jersey.  So, whether you're black or white or gay or straight or a witch or a bro, you should catch this movie on Netflix streaming immediately.  Consider it your moral imperative.

butterflies are free

Hi dolls.  I'm a day late and a dollar short in my Under the Dome recap this week.  Sorry.  It's just that watching that last episode made me unbearably anxious.  As someone who loves television, there's nothing worse than bad television.  Under the Dome is bad.  Everything about it is bad.  The show is poorly plotted, terribly lit and inconsistently shot.  Every actor is giving a hackneyed performance with no regard for tone or ensemble or consistent stakes.  I could go on, but I don't want to.  Despite the Bougie Contrarian that lives inside everyone who has a "blog," I like being positive.  I love to like things - Just ask Joe Seely!

So, while I could spend an hour coming up with catty things to say about Ginger Dursley and her dead husband, Nicky Arnstein's gambling problem, I would much rather take this opportunity NOT to discuss Under the Dome and, instead, explore some of the fantastic developments in "queer cinema" over the past couple years.  Strap yourself in, we're going off genre.

Andrew Haigh.

Andrew Haigh made a romance for the ages. Weekend deals with the complexities of two men trying to overcome their own baggage and make a genuine connection.  This movie was way ahead when it came out in 2011, influencing everything from Rihanna music videos to Lena Dunham's Girls.  Criterion even released their own edition of the film last year.  Andrew Haigh is directing and producing a new series for HBO about a group of gay besties living and loving in San Francisco.  If it's anything at all like Weekend, it looks like we all have something to look forward to this winter!

Travis Mathews.

Travis is the queer iconoclast who was hand-picked by performance artist James Franco to guide him into the gay consciousness.  Franco and Mathews collaborated on Interior: Leather Bar which pretended to recreate the mythical missing forty minutes excised from Cruising in order to explore how we deal with male sexuality and objectification, etc etc.  I'm much more interested in Travis' first feature, I Want Your Love.

I Want Your Love is based on Mathew's short film where two hipsters talk for a bit and then have graphic sex and kiss.  The feature version tracks an aimless twenty-something artist whose life plan isn't coming together the way he imagined.  We follow him through his last day in San Francisco before moving back to the mid-west with his parents.  Yes, the actors have real, on-camera sex but this movie isn't a porn.  I Want Your Love shows us something much more terrifying to the Million Mom brigade than sodomy - emotional intimacy.  Shocking!  This movie captures the transition from ennui to productivity, from just fucking around to actually wanting something more (or not).  I Want Your Love is great.

Adam Goldman.

Like Miss Vanessa Williams (second reference this week - point to Gryffindor!!!), I went and saved the best for last.  Adam Goldman's The Outs is perfect.  It's a perfect thing.  To call it a web-series is too limiting.  The Outs is aspirational.  Goldman proves that we can create the art we deserve.  Gay stories don't have to be about Coming-Out or about AIDS or about being shirtless whores with lemon faces(dotcom).   The Outs is about learning to love yourself enough to accept reciprocity. When my long-term relationship ended last winter, I watched this show repeatedly, as if I was trying to absorb it so I could somehow manifest a happily ever after of my own.  It worked.  That's the power of good art - in it we can see reflections of ourselves and our potential.  I cherish this series. More thoughtful than anything you'll ever find on Logo and better produced than most features, The Outs is the future.  

The next time you find yourself disheartened by lackluster, late-summer entertainment, know that there are alternatives (and we only have five more weeks until Glee is back up and running).  

so you're brad pitt...

Over the two years that World War Z was in production hell, I learned that there are historically two models to follow when your big-budget movie goes off the rails.

Option 1 - Queen Kelly

• The Erich von Stroheim/Gloria Swanson epic from 1929.  The budget was ballooning and everyone questioned Stroheim's intentions and sanity so the movie was shut down and never released in America.    This same thing happened a few years back to David O'Russell on Nailed.  They had all but finished (urban legend says there was only one day left) when the money fell out and the movie never got released.

Option 2 - Cleopatra

• The Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton four hour debacle (which, with inflation, would cost over $300m today) was losing money before it even shot.  Rather than scrap the entire endeavor,  the Studio fired most of its staff and sold the bulk of its backlot to keep the production going in hopes that, in the end, there would be a finished epic that they could somehow cut and sell to recoup some money back.

Lucky for us, they went with Option 2 and Paramount and Brad Pitt's production company just kept spending and shooting and spending some more.  The end result is a $200m zombie movie that belongs on the shelf next to 28 Days Later and Dawn of the Dead.  World War Z is spectacular.  I loved it.

Love Never Dies

"The luckiest man who walks on this Earth is the one who finds true love."

