The Queer Cinephile(s) #23: Can't Stop the Music

I'm a cinephile. Studied film in college and got to review movies for a TV station (don't get excited; it was way back in the 20th century). My Netflix queue swelled to over 400 titles in 2013, so, for 2014, I gave myself an assignment: watch 50 films that I've never seen before and write something about them. I'll be watching a little bit of everything -- Oscar bait, indie darlings, black & white classics, cult flicks, blockbusters and weird shit my friends have been recommending for years.

Can't Stop the Music (released June 1980)

Village People (circa 1980), left to right:
David Hodo, Randy Jones, Alex Briley, Ray Simpson, Felipe Rose & Glenn Hughes

Here's the original theatrical trailer...

What the Queer Cinephile Says: After the phenomenal worldwide success of Grease in 1978, producer Allan Carr could have made any movie he wanted. He decided to make a biography about Village People, a popular disco group with a distinctive sound and a couple of gold records. The real history of Village People is pretty interesting. French music composer/producer Jacques Morali wrote four songs about locales with big populations of gay men -- San Francisco, Hollywood, Fire Island and Greenwich Village -- then recruited struggling singer/actor Victor Willis to provide lead vocals and added a bunch of anonymous background singers in the studio. The music hit big in dance clubs and gay bars. Suddenly, Village People were in demand for public appearances. But aside from Victor Willis, there was no group. The first Village People EP cover featured mostly models!

Village People EP, released July 1977

Jacques Morali and business partner Henri Belolo set up auditions for real singer/dancers to accompany Victor Willis and decided that the group should embody six masculine American archetypes. After some tweaking, the lineup for the first full-length album became Willis (policeman), David Hodo (construction worker), Felipe Rose (Indian), Randy Jones (cowboy), Alex Briley (G.I.) and Glenn Hughes (leatherman). Those are the voices you hear on hits like "Y.M.C.A." and "In the Navy."  

When Allan Carr and Bronte Woodard sat down to write a script for Can't Stop the Music in 1979, they essentially abandoned everything but those six archetypes and concocted an insanely fictionalized origin story. Their goal appears to have been two-fold: deemphasize the gay elements of the biopic for mainstream audiences while simultaneously throwing as many male bodies and winking double entendres at gay viewers as possible. The result is that Village People, easily one of the most unconventional and provocative groups to emerge from the disco era, become secondary characters in their own movie. The main character is Jack Morell (Steve Guttenberg), an Americanized version of Jacques Morali. Jack's a composer who needs to get his music heard by somebody in the record industry. As the guest DJ at a club called Saddle Tramps, he plays one of his own instantly forgettable tunes, "Samantha," but it impresses his retired supermodel friend Samantha (I kid you not) so much that she decides to use her connections to get Jack's demo tape heard. Samantha (Valerie Perrine) loves Jack's music, but not his voice. "It sounds like a cry for help." New voices are needed.

Samantha literally wanders the streets of her neighborhood, New York's Greenwich Village, looking for singers. She recruits Felipe (who's always dressed like a Native American, complete with elaborate headdress, skimpy loincloth and jingle bells), Randy (in cowboy garb), and David (an actor friend who's dressed like a construction worker for a commercial.) David really wants to sing: "Fame, fortune, platinum records -- it's every boy's dream." Then there's a fantasy sequence where he sings "I Love You to Death" surrounded by hypersexual female dancers in blood red costumes on some kind of futuristic factory brothel set. It's a terrible, vaguely creepy song that kind of makes you think he could be a disco serial killer.

Before they ever get to that demo tape, there's an excruciatingly long sequence where a bunch of other major and minor characters have to be introduced, including Samantha's agent (Tammy Grimes), who wants her to return to modeling, Jack's mother (June Havoc), a Broadway veteran who thinks her son is a musical genius, and Alicia, a plot device who just happens to be friends with a singing cop named Ray Simpson. Remember how I said that the original Village People policeman was Victor Willis? He left the group for a solo career shortly before principal photography began. So they just hired another African American singer with facial hair, put him in a cop uniform and assumed no one would notice. Yeah, that happened. And finally, before we get to that goddamn demo tape, Samantha has to have a love interest -- uptight tax attorney Ron White, played by 1976 Olympic gold medalist Bruce Jenner, who's only previous acting experience was appearing on the Wheaties breakfast cereal box. After a lasagna dinner involving all of the above and some people who don't even have names, Felipe, Randy, David and Ray make that demo tape. In Samantha's backyard. They've all just met for the first time, yet miraculously manage to perform a fabulous, unrehearsed first take of a song called "Magic Night" after reading the lyrics off some napkins. But uptight Ron can't handle the magic, telling Samantha, "Your friends are too far out for me!" That's this movie's way of suggesting that Ron is a homophobic asshole. It's resolved by having Samantha sleep with him.

Never satisfied, Jack wants a "big sound," meaning more voices. A ridiculous open audition is held at Ron's law offices -- featuring everything from a stripper to a flaming baton twirler -- but then Alicia the plot device shows up again with yet another friend, national guardsman Alex. He doesn't even have to audition since he's already wearing a G.I. uniform. Finally, at the one hour and ten minute mark, Glenn the leatherman shows up, hops on top of a piano and belts out the Irish American ballad "Danny Boy." He's hired, too. It's a sextet. But what are they going to call themselves? Don't worry, Ron's socialite mother (!) is there to provide some inspiration by wondering aloud, "Didn't Greenwich Village people types go out with the '60s?" "Village People!" shouts Samantha. "I can sell that."

Sufficiently loosened up enough now to strut through Greenwich Village in a crop top t-shirt and short shorts, Ron arranges rehearsal space for the boys at the Y.M.C.A. No, that doesn't make any sense, but it does lead to the film's best and gayest production number, a homoerotic extravaganza of male bodies, some bare asses and even a blink-and-you-miss-it glimpse of full-frontal nudity. It's like somebody unconnected to the film made a decent music video of Village People's biggest hit and they just spliced it into the middle of this fiasco as a reminder of what made them famous in the first place. Side note: They had to re-record "Y.M.C.A" for this sequence to feature Ray Simpson's voice on the soundtrack. Another side note: The best thing I got out of the Y as a kid was trampoline lessons.

