Knight at the Movies: Celebrating Gay Pride at the Movies - 4572 - Gay Lesbian Bi Trans News

I remember interviewing Harvey Fierstein in 1988 when his groundbreaking Torch Song Trilogy arrived in movie theatres. I wasn't yet out of the closet professionally and I stupidly asked him if he was going to keep on making only movies with gay subject matters and gay characters! He looked stunned and immediately shot back, 'You'd never ask a straight person anything as offensive as this! I've got about a thousand goddamn gay stories left to tell and someday you're going to thank me for telling them.'

Dear Harvey Fierstein:

Thank you.

(and please forgive me for also asking you another idiot question: where'd you get that low voice?)

Mr. Fierstein was right, of course, and now on the occasion of gay pride, I'm also thinking about the many films that helped me to become an out, gay man. Here's just five of the films that helped turn a timid, closeted celluloid freak into a … um, less timid, out and proud, celluloid freak:

1. The Wizard Of Oz (1939) I lived with my parents and four sisters in the country in western Nebraska—not a far psychological or geographical distance from Kansas. Did I imagine myself in the gingham dress on the yearly trek to Oz? No, but Dorothy's yearning for something over the rainbow spoke volumes to me—even then I knew something was off-kilter and I needed to get my butt out of there. This movie is still the launching pad for every mixed up, frustrated person, gay or straight. The cornball message, 'There's no place like home' still can't be beat. A fabulous Special Edition DVD is a bargain.

2. Funny Girl (1968) OK, not only was I a big 'ole Friend Of Dorothy but also a Barbra queen. But notice the developing theme—because here's another movie that celebrates Different and Individual and Ugly (read: gay) is Beautiful. When Barbra begs 'My Man' to come back and then sloughs off the depression she sang in code to me as I sat and watched, again with my parents and sisters. On DVD with a few extras.

3. The Way We Were (1973) More Barbra and more desperate yearning. By this time I was in high school and writing my first movie review column (guess what it was called?). When Katie sleeps with the drunken, stumbling Hubbell and then asks tentatively afterward, 'Did you know it was me?' Barbra's yearning spoke for thousands of gay men and women. Barbra never again had a movie role that connected to the gay community so eloquently—she elevated herself into the sludge mainstream hits of A Star Is Born and The Main Event where she played a winner from the outset. A misstep on her part. Sadly, Streisand did not participate in the DVD commentary.

4. Death Trap (1982) Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve, Hollywood's hottest leading man, starred in this not very good mystery based on a hit play. When Reeve suddenly turned and kissed Caine on the mouth(!) it was 10 times more powerful than the chest bursting scene in Alien. It's affect on the audience was just as intense—people booed and screamed 'faggots' and immediately walked out of the theatre. My sister and I sat there stunned and I slunk down in my seat. I desperately wanted to see Making Love with Harry Hamlin and Michael Ontkean, which opened the same year but didn't dare go to a theatre. It purportedly showed two gay men OPEN MOUTH KISSING and tumbling into bed together. No self-respecting person would see that garbage my mother told me. Sigh. No extras on the Death Trap DVD, Making Love yet to be released in that format.

5. The Hunger (1983) What a difference a year makes! My best friend and I decided that WE were the vampire couple portrayed by Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie in Tony Scott's first film. We loved Bauhaus, inhabited all the punk clubs, and dressed to the new wave nines. We were determined to pick up another couple and do the deed just like 'Miriam' and 'John' but alas, she was straight and wasn't much interested in any Deneuve-Susan Sarandon action and Bowie had already morphed from the bi-sexual Ziggy Stardust into that mainstream blonde 'Let's Dance' goose stepping guy so the fantasy just kinda fell apart—like the brief, intense romance we shared. I still think Deneuve's seduction of Sarandon (and their subsequent lovemaking) is one of filmdom's sensual heights—bloodsucking and all. Not yet available on DVD but forthcoming later this year. This is the movie and the relationship that made me a confirmed homosexual bachelor—until Jimmy (in 1997).

5. Maurice (1987) While seeing the breakthrough Merchant-Ivory success A Room With A View in 1986, I routinely replaced pouty Helena Bonham-Carter with myself as she was romanced by sexy Julian Sands. Earlier in the movie he'd shared a very homoerotic swimming hole scene that had full frontal nudity (gasp!) with Rupert Graves, who played Carter's brother. Having Merchant-Ivory take on a gay subject (with Hugh Grant, no less) in Maurice was cultured fag nirvana and I saw the movie NINE times. I loved how Grant and James Wilby cuddled and barely kissed—it was so pristine and nice and white. When Wilby finally (finally!) gets it on with Graves (as the 'underkeeper' on the big estate) it was like WASP meets rough trade. I knew by that point in my life that the actors were straight—no gay men ever really kissed or touched that way. Ah well. Recently released by Home Vision Entertainment in a comprehensive, two-disk Special Edition that's a must for us shoosh queens.

6. Parting Glances (1986) I saw this not long before Bill Sherwood, its writer/director, died from AIDS. Talk about another tragic waste of talent! This was the first gay movie where I recognized characters from my own life. It takes place in New York as a gay couple are about to be parted for an extended period while one of them (the hunky Richard Ganoung) is working on a job in Africa. Funny, sad, and offbeat, it features a terrific, multi-ethnic and multi-sexual cast (including Steve Buscemi and Kathy Kinney) and remains fresh today. Available on a bare bones, expensive DVD that deserves a Special Edition release. I date the beginning of Queer Cinema with this movie. It coincided with my own arrival into Gayville, USA.

The day after I saw Parting Glances for the first time in the late '80s (on Showtime—which even then programmed whatever gay and lesbian fare was available) I marched in the Pride Parade with ACT UP.

How's that for Queer as Film?

A highly subjective list of more films

that celebrate queer pride (many

available on DVD):

1. Some Like It Hot

2. Victim

3. The Rose

4. Grief

5. Poison

6. The Celluloid Closet

7. In & Out

8. Philadelphia