Realizing the hypocrisy inherent to an organized religion that would have him kill hundreds in its name but refuse to grant his beloved access to Heaven, our protagonist tears into the altar like a Medieval Elizabeth Berkley. Screaming himself raw, he renounces God and vows to return from the grave to avenge his beloved’s death with all the powers of Darkness. This all happens before the credits roll.  

In honor of this most sacred of holidays, I present you with one of the great romances of all time. 
Both deliciously campy and sumptuously sincere, this year’s best Valentine is Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992).

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you."

Four hundred and thirty five years go by in a flash and Winona Ryder finds herself engaged to be married to Keanu Reeves.  She is absolutely desperate to consummate their relationship, but he’s having a hard time concentrating on his made up dialect.  He can't be expected to focus on acting as someone from abroad and Winona's vagina. So frosty Keanu goes off to Carpathia and leaves Nona in the care of her best friend, Sadie Frost.  Slutty Sadie is empowered by her wealth to choose her own suitor, whereas Nona is saddled with Keanu, miles away. Just when we think all hope is lost for poor Winona, bound to girded loins for all eternity, Gary Oldman comes to town.

At first, Mr. Oldman is just a shriveled old queen in a dressing gown - holding Keanu at bay in his hilltop castle like a latter-years Tab Hunter.  But what a difference an ocean liner and a handful of sailors can make! By the time Gary makes his way to jolly-olde London, he looks great. Young and fresh.   Desperate to shed any lingering homoeroticism, he absolutely goes to town on Sadie Frost, dressing himself up like a wolf monster and tearing into her on top of a stone sarcophagus.  Naturally, Winona watches all of this like a seasoned voyeur - but the moment Gary sees her watching him plow into her best friend, he realized he's inside the wrong girl. It's love at first sight.  

If that isn't romance, I don't know what is.

While it's obvious that Gary is up for the task of reaping Winona's lady parts to full blossom, he still goes through the motions of seducing her - taking her to the movies, getting her drunk on absinthe, etc.  Romantic. To indicate sexual awakening, Nona starts wearing her hair down and lowers her bust line. Finally feeling a connection to a man that she could never have imagined possible with Keanu, she begins to weep.  Gary turns her tears into diamonds.  

This is the only love story to ever talk about.

Naturally, once Winona starts feeling good about herself, Keanu is off in a convent in Romania suffering from a violent brain fever and insists that she leave London at once and marry him there.  How rude. Meanwhile, even though Sadie has infected a nasty blood virus from her cemetery romp with the Wolfman, that doesn't stop her from giving Nona a gigantic diamond ring - what a good friend!  Unfortunately, generous or not, 1897 wasn't the best time to be a slut and poor Sadie winds up getting her head chopped off.

Seeing what becomes of the sexually liberated, Winona runs back to Keanu.  

In a traditional marriage, she’s miserable - now keenly aware of what she shared with Gary and what’s missing with Keanu - that love without carnality is not complete.  Gary senses her deep unrest and, accordingly, he transforms himself into green mist, sneaks into her bedroom and finally consummates their forbidden love.  

Despite his protestations,Winona gives herself freely and, in the most glamorous love scene ever captured in a horror film, Winona drinks blood from his bare chest.  She is baptized in his blood. Now that's a Valentine's Day to write home about!

"I want to be what you are - see what you see - love what you love... you are my love and my life always."

"Take me away from all this death."

Of course, Keanu eventually gets wind of her infidelity and wrangles all his stoner buddies away from the Chateau Marmont long enough to go after Gary Oldman.  Poor Winona is left tearing at her bosom in the snow with nothing left to live for but the latest Black Friday sale at Saks and the odd bit part alongside pasty, gay-hating fatsos.

Beyond the legendary costumes, the antique lamps, lavish sets and all the peacock feathers, is Bram Stoker's Dracula a gay film?  Absolutely. 

Dracula is about deep and forbidden love in the face of an oppressive patriarchal society.  In 1992, vampire movies were still dangerous.  AIDS was everywhere.  To consummate a gay relationship was, in a way, flirting with mortality.  AIDS is an infection of the blood, to be a vampire was to be infected.  Sexuality equaled death.  It still does in some parts of the country.

"Our love is stronger than death."

1992 was glorious.  It was a time when Winona had the power to bring this script to Frances Ford Coppola, despite having just dropped out of The Godfather III.  It was a time when Anthony Hopkins was capable of giving an interesting performance.  It was a time when a smartly done, intellectual horror, love story made with practical effects in the old Hollywood tradition could be a blockbuster.  Sadly, this is a time long gone by.  But that doesn't mean we can't have a happy Valentine's Day, dolls.  Let's have a good one for Winona.

every gay deserves a lesbian bestie...