Samantha arranges for her record executive ex-boyfriend, Steve (Paul Sand), to hear the guys perform. He takes one look as them and mutters, "I hate Halloween." (We're an hour and twenty minutes into the movie now and I finally laughed at something that I think was intentionally meant to be funny.) They sing "Liberation," a not-too-subtle pro-gay anthem, but screw up the choreography... probably because there were just too many distractions at the Y.M.C.A. for them to concentrate during rehearsal. Steve says he's not interested in the group even though secretly he is and only wants to trick them into signing crappy contracts. Samantha, somehow their manager now, decides to make a commercial for the American Dairy Association with the guys. She's positive a milk commercial will have everyone clamoring for Village People. And then they make the longest commercial in history -- four freakin' minutes -- featuring children, dancers, giant prop glasses, balloons and all-white costumes. This time, the choreography is perfect, at least in the sense that no one bumps into anyone else. It's all staged for a song called "Milk Shake," which has the distinction of being not only the worst song in the movie, but also one of the most execrable things ever recorded. The Dairy Association doesn't want to air "Milk Shake" because it may be "too controversial for their American family image." I'm going to have to side with the Dairy people on this one; it makes their product seem like some kind of magical unicorn juice that'll turn kids into tacky, hyperactive, Broadway-bound diva-urchins.

How will Village People ever catch a break? Turns out Jack's mom, the Broadway veteran, knows how to negotiate a contract. And Ron's socialite mom, also coincidentally/conveniently an event planner, has a big San Francisco charity fundraiser concert that needs performers. "Would it be possible for the boys to sing a few songs?" Ron's mom queries. And then the entire cast goes to San Francisco, where the movie grinds to a complete halt so that The Ritchie Family, another disco group from the same record label, can sing a song that has nothing to do with anything. Steve shows up with contracts for the boys -- despite having never seen them perform for a live audience, ever -- and the group suddenly starts fretting about the fact that they've never performed for a live audience, ever. That tension lasts long enough for Glenn Hughes to emote, unconvincingly, "Leathermen don't get nervous... leathermen don't get nervous." David Hodo combs his mustache one last time, and just before Village People take the stage, Samantha's agent pronounces the audience "bizarre and chic," which it most decidedly is not. It's a bunch of bland, blindingly white, middle-class people who look like they were bused in from Utah.

Finally on stage, Village People sing "Can't Stop the Music," a banal tune that sounds like it was written for one of those Disney Channel shows, and then they reprise it -- even though they were asked to sing a few songs. The mothers, Samantha's agent and even Alicia the plot device join them on stage, flailing about enthusiastically as a blizzard of glitter oppressive enough to cause permanent respiratory damage engulfs them all. Credits roll... and you get to hear an instrumental version of "Can't Stop the Music." Your total time listening to "Can't Stop the Music" is eleven minutes. For comparison, Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" is only eight minutes.

Can't Stop the Music was promoted as "The Movie Musical Event of the 80's." Yes, just like that, with the grammatically incorrect possessive apostrophe. It was directed by Nancy Walker, a Broadway and TV veteran best known for her role as Rhoda's mother on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and it's spinoff, Rhoda, plus her long-running commercial pitchwoman gig as Rosie the Bounty paper towel lady. She had directed some sitcom episodes, but Can't Stop the Music was her first (and only) film. There's really no sensible explanation why producer Allan Carr would ask 58-year-old Nancy Walker to direct a disco musical. I guess the voices in his cocaine-addled head made a convincing argument: "Listen Allan, Martin Scorsese is busy with Raging Bull." "And Robert Redford is directing Ordinary People." "Maybe you can get Nancy Walker, the paper towel lady." "Yeah, see if she's available!!!"

Nancy Walker on the set of Can't Stop the Music

Can't Stop the Music is an ill-conceived, witless mess. Bad direction. Bad script. Bad acting. Steve Guttenberg's performance is so manic, it's like he chugged a couple of Red Bulls before every scene. Proposed drinking game: take a shot every time you can see the veins in his neck pop out. You'll be drunk in about 30 minutes. Poor Valerie Perrine (a 1975 Oscar nominee for Lenny) wrestles mightily with stupid pratfalls and fatuous dialogue, but she never really has an unaffected moment. In his first movie role, Bruce Jenner gives a drama club performance, hitting his marks like a hammer and saying the correct words when it's his turn to talk. You wouldn't necessarily expect the members of Village People to be good actors, but they are, in fact, no worse than the professionals. Felipe Rose has the biggest part, spends virtually the entire movie in Native American drag, but manages to project a genuine sweetness. Both Randy Jones and Ray Simpson have a natural presence on camera. David Hodo works a slightly jaded groove pretty well. Alex Briley has virtually nothing to do outside the last four production numbers, but he appears to be a pretty good sport about that. And Glenn Hughes arrives late, brings an endearingly goofy charm that transcends his amateurish performance and steals the picture. Frankly, Village People weren't half bad at playing homogenized versions of themselves. Ironically, the final credit of the picture is this: The persons and events in this film are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons or events is unintentional. Yup, this movie is extraordinarily stupid from beginning to end.

Stray Gay Observations: I own a vinyl copy of the Can't Stop the Music soundtrack. Someone gave it to me as a birthday gift back in 1980. I think I played it a couple of times and then it just became one of those kitschy things you save. The album contains 10 songs, only six by Village People. "Liberation" sounds like vintage VP, and would likely have been a club hit if it had been released about two years earlier. But Can't Stop the Music was released after disco had peaked and a palpable backlash was underway. The timing was way off and the soundtrack was a schizophrenic endeavor filled with kid-friendly junk like "Magic Night" and "Milk Shake" and the four unremarkable songs by other artists. Play the Saturday Night Fever or Grease soundtracks, then listen to Can't Stop the Music. The contrast in quality is astounding.

About thirty minutes into Can't Stop the Music, a gay male couple, arm in arm, stroll briskly past the camera. That's the film's single unequivocal nod to homosexuality. No one ever uses the word gay in this movie. Not even once. At all times, Village People are presented as non-conformists, as if their homosexuality was undetectable, or moot. And that's the biggest problem with this movie: the filmmakers didn't have the courage to tell to the truth. They made a ludicrous effort to put these men in some kind of a universe where gay isn't really a thing and accidentally created the cinematic equivalent of the most flamboyant, roller-skating, disco-dancing, glitter-blush-wearing elephant in the room.

