I'd like to strap you on sometime

Now that we're back in business, it's time to reinstate everyone's favorite recurring feature... 

"That Gay" is where we pay tribute to the out and about legends who came before us.  These are men who were openly gay and thriving during the slasher movie boom.  I would be remiss not to discuss the poster boy of hot queers, Tom McBride.

"That's not a man.  That is a God." - Poison Ivy

We all know Tom McBride as the hot in the wheelchair from Friday the 13th Part 2, and that's honestly enough.  He's great in that movie.  He's shockingly handsome and his death scene is still gnarly as hell.  If that were Tom's sole accomplishment, we'd still talk about him at our weekly mimosa brunches, but that's not Tom's sole accomplishment.  At the height of the AIDS crisis, Tom filmed a documentary that chronicled his struggles called Life and Death on the A-List (below) that acts as a fascinating snapshot of early-90s New York gay life.  The documentary is leap years ahead of its time, dealing directly with body-shaming among the Chelsea set, femme-phobia, sex addiction and narcissism among tops - all issues that are still prevalent among gay men.  Throughout these conversations, we see Tom progressively falling more and more ill, preparing his things and himself for the inevitable.  Tom McBride should be studied in our history books.

how meta can you get?

"What am I supposed to go to college?  Grad school?  Work!?"

Scream 4 (2011).

The good.

This movie is good.

The bad.

Nothing in the movie is bad.  Well nothing except for the god-awful presence of that dippy girl from the Friday Night Lights show who needs to stop being in movies.  Full stop.


The Exquisite.

(minor spoilers ahead)

Going in, I think we all had our theories as to how a new Scream trilogy could be relevant today. Obviously Sydney would have to die in the opening. Obviously Sydney would wind up being the killer, vanquished only by Gail Weathers in a stab off leaving a whole cast of doe-eyed teens to carry on the legend of Ghostface.  I’m happy to report back that we were dead wrong. Scream 4 is better than any of us could have imagined.  Williamson does, in fact, know best.

While the original Scream loved its teenage protagonists, Scream 4 stabs into them with Chayeskian zeal.  This movie is rock'n roll, spitting in the face of an entire generation who have defiantly rejected narrative storytelling.  Scream 4 loathes the A.D.D. culture engendered by a twenty-four hour news cycle.  Scream 4 hates Taylor Lautner, and the Jersey Shore.  Scream 4 does not want you to leave your iphone on the dinner table - it's rude.  Scream 4 is lashing out at tweens who just expect fame and fortune because they see it on television, gutting Rebecca Black like a school of carp in its wake. 

In this arid climate where theatrically released, big budget horror movies are ostensibly dead, Scream 4 is everything - a long lost postcard from the nineties sent to remind us that things used to be really good.  Believe it or not, it's been nearly fifteen years since a celebrity was famous for actually having some modicum of talent. In an America that is trying to pass off Donald "Rosie is a fat pig" Trump as a serious political contender, Scream 4 is mad as hell and it's not going to take it anymore.  While I hate to draw lines in the sand like that dreadful Tea Party (that doesn't help anyone), if you can't at least appreciate this film for its pinsharp social commentary then you are no longer invited to my Sunday brunches. 

There are gay characters, sure.  More importantly, though, Scream 4 is post-gay movie. We homos don't have to live in subtext anymore - being gay doesn't make you the psychopathic serial killer it did in 1996. Gays and straights coexist and can even band together to get through the night. We’ve come a long way, baby. Listen - just because we don’t have to live in the shadows or act out in shame, that doesn’t mean that Scream 4 isn’t a gay movie. Trust me, there were more queens packed into the Acrlight Cinedome last Friday than at the Elton John's Baby Shower. People dressed up like Drew Barrymore, people brought their dogs – it was like gay Christmas!

"Don't fuck with the original."

If we gays love one thing, it’s a strong female protagonist and Scream 4 delivers them in abundance. Aside from Hayden Pantypants and her fabulous haircut, this is the film where Sidney Prescott officially surpasses Laurie Strode as the Queen of franchise horror. Neve Campbell is remarkably tuned in. While she clearly could have given a shit about Scream 2 or Scream 3, in this go around she is serving us Final Girl 2.0. Sydney has become a hero, someone who can go head to head with the object of her dread and maybe even come out ahead. Her return to the small town that made her is electric. This movie is fresh, it's funny, and it reminded me why I used to be scared to use movie theatre restrooms. 