...and mine is going to be Amber Heard!

We've been following your progress for quite some time, Amber.  But going to the GLAAD awards with your girlfriend has officially earned you the crown.  You are the greatest Scream Queen of our generation!  Congratulations, babydoll.  You have made us all proud and your grapefruit basket is in the mail.

Now hurry up and come over, I need you to drive me to the Home Depot and show me how to use a belt sander.

Everything old is new again.

Maybe it's Maybeline

"Look, she's suffered some sort of memory loss..."

First and foremost, let it NEVER be said that horror is not a gay man's medium.  The fake IMAX theatre in Century City was festooned with upwardly mobile homosexuals last night, hellbent on seeing the Faggotyass Best Actress of 2009 fight zombies while in her first trimester.  I was invigorated (and maybe a little drunk).  The time had finally come for Resident Evil: Afterlife.

I have never played video games.  I have no idea what on Earth is going on in these Resident Evil movies - but who cares?  Paul W.S. Anderson makes them with so much joy, you've got to be a grouch or just soulless not to appreciate their reckless abandon and complete disregard for continuity.

In this particular movie, Milla Jovovich is a on a quest to find Ali Larter.  After a quick stop at Vidal Sasson in this season's best wool-lined parka, she heads off in a biplane from Japan to Alaska. Unfortunately, Ali Larter has been implanted with a robotic spider between her bosom that has left her in a state of amnesiatic savagery.  Luckily, this conflict resolves itself with a quick dissolve to her lying unconscious, sans robotic spider.  You may be thinking that with the Umbrella Corporation hiding around every corner, a girl doesn't have time to look her best... Not so!  Just because we're some eight years into the zombie apocalypse, that doesn't mean a girl doesn't deserve a full face.  You never know who she could run into.  In one of the most touching sentiments of sisterhood ever captured in horror cinema (albeit off-camera), Milla applies a perfect face of 90s neutrals to Ali before they set off on an adventure down the coast.  It's a good thing she did because Milla and Ali wind up making an expected pitstop in zombie-infested West Hollywood where they happen upon Ali's gay brother.  Naturally.  Hilarity ensues.

Even after my champagne wore off, I had a blast.  The 3D is breathtaking - this is the first movie actually shot in 3D since Avatar (discounting cartoons), and it shows. Sure, the acting is nonexistent, the plot makes no sense, and the setpieces are obviously just shot in a room in Canada someplace - that's the fun!  Like a delicious bag of candy corn, Resident Evil: Afterlife is the perfect film to kick-off the Autumn season and it provides ample inspiration to start our Halloween diets on Monday.  How lucky can you get?

respond to friend request...

"Come on in."

When a movie came along  that focused on a clatch of hipsters in the process of editing a documentary about ballet (which I love almost as much as I love scary movies) and promised to be a fright-fest, I was intrigued.  I love stories about people leaving the cozy confines of Manhattan only to wind up realizing that the rest of America is a terrifying, monstrous place.

When said film also happened to be about boys (like my bestie who also just so happens to be an editor) who fall in love with their mind's eye projections of strange girls who they meet on the internet, I was sold. 

Catfish opens on September 17th in limited release.  You should see Catfish.  It's like Paranormal Activity for smart people.  Besides, there's a hot Indian guy in it - those can be about as hard to find in mainstream media as gay hockey players.

Pieces of You

It's really that good.

into the woods

I have fevered and festered over a dissertation on the works of M Night Shyamalan.  There were drafts covering everything from studio politics at Disney to the recurring motifs in Shyamalan's often redundant twist endings.  I experimented with a shot by shot exploration of his specific choices in DPs (always the best in town) for each project.  Along the way I realized something I never understood before - something much more important than critical analysis:

The Village (2004) is actually quite good.

"Be cautious, you're holding the bad color."

"Sometimes we don't do things yet others know we want to do things so we don't do them."

"I find dancing very agreeable."

"Christop, you needn't be scared.  We have the magic rocks.  They will keep us safe."

"We can move towards hope - that's what's so beautiful about this place."

There has been a lot of smack-talk about M Night Shyamalan and justifiably so.  For all intents and purposes, he's an egomaniacal prick.  Shyamalan gets so caught up in his ideas (and he has a lot of ideas) that he has no concern about communicating them to the audience.  That's not good.  He did, however, buy his assistant a house.  Unlike the earlier films, based solely upon their twist-endings which do not play well in second viewings, The Village is the gift that keeps on giving.  Bryce Dallas Howard gives a breathtaking performance and Adrien Brody plays a retard without ever being offensive.  Get into it!