Should You See It? You know how 1959's sci-fi disasterpiece Plan 9 From Outer Space is considered to be one of the worst films ever made? Can't Stop the Music is the Plan 9 From Outer Space of movie musicals. What more of a recommendation could you need?

Next Week: How to Survive a Plague (2012)

The Queer Cinephile(s) # 22: Mahogany

I'm a cinephile. Studied film in college and got to review movies for a TV station (don't get excited; it was way back in the 20th century). My Netflix queue swelled to over 400 titles in 2013, so, for 2014, I gave myself an assignment: watch 50 films that I've never seen before and write something about them. I'll be watching a little bit of everything -- Oscar bait, indie darlings, black & white classics, cult flicks, blockbusters and weird shit my friends have been recommending for years.

Mahogany (released October 1975)

Mahogany: Diana Ross

Here's the original theatrical trailer...

What the Queer Cinephile Says: Signed to the fledgling Motown Records in 1961 at only 17, Diana Ross became lead vocalist of The Supremes, the most commercially successful female group of the Sixties. Going solo in 1970, she released "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" and scored a number one hit on the Billboard pop and R&B charts, plus a Grammy nomination. When Motown founder Berry Gordy decided to make movies, his first project was a biopic about legendary jazz/torch singer Billie Holiday entitled Lady Sings the Blues. Ross was cast in the lead role, prompting criticism from Holiday fans and industry insiders alike. But under the direction of Sydney J. Furie, Ross delivered a performance that Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert described as "one of the great performances of 1972." She was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, but Liza Minnelli picked up a statue for Cabaret that year.

And then Diana Ross made her second film, Mahogany. It's about a high-end department store secretary named Tracy Chambers (Ross) who takes fashion design classes at night and dreams of making clothes. It's never really clear what kind of woman would wear her clothes, since they're a cross between Kabuki theater and Cirque du Soleil costumes. Anyway, Tracy lives in a run-down Chicago neighborhood like the cast of that beloved '70s sitcom Good Times. Unfortunately, none of her friends or neighbors are that interesting or funny. Her Aunt Florence (Beah Richards) sews her designs for her, but don't get used to this character because she disappears after two scenes and never comes up again. Tracy keeps crossing paths with Brian Walker (Billy Dee Williams), a community organizer who's running for alderman and wants to restore her neighborhood. Let's just say he's not nearly as eloquent or savvy at politics as Barrack Obama -- Brian gets into fistfights every time he emerges from his campaign van. And despite his naked contempt for Tracy's career aspirations, they fall improbably in love and she helps him run for office. Meanwhile, back at the department store, revered fashion photographer Sean (Anthony Perkins) drops by searching for a muse. He mistakes Tracy for a model and invites her to Rome. She goes, leaving Chicago without even saying goodbye to Brian or poor Aunt Florence.

Up to this point, Mahogany is just silly and implausible. Rome is where it all takes a turn for the worse, becoming a flagrant, ludicrous, overwrought train wreck -- and that makes it a lot of fun to watch. In Rome, it's immediately obvious that Sean is in deep denial about being gay -- and he has a creepy, obsessive fixation on his models. "There's only one word that describes rich, dark, beautiful and rare," he tells Tracy. "I'm going to call you Mahogany." And one lavish 4-minute montage later, she's an international supermodel. Convinced that he's in love with his creation, Sean becomes psychologically unhinged when he can't perform sexually with Mahogany. Seriously, he goes from bitchy queen to homicidal maniac pretty quickly over that. And because Anthony Perkins played a cross-dressing, knife-wielding madman in Psycho, I kept expecting him to throw on one of Mahogany's dresses and slash her to pieces. Instead, he comes up with a screwball way of killing her and fails.

Of course, Brian's not out of the picture, either. He shows up in Rome after losing his election. Indifferent to Tracy's success as Mahogany, he apparently flew thousands of miles to disapprove of her lifestyle in person and get into a spectacularly awkward homoerotic knock down, drag out catfight with Sean. Oh, he also spits out the movie's tagline: "Success is nothing without someone you love to share it with!" But Tracy won't know the meaning of success until she sells those Kabuki-inspired frocks to somebody. When models work the runway in her designs and luminaries of the fashion world approve, she realizes -- SPOILER ALERT, but not so much -- that she needs to be with Brian because Success is nothing without someone you love to share it with! 

Diana Ross is an extraordinary woman. She was already a fashion icon by the mid '70s. So, on paper, the idea of casting her as a supermodel must have looked like a cinematic coup. Ross' performance is erratic in the early Chicago scenes, then ferociously mercurial in Rome. Her evolution from wannabe designer to Frankenstein's fashion monster is wholly unbelievable (though bizarrely entertaining). To be fair to Ross, no actress could make that character work or rise above the hoary cliches and idiotic melodrama of John Byrum's screenplay. Worse for Ross, Motown Productions founder Berry Gordy dismissed the film's original director, award-winning British filmmaker Tony Richardson (Tom Jones), and finished the picture himself. Mahogany was his first directorial effort; his approach is, to put it kindly, crude. And Ross was his former lover. Nothing good could come from all that.

And one more thing about John Byrum's screenplay. Brian repeatedly invalidates Tracy's dreams and ambitions, essentially dismissing them as self-centered and superficial. He wants her by his side as political eye candy, more or less. It's classic subjugation. So, the idea that Tracy would abandon Rome and her burgeoning fashion line for this asshole is completely nonsensical. Even for 1975. We all know there's not going to be a happy ending for this couple. The plot of Mahogany 2 would go something like this: After failing to get elected to any office, Brian hits the bottle pretty hard. One day he finds Tracy sketching dresses again and knocks her down a flight of stairs. While he languishes behind bars for assault with a rotten personality, Tracy flies to Rome and resumes her fashion career. She becomes wildly successful -- something we learn via a dazzling 4-minute montage -- designing Kabuki-inspired capes for the pope. Back in Chicago, Brian is murdered by his cellmate.