Alas, Scream 4 was a flop at the box office this weekend  - proving once and for all that people don't want ideas or compelling characters with climactic denoument in their movies.  They want bunnies who poop jelly beans.   So, if you haven't already, go and see Scream 4 and then go and see it again. Do it for our country, dolls.  Don't let the terrorists win.

xoxo

no country for gay men

"Hey, did you go to the shooting today?"

I don't know about you, kids, but this Target nonsense has me out of sorts. I’m positively depressed. It's not Back to School season without being able to pick up a New Kids on the Block TrapperKeeper and a couple of chintz picture frames. I don't even know where to buy socks anymore! Alas, no one ever said that being gay was easy. We must stay the course.

All of this political sacrifice, coupled with the sudden availability of pumpkin ale in my Whole Foods, has me harkening back to the days of being a schoolboy. Clutching my textbooks to my chest, tempra paint on my flat-front khaki pants from last night's all-nighter, cramming for that omnipresent Final Exam (1981).

Maybe we should all take a page out of the student handbook of those kids at Lanier College. Their student body was renowned for their elaborate political performance art projects in times of conflict. Take for instance the time that they staged a terrorist shooting on campus to get more funding for the arts (mind you, this was well before Columbine and 9/11 so it was still okay to laugh) – these kids were living!

Of course, the students were living until they start dying off one by one at the hands of a psychotic killer dressed up like Javier Bardem, but you can't make an omelette...

You see, Final Exam isn't really about a campus plagued by a serial killer.  The real story here, what separates this from the other ultra-low budget slasher dreck, is Radish. Radish is the school's resident old-school  sissy gay. Perpetually lemon-faced, Radish walks with a proud sashay as words slither from his mouth like a gay snake with sibilant s’s to spare. Whenever he speaks, eyes roll and midwesterners pray for a mercy-killing. 

This kind of gay isn’t at all exclusive to Final Exam.  Let me tell you a story.

The year was 1986. I was in second grade at Saint Agatha’s Parochial School and there was a little boy in my class named Paul. While my own budding homosexuality was subtle enough to pass as aloof intellectualism (unless, God forbid, someone brought up Ellen Greene), Paul wasn’t so lucky. Paul wore his gay with a badge of honor that, at 7 years old, left me mortified. I made the obvious second grade assumption that if I were to even look at Paul, it would draw attention to my own secret and they'd come for me in the night with torches. I avoided him like the gay cancer.

One day Paul was having a birthday party and he handed out the most beautiful invitations.  They were handmade with construction paper and glitter and dyed feathers. In a flash, it came to me - I figured out the perfect way to show that I was nothing like that sissy, Paul. In front of all my classmates, I tore up his invitation and sprinkled it on the floor to a chorus of laughter.  This was the worst moment of my life. I was Judas Iscariot. I was Nancy Allen!

"I should have had a salad instead of this spaghetti."

"Well, why didn't you?"

We all know about Mean Girls, but nothing trumps a mean gay. Gay on gay hatred is tricky business and it’s everywhere. No different than the Phelps clan or Target, this hatred is spun out of fear – fear of being taken down, fear of being questioned, fear of change. As long as it’s socially acceptable for everyone else to hate the gays, how about we take it easy on each other?

Whether in school or at work or at the grocery store, there's always a Radish – a gay who can’t be anything other than the precious little butterfly that God made him. And he shouldn't have to be.

If your first instinct is to cringe and distance yourself, I get it. I was that way too, but I got over it. Take a moment to acknowledge that feeling and then try to amend that behavior.  Why not? Let's evolve together. Straight people hate us enough; we don’t have to hate each other.

The next time you see a Radish, think about what it’s like to be in his shoes (even though they may be sandals with socks and even though they may make you throw up in your mouth a little). You don’t have to invite him over for a movie marathon sleepover or to your next vodka infusion brunch, but a little kindness can go a long way.  We’re all in this together.

who can turn the world on with his smile?

"You know what?  Let's pretend this is Buckingham Palace and you'll be Princess Di and we'll have a parade with horses..."

Everybody stop what you're doing, do a twirl and throw your hats high in the air because I’m proud to announce a brand new feature here at Now Kindly Undo These Straps...

That Gay! is a celebration of the dreamiest, out and about slabs of flesh in the stockyards of horror past. 

I was playing with my streaming Netflix when out of no place (as they so often do) popped a homosexual.  Sure, he was pretending to be engaged to some fish - but, come on, he lives with his mother.  He may be a deputy sherriff in town, but even the dispatchers know that he likes a lot of sugar in his coffee (if you catch my drift).  Thusly, our first That Gay! gay is Mitchell Anderson.