Knowing Me Knowing You

Today is election day here in California and I'm going to ask you to do your part in the betterment of America by going to see Splice.

Splice is the greatest thing to come out of Canada since hockey and David Cronenberg.

It's smart. It's scary. It has more ideas than it even knows how to wrap inside a three-act structure. Both science fiction and horror, Splice explores the terror inherently engendered in raising a child. A newborn can't communicate. It can't rationalize.  You don't know if it wants to eat or poop. You don't know if you can trust your baby around strangers. You may not even necessarily want to be left alone with it.  There's a responsibility in that. This is fascinating business for what's basically a three room chamber play.

Sarah Polley is incapable of being inauthentic. She just doesn't care enough - she's like Cher that way. Her performance carries this film. Along for the ride, Adrien Brody is lovely as her long-suffering better half. I had nearly forgotten how I used to adore him back in the early-aughts.  Before he was obnoxious (post-Oscar), when he was only known for burying Maura Tierney alive and wearing vintage, I followed him for about five blocks home from the Angelika.  He's still got it.

Go see Splice.  It's completely original and thoroughly entertaining.  If we don't go see these kinds of movies, they're not going to make them anymore!  Do your part, kids.  Make me proud!

from apathy to entropy and empathy...

"Enjoy the little things."

I can be a stubborn monkey. I don’t moisturize my face. I always use my turn signal, even in parking lots. I have never seen Wedding Crashers or The Hangover and I never will. I don’t need to see fat guys with impossibly skinny wives. I have no desire to be the butt of countless gay-panic jokes (I get enough of that in my bedroom, thank you very much). I have a deep-seeded contempt for trust-fund brats, smirky punks who think they they’re wicked cool for accomplishing absolutely nothing. These hipster, rich kids are the death of comedy. Go ask Phyllis Diller or Paul Lynde and they’ll tell you: comedy is not being cool. Comedy is committing to something so sincerely, so wholeheartedly that it can only make the audience chuckle through its humanity. So when a horror comedy came along billing itself as the best thing since Superbad, it was an immediate pass for me.

Well, chime the bell tower because I am admitting that I was dead wrong. Zombieland (2009) is easily our generations Dawn of the Dead. Color me embarrassed!

Dawn of the Dead was more than just popcorn horror.  It was a clever satire that harkened the beginning of the end of an era.  In 1978, the mindless consumerism of mall culture was spreading through our country like a heard of ravenous flesh-eating zombies. Thirty years have gone by and we’re paying the price for all that excess. The chasm between the rich and the poor has never been more obstinate. The malls have evolved into acre-wide Wal-Mart superstores. Over the past decade, people (like my mother) have lost their jobs and houses while Julia Roberts and Carrie Bradshaw trek around the world on holiday just get away from the monotony of having it all! Something has got to give. The popular culture is equally polarizing (television only seems to care about you if you’re over sixty or under sixteen, or morbidly obese or a midget). Human to human interaction has become limited to blog comments and social networking websites. Maybe we need a zombie invasion to remind us of what’s really important.

Our protagonist (Jesse Eisenberg, always a friend to the gays) is a living, breathing example of what living in the age of entropy has done to us. He’s a grown man living alone. He eats processed food and plays video games. He’s scared of outside. A victim of apathetic parents, he longs for a family of his own - even if he doesn’t necessarily know that that means. Like 28 Days Later and The Stand before it, Zombieland continues in the tradition of zombie narratives following The Wizard of Oz formula. Jesse Eisenberg is alone, he finds a best friend in Woody Harrelson and they’re joined by two more in a quest for a third-act happy ending. They even happen upon an unlikely wizard in the middle of Beverly Drive!

Interestingly enough, unlike slasher flicks, zombie movies can have male protagonists and not be gay.  How curious!  This movie was made with remarkable attention to detail and it’s queer friendly. Zombieland understands a precept that gays have understood since Dorothy ran away from home: your friends are the family you make for yourself. Jesse Eisenberg is the Anti-Michael Cera. He’s never too cool for school. He’s never afraid to be the punch line. In short: he has a soul.

Dawn of the Dead was justifiably nihilistic.  When it comes to mindless consumerism, there is no upside. Thirty years later, things sure are a lot worse but Zombieland is ultimately hopeful. It exemplifies that companionship is tangible, not furs or diamonds. How we treat each other is more important than having a private island. Above all else, when you’re the only skinny person in a bus full of morbids who hate you because the TV people told them to hate you, you have to laugh.  Now, you’ll have to excuse me. I’m going to go update my twitter and buy a snackwrap.

P.S.  For that inevitable day when we are left to fend against the zombie hoards, be sure to pick up your Zombie-Proof Survival RV.  Someone's got to think of these things!