Diana Ross & Lando Calrissian... oops, er, Billy Dee Williams

Stray Gay Observations: The closing credits declare, "Costumes Designed by Diana Ross." The whole movie is filled with the kind of clothes that get you kicked off Project Runway.

Ross also recorded the movie's dangerously-close-to-cloying theme song, "Do You Know Where You're Going To." Aside from the irritating fact that it's the default music for the whole movie, it bothers me that the title ends in a preposition and does not contain a question mark.

Anthony Perkins worked steadily after playing schizophrenic murderer Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), but he was often cast as someone sweet and nervous or somewhat unbalanced. He's the single best thing about Mahogany. A fine actor, I suspect he recognized the script's insurmountable flaws, had some hammy fun and cashed the paycheck. (He succumbed to AIDS complications in September 1992.)

Should You See It? Mahogany is a godawful movie. But consider this: When I reviewed Valley of the Dolls early in this series, I mentioned that it's a renowned camp classic. And for anyone who didn't know what camp is, I offered this explanation: Camp is what happens when a bunch of creative people come together to make a serious drama, but something goes monumentally awry in the process and they unintentionally make a comedy. They just don't know it until the audience starts laughing in all the wrong places. Mahogany succeeds as camp.

Next Week: Can't Stop the Music (1980)

The Queer Cinephile(s) #21: The Way We Were

I'm a cinephile. Studied film in college and got to review movies for a TV station (don't get excited; it was way back in the 20th century). My Netflix queue swelled to over 400 titles in 2013, so, for 2014, I gave myself an assignment: watch 50 films that I've never seen before and write something about them. I'll be watching a little bit of everything -- Oscar bait, indie darlings, black & white classics, cult flicks, blockbusters and weird shit my friends have been recommending for years.


The Way We Were (released October 1973)

The Way We Were: Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford

Here's the original theatrical trailer...



What the Queer Cinephile Says: Before I watched The Way We Were the only thing I knew about the movie was that it starred Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford, and the title song was an enormous, Oscar-winning hit. The trailer gave me the impression that I was about to see a wartime romance with tearjerker potential. It carefully avoids the film's sociopolitical drama and sells one thing: Streisand & Redford Together! They might as well have called it that.

Redford is Hubbell Gardiner, a blonde, blue-eyed, all-American guy who falls in love with Streisand's Katie Morosky, a passionately radical Jew. He's affluent, carefree and apparently irresistible. She's tireless, stridently political and not necessarily the kind of girl a white-bread boy takes home to meet mother, unless he hates his mother. Years after their mutual infatuation at some unspecified New England university, Hubbell and Katie accidentally meet up again in a New York City bar. She takes him home and to bed, where he falls asleep on top of her after sex. There's some hint that it might have been her first sexual experience, maybe, or not. All we really know is that this is pretty much what it takes for her to fall head over heels in love and give him the key to her apartment. Hubbell is fascinated by Katie and somewhat respectful of her political fervor, but mostly she's his respite from a glib and tedious circle of friends and acquaintances.

Hubbell and Katie couple up, break up, reunite and marry. At various points along the way, Katie tries to change herself enough to fit into his world while simultaneously fretting that she's not attractive enough for him. Hubbell writes a book entitled A Country Made of Ice Cream, sells it to Hollywood and they relocate from the east coast to the west coast -- along with Hubbell's best friend and his wife, who used to be Hubbell's college girlfriend and, yes, all that turns out to be just as bad an idea as you think it is. Hubbell becomes a screenwriter and Katie takes an unfulfilling studio job reading film synopses or something. There's little time for happiness in their cozy Malibu beach house because Hubbell has landed in Hollywood at the same time that Congress's House Committee on Un-American Activities is determined to expose every Communist in the movie industry. Katie's suppressed political instinct resurfaces and Hubbell is bewildered by her impulse to get involved.

The Way We Were has big problems. Streisand and Redford, 30 and 36 respectively at the time of filming, just aren't credible as college seniors in the film's extended flashback. The supporting characters are consistently undeveloped, wasted (poor Viveca Lindfors, James Woods and Herb Edelman), or unceremoniously dispatched from the picture without so much as an inkling as to why they were there in the first place. The editing is choppy, the photography is oddly flat, and Pollack's direction is uninspired -- which is especially frustrating since he's directed some really fine films, including Tootsie. Worse, the DVD extras include a number of impactful scenes Pollack shot and ultimately discarded, most of which would have arguably given the film more coherency, a lucid climax and an even more poignant resolution.

The potential for a great story is all there, but The Way We Were is a badly executed film. The original script by Arthur Laurents -- based on college events and his personal experience with the House Committee on Un-American Activities -- was written with Barbra Streisand in mind for Katie Morosky. (This is confirmed by both Streisand and Laurents in the DVD extras.) But when Sydney Pollack signed on to direct, he had the role of Hubbell Gardiner rewritten to accommodate Robert Redford. (Pollack states that directly in the DVD extras, too.) Reportedly, eleven different writers worked on the script, so Laurents' original vision was undoubtedly lost. The politics have mostly been eviscerated, too, so all that's really left is a jumbled, lukewarm narrative about star-crossed lovers set to a lush, melancholic score. Streisand does have her moments as Katie, a character that's alternately obsessive and foolish. Her big emotional outbursts come at regular intervals, so things never get too dull. Redford brings surprising depth to Hubbell, a character who likes things easy and would surely have coasted through life on charm, good looks and family connections if he hadn't met Katie. I grew tired of Streisand and lost all empathy for Katie late in the film when she wistfully muses, "Wouldn't it be lovely if we were old... we'd have survived all this and everything would be easy and uncomplicated the way it was when we were young." Hubbell wearily replies, "Katie, it was never uncomplicated." In that single moment of impeccable acting, Redford almost makes you forget the preceding hour and forty-five minutes worth of botched storytelling.

