Joe: What happened?
Jerry: I’m engaged.
Joe: Congratulations! Who’s the lucky girl?
Jerry: I am
Joe: What!
Jerry: Osgood proposed to me. We’re planning a June Wedding.
Joe: What are you talking about? You can’t marry Osgood.
Jerry: You think he’s too old for me?
Joe: Jerry, you can’t be serious.
Jerry: Why not?? He keeps marrying girls all the time.
Joe: But- but you’re not a girl. You’re a guy. And why would a guy want to marry a guy?
Jerry: Security
- Some Like it Hot (1959) Written and Directed by Billy Wilder
This edition of the Five Films series is different from the others. First, the topic that has been chosen, Homosexuality, is not something you can find many examples of in old movies. Unlike a topic such as race, homosexuality was either not talked about or censored. Take the above joke from 1959 in Billy Wilder’s Some Like it Hot. The character of Jerry asks, “Why would a guy want to marry a guy?” in a state of complete befuddlement. Apparently he has never even heard of homosexuality. And it’s not that the character of Joe is homosexual either (he isn’t for those unacquainted with the movie. Joe and Jerry have disguised themselves as women in order to infiltrate an all-women band and escape the mob) although he does hit on the basic reason why people want to marry each other. A rich playboy asked him thinking he was a girl and as he explains to Jerry, this is his last chance to marry a millionaire.
Second, unlike race, the national controversy about homosexuality is far from over in our time. (And when I say that the controversy concerning race is over, I simply mean you will be hard-pressed to find a large and outspoken segment of the population that does not think racism is bad and isn’t against it.) Only in the past year, has a majority of the American people polled in support of gay marriage. At the same time there have been a large number of states that have outright banned gay marriage in their state constitutions. But our culture’s view, expressed in those time capsules we call movies, has indeed changed, and that change is what I hope to chronicle here.
All That Heaven Allows (1955) – Directed by Douglas Sirk
Take note! This movie is not about homosexuality. It never even mentions the subject. I don’t know of many movies from this period that do. More importantly, I don’t know any great movies that do. And no matter what I feel about the subject matter, the main point of the “Five Films Series” is to recommend great movies. So I am not going to recommend Ed Wood’s “Glen or Glenda.” I haven’t seen it but I’ve heard it’s terrible.
This one will work just fine. (I also deliberated on recommending “Lawrence of Arabia.” Homosexuality isn’t mentioned at all in that one as well, even though it is widely suspected that the biographical Lawrence was homosexual. We don’t know for sure and know even less as to whether he if ever acted on it if he was. We just don’t know basically.) For two reasons I will choose “All That Heaven Allows.” The first is that it is about forbidden love, albeit a heterosexual one between a rich widow from the country club set and her much younger gardener. Second reason is that the actor who plays the young gardener is Rock Hudson, a heterosexual sex symbol throughout the 1950s and 1960s. He was best known for playing virile Texan oil tycoons (see Giant) until he was involuntary outed as a homosexual in the 1985 when he died of A.I.D.S. It came as a huge surprise to many people. That very manly man was super gay the entire time.
It is completely inescapable to watch this movie and not think about it. One of the great strengths of Douglas Sirk’s directing style is its unapologetic directness. It is a type of movie making that nowadays has gone completely out of style, only to be used ineffectively by daytime soap operas and endlessly parodied by sketch comedy shows. But here, because of the time period, the melodramatic oppression of conformity is believable and is especially disquieting.
There are many nice touches that make this small movie a great movie. The gentle honest moments between the two very different people that explain exactly how and why they feel a strong connection. The cynical reactions from the gossip crowd that don’t understand the match and insist that the main motivations must either be the gardener’s sex appeal or the widow’s inheritance and probably both. The couple’s fears that their love would turn the widow’s children against her and make her lose her place in society. Dialogue about being “true to thine own self,” being brave enough to live the correct way, and making sure what is unimportant stays unimportant. And how the couple’s plans to get married are eventually and realistically derailed by a sense of shame stemming from societal disapproval. The widow’s son buys her one of those newfangled television sets to cheer her up. “All you have to do is turn the dial and you have all the company you want right there on the screen-drama, comedy, life’s parade at your fingertips…” says the salesman. A poor substitute for love.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) – Directed by Jim Sharman
Starting in the 1960s, homosexuality starting popping up in movies, albeit in stand alone scenes, either as a joke or some sort of horrible experience, and sometimes both. In 1967, Mel Brooks made “The Producers,” a story about a couple of Broadway producers attempting to make lots of money from little old ladies by overselling a sure-fire flop. The producers seek out the “worst director in the world,” a gay man that meets them in a full dress and complains how the story “Springtime for Hitler,” is depressing because in the third act the Nazis lose the war. In 1969, the Best Picture winner “Midnight Cowboy,” featured perhaps one of the most awkward and cringe inducing sexual encounters (homo or hetero) ever in a movie. It takes place between two complete strangers in a filthy movie theater in a disgusting NY Times Square. My favorite though is the ten seconds in Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry” when the cop is searching a San Francisco park at night for a serial killer and happens upon a nervous young man named “Alice” who says he will take a dare. Harry discloses that he is police and the young man threatens to kill himself. “Well, do it at home!” growls Harry.