Nestled snugly between Janet Leigh and Drew Barrymore rests Mitchell Anderson.  Everyone knows that being a gay is on par with being a platinum blonde when it comes to your mortality rate.  True to form, Mr. Anderson doesn't make it more than ten minutes into Jaws: the Revenge (1987) before that shark makes sashimi of him.  Bless his faggotyass heart. 

 

After Mitchell dies, the movie not only goes off the rails, but it repels down a cliffside all the way to Pandora where it communes with the tree of life.  Michael Caine shows up for some reason.  The shark actually growls at Lorraine Gary on more than two occasions. The shark may or may not eat a plane.  But don't cry for our sacrificial beefcake - if wikipedia is to be believed, he is living happily ever after running a restaurant in Atlanta someplace with his boyfriend.  Well done, Mitchell.  Your congratulatory grapefruit basket is in the mail.

In case you need a visual aid, here's Mitchell giving you oversized cardigan realness while throwing shade at Kathy Lee Gifford:

third wheel

Has your best friend ever dated a girl that you can't stand so you wind up seeing him less than you normally would just to avoid her ugly sweaters and ill-conditioned tips?  You know very well that, despite what you tell your other friends, she's not actually retarded, so she can tell you hate her.  But it's not like you're gay for your bestie and so you just leave it be; you don't even launch into a dramatic dialogue as it starts to rain, causing your nipples to poke out of your Donna Karen top.  Listen, if you ever thought that maybe you should try and make an effort to connect with your bestie and his hateful cunt girlfriend as a couple by taking a day trip, don't go skiing.

I've never been skiing and I certainly won't be skiing any time soon after seeing Adam Green's Frozen (2010).  Bobby Drake left Professor Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters and he's living as a stoner from Boston who loves his bestie, Kevin Zegers, and hates his bestie's girlfriend, Emma Bell.  Like any good episode of Three's Company, circumstance finds them trapped on a ski lift together where they have no choice but to resolve their differences and talk it all out!  Then the wolves begin to circle...

Even though I may not be wild about this film, Boston is very well represented with references to Papa Gino's (anyone from Boston knows that no birthday was complete without a hand-made pizza and getting to play "Oh Industry" on the jukebox) and dialects that come and go (this is an affliction that true Bostonians suffer from - we don't always go around talking like Shutter Island day players).  Frozen is thoughtfully plotted and thoroughly disturbing.  I was so curious as to how it would all turn out that I barely minded the fat people who were having full blown intercourse in the row behind me.

Bros Before Hos

"If you take it seriously you just get depressed all the time."

Maybe I’m showing my age, but I don’t think it’s all that bad for us city queers nowadays.  Don’t get me wrong, forty years have passed since Stonewall riots and we still don't have equal taxation for representation - but we aren't dying off like flies either. This is progress?

Sure, we may not be able to make-out aggressively against a jukebox in a Montana gay bar like trashy straights, but we’re prominently featured in primetime television shows starring Sally Field. We are a minority, but we can be a vocal minority.  We’ve moved away from "gay neighborhoods" and "gay bars" and towards becoming fully integrated members of society. Ellen doesn’t even have to dance like a monkey every morning to get ratings. Progress.

With forward momentum, there’s inevitably a hiccup in the matrix - our acceptance is conditional.  In the five years since Will & Grace (inoffensive and sexless, but nonetheless iconic and funny), I see the media bending over backwards to paint the homosexuals as being "just like you." Gay men are not, in fact, a threat to “decency” unless that means shopping at JCrew and buying unethically sourced furniture from Pottery Barn.

My favorite current in this media sea change is the emergence of the straight best friend. Not since the days of Jews and African Americans bonding together against a common foe has a camaraderie so warmed my cold heart. 

Unlike gay on gay best friend dynamics, which can be messy and turn on a dime, there's no drama to be had here. There's no competition. It's just bros being bros - idiots free of subtext. Whether watching Jurassic Park with a thirty-pack of miller high life or approaching strangers at a bar, there's no better wingman than a woke straight guy. This brotherhood runs deep. Take, for example, Fred Dekker's genre-bending classic, Night of the Creeps (1986).

If you look past the ax-wielding zombies, the exploding heads, the creepy crawlies, and the overall collegiate tomfoolery, Night of the Creeps is about the bromance between a crippled gay kid named J.C. and the second Rusty from the National Lampoon Vacation movies (wearing lots of makeup for some reason).

J.C. is the perfect friend. He's clever, funny, and a snappy dresser to boot! We never doubt that he has Rusty's best interest at heart, even to his own detriment. He is the kind of gay who's perfectly content in getting forcefully penetrated by space-leeches in a public bathroom if it means that his best bro gets to have a night with the girl of his dreams. That's love. 