Stray Gay Observations: Barbra Streisand is another one of those entertainers I'm supposed to love because I'm gay. For the record, I like her, but I've never really gone out of my way to see one of her movies. In 2012, she co-starred with Seth Rogan in The Guilt Trip, an amusing story about an inventor whose mom tags along with him on a cross-country trek to get various investors interested in his latest product. I saw it because I like Rogan, but Streisand is quite good; she has an impressive chemistry with her co-star. Streisand's music? I've enjoyed some of it over the years -- dear God, the woman's been recording since 1963! -- but the only one of her songs on my iPod is "Enough is Enough (No More Tears)," a disco duet with Donna Summer.  

Throughout The Way We Were, Robert Redford's hair never changes style, despite the fact that the movie appears to take place over about a 20-year period, from roughly the late 1930s to the late 1950s. It's a totally anachronistic hairstyle.

The Way We Were is a period piece; Redford's hair is a decisively '70s style.

For me, the most interesting question raised by The Way We Were is this: Can you have a successful relationship with someone who doesn't share your politics or worldview? All I know is that I can't date (or even fuck) a guy who watches Fox News.

Should You See It? Lots of people think The Way We Were is a grand cinematic romance, but I'm sincerely baffled by the popularity of this movie. All I see is a gracelessly executed star vehicle filled with dozens of closeups. Redford is fine in a thankless, almost passive role, but it you want to see him give a solid performance in a better movie with political overtones, check him out in All the President's Men -- he has excellent chemistry with Dustin Hoffman. If you're a Streisand fan, my guess is that you've already seen The Way We Were. I honestly can't think of a single reason to recommend this to anybody else. It's not terrible, but even Streisand & Redford Together! can't rescue it from mediocrity

Next Week: Mahogany (1975)

Cruel Summer Music Mix 2014 - Vol. 2

As a southerner, I've been listening to these seven words all my life: "It's not the heat, it's the humidity." I call that southern science. And it's not particularly comforting when the sweat is rolling down my back into my underwear. Anyway, it's going to take more than sunscreen, shade, AC or lots of citrus-kissed blonde ales to get me through the next couple of months. Summer needs a soundtrack! In part two of this 6-part series, I'm featuring earworms from tUnE-yArDs, Sam Smith and Fucked Up.


tUnE-yArDs. Music meets performance art. Based in Oakland, California, tUnE-yArDs (yes, it's deliberately stylized that way) is the creation of Merrill Garbus, a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist wild woman with a seriously unconventional imagination. She's an amalgam of influences, yet startlingly original. Accompanied by Nate Brenner (bass and synthesizers), they're work is an eclectic, convention-defying, passionately theatrical endeavor. Check out the tUnE-yArDs website here.

Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs
"Sexual roles just never really made sense to me at all," she told Mother Jones in 2012.

Song & Video: "Water Fountain" -- It's a tribal, percussive, and rhythm-driven pop song that's chaotic, exuberant and catchy as hell. You can dance to it. Wildly. Garbus says the tune may fool you into "thinking that you're listening to a kids' song," but it's actually about "the disintegration of society and the rotting of American cities." The video looks like a mashup of Pee Wee's Playhouse, Yo Gabba Gabba and Sesame Street on acid.

Sam Smith. This British singer-songwriter first got noticed in 2012 as the guest vocalist on Disclosure's "Latch," a synthpop cut that hit the charts in a dozen countries. That collaboration led to a solo EP and critical acclaim -- he landed on top of the BBC Sound of 2014 poll, a list compiled by 170 DJs, critics and bloggers to honor emerging artists. He has an amazing vocal range and claims he honed his voice by singing along to Aretha Franklin and Whitney Houston records. And just before the release of his first full album (In the Lonely Hour), Smith addressed rumors about his sexual orientation by telling Fader magazine that the release "is about a guy I fell in love with last year, and he didn't love me back." Heartache + Music/Lyrics/Emotive Voice = Success? That formula worked pretty well for Adele a few years back.

Sam Smith

Song & Video: "Stay With Me" -- It's a raw, moving gospel-inflected ballad. There are multiple videos for the song, but I like this one, a straightforward studio session with a full choir. Smith's website, with an alternate video version of the song, is here.

Fucked Up. As their name suggests, this is a hardcore band. But beyond pushing buttons and boundaries with that name (The New York Times has referred to them as "a well-regarded, profanely named Canadian band"), this ambitious sextet has been delivering prodigious, melodic punk and experimental rock since 2002 -- and that's a long time for a hardcore punk band to remain relevant. Their live shows are raucous events that feature manic singer Damian Abraham, who's been called everything from "an unhinged monster" to "a brute wrecking ball of a man." He's got a killer grin, too.

Fucked Up, left to right: 
Ben Cook, Sandy Miranda, Jonah Falco, Damian Abraham, Mike Haliechuk & Josh Zucker

Song & Video: "Sun Glass" -- It's a rollicking, slamming but ultimately accessible wall of sound. Even if you don't understand most of the lyrics, you may find yourself sporadically shouting "Sun glass!" right along with Abraham. This is the kind of song you play at a pool party and people start asking, "Who is that?" The video is sort of effortlessly cool, juxtaposing sun-tinged glimpses of the band with images from a fervid live performance.  

There are some pretty great lyrics between Abraham's chant-like roar of "Sun glass!" See below.

Did you miss volume one in this series? See it here.

The Queer Cinephile(s) #20: Casablanca

I'm a cinephile. Studied film in college and got to review movies for a TV station (don't get excited; it was way back in the 20th century). My Netflix queue swelled to over 400 titles in 2013, so, for 2014, I gave myself an assignment: watch 50 films that I've never seen before and write something about them. I'll be watching a little bit of everything -- Oscar bait, indie darlings, black & white classics, cult flicks, blockbusters and weird shit my friends have been recommending for years.

Casablanca (released November 1942)

Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa & Humphrey Bogart as Rick in Casablanca

Here's the original theatrical trailer...

What the Queer Cinephile Says: Most any film student can explain the old Hollywood studio system. Between the late 1920s and early 1960s, motion picture studios -- like MGM, Warner Bros., Paramount, RKO, 20th Century Fox -- produced movies primarily on their own filmmaking lots with creative personnel (writers, directors and stars) under long-term contracts. In the peak days of the Hollywood studio system, arguably the late 1930s through the 1940s, these companies produced and distributed over 350 films a year. They were cranking out product for audiences whose alternative to radio in those pre-TV and Internet days was a trip to the local movie theater. There was far, far less emphasis on making a blockbuster that would pack houses on opening weekend. More often than not, the studios were just hoping that a solid story and some A-lists stars would produce a hit. And that was essentially the formula behind Warner Bros.' Casablanca, a product of the studio assembly line that was based very loosely on an unproduced 1940 play entitled Everybody Comes to Rick's.