Then like a thunderbolt, the silence is broken. Out of nowhere, adapted from a little known British stage production, comes “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” And this isn’t just any movie; it is a bizarre musical horror/science fiction parody, a frenetic freak show full of gleeful shock and awe. It is the ultimate and definitive cult classic. A movie that caused absolutely no ripples in the box office when it opened but through strong word of mouth, repeat viewings, and midnight event showings now holds the world record for longest theatrical release. In fact it is still being shown at several theaters. (Chelsea’s Clearview in NYC still shows it Saturdays at midnight and that is where I first saw it two years ago). You may want to see the movie first at home before seeing it in a movie theater though because its hard to hear the movie over everyone in the theater screaming the entire time.
Homosexuality isn’t just present in this movie. It is brazenly outspoken in a horrifyingly sacrilegious and depraved way. The movie starts with a newly engaged straight-laced couple named Brad and Janet (a young Susan Sarandon), whose car gets a flat and strands them next to a gothic castle. Inside they find a bunch of tap-dancing freaks led by a murdering transvestite in horror makeup named Dr. Frankenfurter (Tim Curry in a role of a lifetime). He is constructing in his lab a perfect man-specimen, which he names Rocky Horror and plans to use exclusively for gratifying his homosexual lust.
Anyone watching this movie and not knowing anything about homosexuality will not come out thinking that it is anywhere near normal behavior. In fact, the transvestites aren’t even human. They are aliens from the planet Transsexual in the galaxy Transylvania. They came down here in a time warp and oh well nevermind. The point is that this movie and how it was seen is indicative of how people thought about homosexuality in the 1970s. It was underground, it was extreme, and it was something you did in secret in the middle of the night with a bunch of other like-minded weirdos. (p.s. Don’t let that last line fool you into thinking I don’t heartily recommend this movie.)
Let it be noted that “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” has never been associated with homophobia. It was largely successful only in neighborhoods with a large homosexual population. So unlike “A Birth of a Nation,” it speaks less about societal prejudice than it does about the type of person who engages in the type of taboo that will end up ostracizing themselves from society. In other words, it takes an extreme person to openly engage in the type of behavior that will eventually cost them family, friends, and church (as coming out in the 1970s regularly did). Would a normal person be able to make that choice? And if they did, is it something that can only be done halfway?
Philadelphia (1993) – Directed by Jonathan Demme
You can’t ignore a dreaded deadly infectious disease. Homosexuality for the longest time was something slept under the rug and ignored. You could live your entire life without noticing that it ever existed. And then in the eighties and early nineties, thousands of people started dying each year from a new sexually transmitted disease named A.I.D.S., a disproportionate number of them having contracted the disease through homosexual relations. And these weren’t just the stereotypical “freaks” you might meet at a shady cineplex in the middle of the night; these were well known famous heterosexuals who (gasp!) had been gay all along. People like Rock Hudson and Freddie Mercury, involuntary outed as homosexuals on their deathbeds.
A.I.D.S. unlike homosexuality was especially visible. Someone who had it wasted away in front of your eyes. Other times they developed sizable lesions on their skin. This is what happens to the lawyer Andrew Beckett (played by Tom Hanks in an Oscar Winning Role) in “Philadelphia.” One of the partners of his law firm recognizes his lesions as the result of A.I.D.S. and not long after, Beckett finds himself fired for incompetence by the same colleagues that just made him a partner and put him in charge of one of their biggest cases. Of course, Beckett was fired not because he was incompetent. He was not even fired because he had A.I.D.S. He was fired because his disease outed him as a homosexual and to the partners of his law firm this means that he is an unfit degenerate (think Dr. Frankenfurter in “Rocky Horror”). But Andrew Beckett is a lawyer and he knows there are laws against discrimination (i.e. formulating opinions about others not based on their individual merits, but rather on their membership in a group with assumed characteristics.) Armed with that legal rationale, Andrew Beckett takes his former partners to court for unlawful termination.
This movie could have just been simply a court battle between Andrew Beckett and his former partners, but these forces are actually both antagonists in this story. The main character is the lawyer that represents Andrew Beckett, one Joe Miller (played by Denzel Washington.) I refer to him as the main character because Joe Miller is the person who changes during the story. The character of Joe Miller is not unlike the white racist sheriff in “In the Heat of the Night.” He starts off homophobic. He is afraid he may contract A.I.D.S. by shaking Andrew’s hand. He finds homosexual sex disgusting. In one scene, he gets especially angry when he is mistaken as gay in public because he has taken on Beckett’s case. But as a lawyer (and just maybe as an African American) he understands discrimination and as the story progresses, he not only comes to understand that was Andrew Beckett unlawfully terminated but that he too has engaged in it himself. He starts seeing this person not as a homosexual with A.I.D.S. but as a complex and decent person who just happens to be a homosexual. Spending time with people will do that. It’s only human.