What makes Night of the Creeps so absolutely transcendent is its handling of this relationship between Rusty and J.C.. Never played for laughs, never playing for "gay panic," this movie is unafraid to explore platonic love between besties with complete sincerity. The performance of Steve Marshall as J.C. transcends genre and should be commended for giving this quirky b-movie a heart and soul.

Of course, this was the eighties and that meant that the gay had to die so that the straights could live happily ever after. Hopefully, forty years from now, we can have our own happy gay endings. One day we will be the ones carrying the flamethrowers and getting the guy in the end. 

Until then, there's Night of the Creeps.

Please note: Allan Kayser doused himself in buckets of peroxide to play the film's antagonist. If you aren't familiar with Allan's semen-al work as "Bubba" in Mama's Family, learn history!

A Remarkable Woman

"I bought a gorgeous new lucite frame for one of your most famous pictures."

When I played the titular role of Pippin in a Boston production of Pippin, I had a fan. A diminutive Fraggle of a girl would leave me poems at the stage door every night. First, she wrote a sonnet about my radiance, which soon turned to a limerick on how I was an icy glacier that she was trying to climb but the sun kept melting her down, and finally a haiku about how she was going to cut off my head and use the blood to write the next poem. I got a restraining order and never made eye contact with anyone at the stage door again. 

You see, once upon a time, there was a thing called a Broadway Star - women who lit up the great white way, entertaining packed houses and holding court at Sardi’s night after night! Despite having a three-note vocal range and fighting a losing battle with her addiction to Virginia Slims, Lauren Bacall was the most glamorous star ever to grace the Broadway stage. The Fan (1981) presents the relatable story of Lauren learning to deal with a stalker on her terms while clawing her way back to the top in a Marvin Hamlisch musical.  Something for everyone!

Lauren Bacall is playing Sally Ross and Sally Ross is going through it. She’s feeling old and alone. She has two friends and both are on her payroll: her assistant and her maid. Sally's love life is stale (James Garner, stale). She has countless devoted fans, but she can’t take a fan home to bed with her because everyone knows that when you do, they invariably want to skin you alive. 

Normally, Lauren Bacall’s midlife crisis coupled with some fabulously atonal musical numbers would be enough to make this movie a gay camp classic, but The Fan has a trick up its sleeve: Michael Biehn (pre-Aliens)…playing a home of sexual! A home of sexual obsessed with Lauren Bacall!

Michael is unlike most real life stalkers in that he is gorgeous. He dresses impeccably (if not a bit preppy), but, like a lot of Queens in the ‘70s and ‘80s, he hates himself for being gay and is deluded into believing that he has a relationship with Lauren Bacall (like when Richard Simmons asked Barbra Streisand to marry him a few years back, only Michael sends Lauren pictures of his ding-dong instead of a diamond ring). 

Meanwhile, in rehearsals for her new show, Sally Ross/Lauren Bacall who, like a lot of stars, has a real hang-up around being alone, becomes fast friends with the dance captain of her musical (indicated to be gay by his hand gestures, big toothy smiles, and preternatural thinness). Soon enough, she is flaunting her new gay all over town, the ultimate accessory to the aging diva. But it’s exhausting keeping Sally Ross/Lauren Bacall propped up all the time and her gay needs to sometimes go off to the bathhouse to let off some steam. Michael Biehn is jealous, so he gets half naked, grabs the nearest box-cutter and slashes his rival right there in the pool! Gay on gay crime is bad news, Michael means business.

"There's some fruitcake out there who, apparently, wants to kill me!"

With her best friends dropping like flies at the hand of a homicidal homosexual, Sally runs off to her Hamptons beach house to pontificate on her own mortality. She stops taking Michael's calls and he gets real down, running straight to the local gay bar for some companionship. Sally's rejection gives Michael the nerve to finally take a guy up to the roof for a quick blowie. If he didn't have this tiresome angst around his sexuality, this could be the starting point for a lovely romantic comedy - but no such luck for the other guy! The Fan (1981) understands that no third act is complete without a gay being sliced at the throat and set on fire on a Manhattan rooftop.  Flamer indeed!

I'm sorry. I know how offensive it can be to have gay characters ALWAYS be the vengeful maniacs or the tragic martyrs serving to advance a story for the heroine...but this movie is a riot. Lock me up because I think The Fan is compulsively watchable. It's got fake blood, old women being chased in sequins and musical numbers involving leather S&M gear and neon lights! If anyone wants to adapt this as a Broadway show (or, even better - a show for high school kids and regional theatres), I'm available - just don't expect me to do meet and greets at the stage door.