Casablanca is set during World War II (1939-1945), after German troops had invaded and occupied many European cities, including Paris, but just before the United States had entered the war (after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941). American expatriate Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) runs a thriving nightclub in Casablanca, a city located in the northwest African territory known at the time as French Morocco. As yet unoccupied by the Germans, Casablanca is the next-to-last stop for desperate refugees fleeing Europe. In Casablanca, luck, perseverance and money will get you a letter of transit and a plane ride to Lisbon, Portugal, which had become the great embarkation point to the Americas. The most likely place to find a shady character selling letters of transit? Rick's nightclub, of course. Cynical and aloof, Rick is expressly detached from the process. His personal philosophy is, "I stick my neck out for nobody." He says that twice in the first twenty minutes, so you know that mantra is due for some recalibration.

Enter Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) and Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid). He's a renowned Nazi-resistance leader and concentration camp escapee. She's Rick's former lover -- and thanks to an extended flashback, we see their whirlwind romance unfold in Paris just weeks before the Germans marched into town. Rick makes plans for them to escape Paris by train, but Ilsa's a no-show at the station, opting instead to send Rick a note via his buddy, Sam (Dooley Wilson). Movie notes are never good news: she's not going, she can't see him again, and he must not ask why. A year and a half later, there she is with Laszlo, and bitter, brokenhearted Rick sums up her entrance with pithy precision: "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine." Naturally, Ilsa and Laszlo need letters of transit to Lisbon. A cabal of Nazi officers are determined to thwart their departure. And Rick is suddenly conflicted about whether or not to stick his neck out for somebody.

Casablanca is an intoxicating mixture of romance, intrigue, idealism, quotable dialogue and great performances. It's a crackling good story, shrewdly directed by Michael Curtiz -- a Hungarian immigrant who helmed a lot of great movies, like Captain Blood (1935), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), and one of my all-time favorites, Mildred Pierce (1945). Curtiz received five Best Director Oscar nominations during his career, winning once for Casablanca. Austrian immigrant Max Steiner composed the impeccable musical score, but not the film's iconic song, "As Time Goes By" -- it was a ten-year-old Broadway tune that he discovered, rearranged and turned into a haunting leitmotif. Steiner scored over 300 movies, including King Kong (1933) and Gone With the Wind (1939); he was nominated for eighteen Oscars, winning three times.

One of the more fascinating things about Casablanca is the casting. Humphrey Bogart had already played plenty of tough guys, but this was his first truly romantic leading role. With his careworn face and rusty, nasal voice, he was pretty much the antithesis of Hollywood's leading men at the time. There's no real reason that pairing Bogart with the radiant Ingrid Bergman should work, but it does. "With the whole world crumbling, we pick this time to fall in love," says Bergman to Bogart, striking a note of pitch perfect pathos. A lesser actress would have made Ilsa seem foolish, but Bergman's performance never lets you forget that this character is a complex, vulnerable woman navigating protracted circumstances as best she can.

More about the casting: Bogart and Dooley Wilson (the African American actor playing Rick's best friend, Sam) are the only two members of the main cast born in the United States. Bergman was born in Sweden. Claude Rains (local prefect Captain Renault) and Sydney Greenstreet (rival nightclub owner Ferrari) were born in England. Paul Henreid (Victor Laszlo) and Peter Lorre (Ugarte) were born in Austria-Hungary. Conrad Veidt (Nazi officer Major Strasser) was born in Germany. In fact, virtually all the supporting parts, minor roles and background extras were European immigrants or refugees. According to Warner Bros., thirty-four different nationalities worked on the film. Casablanca is a terrific symphony of accents.

Considering Casablanca's troubled production history - four writers essentially jettisoned the source material, writing and re-writing the script throughout the shooting -- it's a smartly paced, unified film that mixes genres with wild abandon. You could call it a wartime melodrama about some star-crossed lovers, but it's so much more -- a tale of personal integrity, selflessness and meaningful emotional sacrifice. Released roughly a year after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and coinciding with the Allied invasion of North Africa, you can imagine Casablanca having a particular resonance with American audiences of the day. Casablanca's famous ending (and if you don't know how it ends, I'm not about to spoil it for you) has been discussed at length, but there's a particularly powerful moment earlier in the film that really stuck with me. A group of Nazi officers casually intimidate the multinational patrons of Rick's nightclub by loudly singing a German anthem, "Watch on the Rhine," that's deeply rooted in French enmity. Resistance leader Victor Laszo starts singing the French national anthem, "La Marseillaise," and others follow until the Germans are entirely drowned out. In under two minutes, this superbly acted, directed and edited scene embodies everything from fear, paranoia and antipathy to defiance, patriotism and hope. It's extraordinarily stirring.

Stray Gay Observations: Before Casablanca, I'd watched a handful of Humphrey Bogart pictures, including The Maltese Falcon (1941), The African Queen (1951) and The Caine Mutiny (1954). His career was filled with hard-boiled, hard-drinking, disillusioned characters. That can be an awfully narrow range to play, but his carefully modulated performances never feel lazy or perfunctory. And although I really don't think he possessed the sheer sex appeal of some of his Hollywood contemporaries, like Errol Flynn, Cary Grant or William Holden, Bogart was brimming with personal magnetism and ineffable presence.

When asked his nationality by a Nazi officer, Rick replies, "I'm a drunkard."

Is there a gay character in Casablanca? In a 1996 review, Roger Ebert described the Claude Rains character -- charmingly corrupt French police prefect Captain Renault -- as "subtly homosexual." I admire and respect Ebert (1942-2013), arguably the most successful film critic in cinema history, but I have to respectfully disagree. Renault has an obvious fondness for Bogart's Rick, but then so does Rick's buddy and house pianist, Sam. Both, in their own ways, show a lot of compassion for Rick. I wonder what Ebert saw in Rains' performance that led him to believe the character is gay? To me, Casablanca's not-so-subtle homosexual is rival nightclub owner Signor Ferrari, played by Sydney Greenstreet. And I jumped to that conclusion because, among other things, he owns a parrot and wears white suits throughout the film. Perception is a funny thing.