Ellen, “The Puppy Episode” (1997)
Because of our society’s love affair of new technology, social change seems to happen quicker nowadays. This TV episode only happened four years after “Philadelphia,” but I include because it is one of those watershed moments where tolerance really started to pick up steam. After this aired, you started seeing gay characters in TV series and movies everywhere. It was no longer a problem anymore as far as Hollywood was concerned.
And I would argue that one of the biggest reasons is the type of person who started coming out around this time. These were not freaks like the creatures of “Rocky Horror Picture Show,” that cavorted in horror labs and mocked family and church. These weren’t even those that were publicly respected but had succumbed to a dreaded disease brought upon by engaging in secret lifestyles. This was an entirely different breed of public homosexual. In 1997 Ellen Degeneres came out twice. She came out as a lesbian in her personal life and as her TV character “Ellen” in the famous, “Puppy Episode.” (This move would eventually get her TV show cancelled and would put her out of work for three years.)
There is one striking thing that it is just too obvious to overlook about Ellen Degeneres. She is not a terrible person. She was a completely clean comedian. She never cursed, never was vulgar, and mainly joked in that Seinfeldesque vein of observational humor and quirky thoughts. Her show was strictly PG. And when she came out, she did it in a genuinely funny and nice way. She wasn’t angry with anybody. If you were homophobic, she seemed to go out of the way to hold your hand and guide you through it. It is one thing to say you don’t want Dr. Frankenfurter around your children, but how can you keep a straight face and say the same thing about Ellen.
Getting an honorable mention from this year is the Kevin Kline comedy, “In and Out.” I won’t say too much about it other than it too is about the coming out of a really nice character, a romantic literature professor. Here is my favorite scene in the movie.
Milk (2008) – Directed by Gus Van Sant
The first I ever heard of Harvey Milk, was a discussion in a criminology class about “The Twinkie Defense.” A lawyer from San Francisco claimed that his client, a man by the name of Dan White, was not responsible for the assassination of the Mayor of San Francisco and a city supervisor named Harvey Milk because he was hopped up on too much junk food. The jury may have agreed because they only gave Dan White a four-year prison term. That may seem odd to you. Dan White murdered two elected officials and received only four years from the jury.
Well maybe it would make more sense if I told you that Harvey Milk was the first openly gay public official ever elected in this country and more can be attributed to him for the successes of the early gay rights movement than any other public figure. The movie “Milk” chronicles the life of Harvey Milk (played by Sean Penn in an Oscar winning role) and is narrated by a lone Harvey Milk at his kitchen table giving a living will into a tape recorder in the event that he would be assassinated, which he eventually would be. This movie is more than just a great biopic though. It is also a great movie about American democracy, because it shows just how one man can use those great freedom loving tools, politics and capitalism, to change society.
Harvey Milk did not like how the street businesses in his community discriminated against his fellow homosexuals. So he made a list of all the gay-friendly businesses in town and all the not gay-friendly businesses in town. Then he networked with his community. He got everyone to stop buying things from businesses that were run by assholes. This works. Soon enough, the neighbor that gave Harvey Milk a less than polite welcome finds himself having to be polite in order to keep his business afloat. Milk then uses his existing network to do favors for other local forces like unions, newspapers, and political parties. He gains influence and runs for office. As an open homosexual, he introduces the topic in debates. He organizes protests and rallies to make the issue more visible. He goes across the state to such hostile places as Orange County to spread his sometimes very unwelcome message. He cleans up the epidemic of dog shit at the local park (Not a LGBT issue but still important to society). He is a great role model for those who would bring about how social change. He gets rid of his hippie beard and wears a suit. He often tells jokes to break the ice of with people he is attempting to recruit to his cause. And he is willing to work with other not-like minded people (for instance Dan White) on other issues they may agree on.
This movie holds a special place for me because it helped evolve my view on LGBT issues. Until I had seen it, gay marriage, was something that I considered none of my business. I felt I did not have to care about it one way or another. Then I saw a scene in this movie that really took me by surprise. Harvey Milk is having a birthday party at the capitol when Dan White shows up drunk. Dan White, who is not doing well politically at that point, goes up to Harvey Milk and claims that homosexuality is merely an issue that helps Milk get elected. And this is when I expected Harvey Milk to do the Ellen Degeneres thing and calmly and jokingly explain to Dan White that he is mistaken but it is okay because he understands where he is coming from. But Milk does not do that. Milk gets angry. He informs Dan that this is not an “issue.” “This is our lives we’re fighting for,” he says. Milk goes on to inform Dan that he has had two lovers in the past that he had to talk out of suicide (one more will actually go on to commit suicide before the movie is over.) He could not be more serious about the importance of what he is trying to accomplish.
The message to me was clear. It is not okay that you don’t understand or don’t care to understand or wish that the whole thing would just go away. The time for the apologetic friendliness of Ellen-types is over. Now is the time to finally realize that lives are being ruined. Life, that thing you only get one of. This is far more important than the semantics of what the word “marriage” means. Admittedly the Bible is against it. But then again the Bible believes in the power of witches and that the sun revolves around the Earth. Just because the Bible is wrong doesn’t mean that God doesn’t exist, it just means that the people who wrote the Bible lived in the goddamn Bronze Age. Gain some context, a little empathy, and grow the fuck up.
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