I'm Laura Mars.

"I sat there and watched the blood dry on her face until it was just about the color of your hair."

To those who suggest that homosexuality is a choice and not a genetic predetermination, please explain to me why I watched Mommie Dearest every day when I was 8 years old, staring blankly at histrionic scene after histrionic scene for hours on end. 

There are some impulses (like making out with boys and watching Faye Dunaway videos on youtube) which we have absolutely no choice but to succumb. These impulses are part of our genetic makeup bag. 

Of course, those who think being gay is a choice are the same people who don’t believe in dinosaurs, but let’s not get upset - not today. For today, she is risen.  The Eyes of Laura Mars is gay Easter, a great big basket full of chocolate and marshmallow treats wrapped with a Hermes bow!

The first shot of The Eyes of Laura Mars is a black and white closeup of Faye Dunaway’s eyes over the refrain of a Barbra Joan Streisand Power-Ballad. This pretty much sets the tone for the proceeding ninety minutes.  The Eyes of Laura Mars is a film where our heroine is put through the ringer without ever actually gets her hands dirty or her hair mussed.  Nicole Kidman would later adopt this genre of thriller as her own, but in the ‘70s, all we had was Faye (especially when Streisand and Jane Fonda already passed).

Faye Dunaway is playing Faye Dunaway as Laura Mars, the most glamorous photographer in the world. So keen is her photographer’s eye that she begins to see gruesome murders happen, psychically. In the 1970s, photography was still controversial. People in the art world weren't ready to embrace the medium and they certainly didn’t want to embrace Laura Mars, who specialized in tableaus of naked women splayed out in gruesome and beautifully shot crimes of passion. Edgy!  So a lot of people wanted Laura dead. 

Being the World's Most Important high fashion photographer, Faye is surrounded by homosexuals. Her best friend and confidante is an ascot wearing, feathered hair, stonewall-rock-throwing queen named Donald. Donald is very fond of Laura, going so far as wearing her dresses and heels from time to time - evoking the rare outbreak of internalized homophobia where I find myself wanting the killer to kill the gay.  This is my issue, not his. I can only imagine how stressful it must be to try and be Faye Dunaway's gay friend. All the scheduling and film-loading and grocery shopping and crime-solving is invariably left to her token gay while Faye just emotes and yells his name in random locations.

“I’m very serious about my work, by my own standards.”

The thing is, if you take away Faye’s delivery and her vanity lighting, The Eyes of Laura Mars is a gritty and effective little thriller. Shot entirely in Manhattan, Raul Julia and Tommy Lee Jones and Brad Dourif completely get lost their roles. There are times, however, when it's clear that Irwin Kirshner (he who hath birthed The Empire Strikes Back)  just had to turn the camera off to end a scene because Faye would otherwise keep going and going, inserting pauses and intense staring and hair flips like the energizer bunny in a silent movie until everyone died of starvation.

How do you solve a problem like Faye Dunaway? More importantly, why would you want to?  She’s arguably the greatest bad actress of all time. You can’t take your eyes off her! I’m an old school queen who believes that most homophobia is rooted in misogyny.  This isn’t necessarily the time or place to dissect queer identity in relation to the notion of “camp” or why we as gay men often hold actresses interests above our own (spoiler: it has to do with the fact that we lack representation in media and have always had to project our own emotions, wants and desires onto the female protagonist), but I hate to see women get a bad rap.  It happens constantly in Hollywood and I think we can do better. I digress.

Faye never was appreciated as a contemporary to Robert Redford and Warren Beatty, so she kinda snapped.  Fair. But as a result or her having “had it,” we got some of the most over-the-top, queer-identifying films in our canon (specifically: Supergirl, Mommie Dearest and The Eyes of Laura Mars).

The pedigree of Laura Mars is unrivaled. The film was adapted from a script by John Carpenter, whose film Halloween came out a few months later.  Heard of it? It’s also one of Laura Ziskin’s first credits - she went on to produce the Spider-man films.  And, no film about the ultra-glamorous New York fashion scene would be complete without gowns!  The only thing capable of holding its own opposite the scenery-devouring Ms. Dunaway (who was paid a million dollars for this movie, having just won her Network Oscar) is Theoni Aldredge’s costumes. Furs, plaids, slit skirts, silk scarves, capes, and more furs! It’s a hate-crime that they never made Laura Mars dolls.