Should You See It? The opening narration over a spinning eighth-grade-science-project globe is the only element that feels dated, and you'll have forgotten it anyway by the time Casablanca arrives at its bittersweet, honest denouement. There's an old Hollywood legend that Casablanca was dubbed "sophisticated hokum" by the Warner Bros. script department; they weren't making Gone With the Wind or Citizen Kane. But seventy years on, time has not diminished this accidental classic of the Hollywood studio system assembly line, even though it's been badly mimicked, parodied and ripped off dozens of times since its premiere. I can't imagine myself curling up on the sofa with Citizen Kane or Gone With the Wind on a rainy Sunday afternoon; Casablanca is like cinematic comfort food.

Next Week: The Way We Were (1973)

Cruel Summer Music Mix 2014 - Vol. 1

Ah, another Georgia summer for me. As a southerner, I've been listening to these seven words all my life: "It's not the heat, it's the humidity." I call that southern science. And it's not particularly comforting when the sweat is rolling down my back into my underwear. Anyway, it's going to take more than sunscreen, shade, AC or a six-pack of citrus-kissed blonde ales to get me through the next couple of months. Summer needs a soundtrack! In this 6-part series, I'll be featuring some of the iPod-worthy tracks that help me beat the heat. Let's start with Clean Bandit, Bleachers and Future Islands...

Clean Bandit. This British electronic quartet specializes in a fusion of pop and classical elements with dance beats. Comprised of brothers Jack and Luke Patterson, Grace Chatto and Milan Neil Amin-Smith, their first album (due mid-June in the U.S.) features about a dozen guest vocalists. Website here.

Clean Bandit's violinist, Milan Neil Amin-Smith

Song & Video: "Rather Be" (featuring Jess Glynne) -- A perfect dollop of bright and breezy pop. The video is about a Japanese fan whose daily routine is disrupted by a series of hallucinations featuring the band, its logo and random citizens who keep creating choreography to match the song in her head.

Bleachers. This is the solo project of Jack Antonoff, the lead guitarist of Grammy-winning indie pop band fun. ("We Are Young"). Turns out that Mr. Antonoff is a pretty unapologetic pop rocker. In early 2014, he told Buzzfeed, "God, just shoot me the day I start making music you can just put on in the car and have a conversation over it." Website here.

Jack Antonoff, the guy behind Bleachers

Song & Video: "I Wanna Get Better" -- The song is an irrepressibly catchy all-season hipster anthem. And this video made me laugh out loud three times. (PS. Antonoff is straight, but along with his band and sister, he co-founded The Ally Coalition, a non-profit organization that raises money for LGBTQ causes. You can check it out here.)

Future Islands. This Baltimore-based synthpop trio works an '80s groove, but it all sounds remarkably fresh due to smart arrangements and the soulful, expressive voice of Samuel T. Herring. Website here.

Future Islands, left to right: William Cashion, Samuel T. Herring & Gerrit Welmers 

Song & Video: "Seasons (Waiting On You)" -- It's kind of the perfect track for a road trip. The beautifully photographed video (in which the band does not appear) is wide open for interpretation. And full of cowboys.

You can see volume 2 in this series here. 

The Queer Cinephile(s) #19: Purple Rain

I'm a cinephile. Studied film in college and got to review movies for a TV station once (don't get excited; it was way back in the 20th century). My Netflix queue swelled to over 400 titles in 2013, so, for 2014, I gave myself an assignment: watch 50 films that I've never seen before and write something about them. I'll be watching a little bit of everything -- Oscar bait, indie darlings, black & white classics, cult flicks, blockbusters and weird shit my friends have been recommending for years.

Purple Rain (released July 1984)

Purple Rain: Prince and his unidentified little friend, a homemade ventriloquist's doll

Here's the original theatrical trailer...

What the Queer Cinephile Says: The state of Minnesota -- "Land of 10,000 Lakes" -- is not usually recognized for its cultural contributions. It's well known for its natural beauty and cold winters, but the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul have a thriving theatre community and music scene, too. Minnesota has given us the Andrews Sisters (best-selling swing/boogie woogie group of the 1940s), Judy Garland (yup, The Wizard of Oz), Bob Dylan, Husker Du, The Replacements, wrestler-turned-governor Jesse Ventura, two-time Oscar winner Jessica Lange (American Horror Story, among other things) and humorist Garrison Keillor (Praire Home Companion). And then there's Prince Rogers Nelson, known to the world by the mononym Prince.

Purple Rain is a purportedly semi-autobiographical film about how Prince became Prince. The script was concocted by award-winning student filmmaker Albert Magnoli and TV writer William Blinn, whose credits included everything from Gunsmoke and Starsky and Hutch to Eight is Enough and Fame. Magnoli (who also directed) and Blinn skip over Prince's childhood entirely. There's no look-alike child actor banging away at piano lessons, plucking a guitar or bustin' moves in the street. It's not that kind of biopic. Curiously, no one ever calls him Prince, even once, despite the fact that he looks and dresses exactly like Prince. He's "The Kid." There's not a single scene where The Kid pauses to consider a style choice, like that wispy mustache or asymmetrical hair, the ruffled shirts and tight pants or even those lacy gloves. Nope. The Kid is Prince, a fully developed, magnetically androgynous enigma from scene one. And even though Prince's musical breakthrough happened in the late '70s, everything in Purple Rain takes place over the course of a few weeks in what looks exactly like 1984. The fashions, makeup and hairstyles distinctly capture that unmistakable aesthetic of the 1980s.

Shot mostly in and around Prince's hometown of Minneapolis, Purple Rain features numerous performances at the famous First Avenue and 7th St Entry nightclub. And that's where the film begins, with The Kid and his band, The Revolution, performing "Let's Go Crazy" for a packed house. Cross cut with their performance is the arrival of Apollonia, a nineteen-year-old singer from New Orleans with nothing but some dreams and the Catwoman clothes on her back. Seriously, the girl travels 1,200 miles from New Orleans to Minneapolis and shows up without a suitcase. Also, in what universe does an African American singer in New Orleans decide that Minneapolis is the place to jumpstart a career? Well, fortunately for her, The Kid's number one rival, Morris Day, needs a sexy woman with a cool name for his own band. The Kid, on the other hand, just needs a sexy girlfriend with a cool name to terrorize, humiliate, screw and slap around.

Did I mention that The Kid, who's supposed to be the brilliant musician Prince, but not really, is also a moody, egotistical, selfish, preening asshole? Uh huh. Ostensibly, Morris Day is the film's antagonist. Mostly, though, he's just a vain jerk. The Kid is a piece of work. For a first date, The Kid orders Apollonia on the back of his purple motorcycle and drives off to a secluded lake. The initiation for new Minnesotans, he tells her, is to purify themselves by jumping into Lake Minnetonka. She strips (to the delight of straight men everywhere) and complies. "That ain't Lake Minnetonka," he grins. All is forgiven, of course, because he's a really good singer. Their second date is even better: he takes her to his place, the basement of his parents' house... that's decorated with masks and dolls. Ordinarily, this would make a guy seem uncool. Not to Apollonia. Then The Kid sets the mood by playing a recording of a woman crying, backwards. Ordinarily, this would make a person seem like a creepy serial killer who's going to make a vest out of your skin. But no, Apollonia is not creeped out. She's turned on. And they have sex. Later, to affirm his commitment to her, The Kid removes an earring and puts it on one of her ears. That's the least weird thing he does. And by the way, we're nearly an hour into this movie now and she's still wearing that same damn Catwoman outfit. She doesn't need an earring, she needs clothes.

In essence, Purple Rain is a dozen dynamic songs surrounded by a series of of alternately lurid or unrealistic scenes, all punctuated by terrible dialogue. There's a love story, some dysfunctional family drama and a little battle-of-the-bands action. When it's not about one of those things, it's a concert film. There may be a few grains of truth sprinkled in there, but not much of what happens between the music is remotely believable. Prince is a prodigious musician, producer and arranger; the Purple Rain soundtrack, an eclectic mix of rock, soul, funk and pop, is arguably a masterpiece. But whenever this film is not about the music, it's a bumbling, poorly acted, tonally discordant mess.

It's also just weird... really, really weird. When his Revolution bandmates express discontent about the fact that The Kid won't perform any of their compositions, he mocks them with ventriloquy. After a particularly scary altercation between The Kid's abusive father (a singularly first-rate Clarence Williams III) and his co-dependent mother ends with dad's tearful lament, "I would die for you," The Kid is inspired to write a dance track entitled "I Would Die 4 U." Simultaneously, The Kid worries that he might be turning into his father, a tortured musician who regularly browbeats and manhandles his wife. That would be an interesting thing to explore since The Kid treats his female bandmates like crap and knocks Apollonia around a couple of times. But this is Purple Rain, so no. You will just have to accept that the sensational mini-concert that takes up the film's final twenty minutes is exactly the right amount of music to soothe the savage drama queen living inside The Kid.

Stray Gay Observations: A boy named Richard sat behind me in the 4th grade. One day he leaned forward and whispered in my ear. "Queer." I instinctively knew it wasn't a compliment, but I liked the sound of it anyway. I'm queer. And I'm happy to have lived long enough to see that word re-enter the lexicon in a positive way. But back in the 1970s and '80s, it was de rigueur for critics and journalists to substitute androgynous when they really meant queer. Prince may be androgynous to some people, but he will always be queer to me.

Purple Rain's credits say, "Clothes by Louis and Vaughn Marie-France." And clearly their clothes budget was spent almost entirely on Prince and Morris Day. Throughout Purple Rain, Prince is always dressed like Prince -- ruffled shirts, high-heeled boots, ascots, those chic trench jackets and strikingly tight pants. Seriously, he wakes up in those pants. Morris Day's wardrobe is full of flashy, glittery jackets and insanely ostentatious shoes, or blindingly white overcoats and purely decorative walking canes -- he's what previous generations would have called a dandy, or a fop. Prince's wardrobe and styling pushed boundaries, mixing a masculine and feminine aesthetic about as successfully as it's ever been done. (Yes, even more so than David Bowie. Though to be fair, would Prince have been possible without Bowie?) Prince looks amazing, like some kind of horny, gender-bending, biker vampire. Morris Day just looks silly, which makes it all the more hilarious when he gets pissed-off and calls Prince a "long-haired faggot."

No one is going to remember Apollonia's clothes -- which mostly look like stuff Madonna dropped off at Goodwill in 1983. They'll just remember that scene where she removes them and jumps in a cold lake. In fact, she's rarely photographed in a way that emphasizes her wardrobe at all -- for the director, it's about her face and those breasts.

Apollonia performing the film's most disposable song, "Sex Shooter"

Prince has done some things that test my admiration for him (changing his name to an unpronounceable symbol and forcing us to call him "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince," for instance), but all is forgiven every time I hear "When Doves Cry," a stark, dramatically urgent pop classic. I can't think of another male artist who could write and then sound completely natural delivering these lyrics:

Dream if u can a courtyard
An ocean of  violets in bloom
Animals strike curious poses

They feel the heat

The heat between me and u

I was in a long-distance relationship with a native Minnesotan for three years (Hi, Greg!). There's no initiation that requires you to purify yourself by jumping in Lake Minnetonka. They make you go to the Minnesota State Fair, pet farm animals and eat cheese curds. I'm not kidding.

Something that never happened in the 1980s that should have happened: a Prince and Michael Jackson song collaboration, with a music video. I mean, these two guys owned the music charts in the '80s. The Purple Rain soundtrack spent 24 consecutive weeks atop the Billboard album chart; Jackson's Thriller spent thirty-seven weeks there. If someone had locked these two in a recording studio overnight, the outcome would have been either a fantastic record or a murder-suicide.

Should You See It? Purple Rain is filled with outstanding songs and some electrifying musical performances. The rest of it is so bad that it's accidentally fabulous.

Next Week: Casablanca (1942)