It’s Time to Play the Music…

After years of mounting expectation, overanalyzing every rumour and leaked tidbit of info on the web, die-hard fans finally got their chance to relive their childhoods. Some waited for hours outside the theatre in costumes or clutching beloved retro toys. The excitement was mixed with fear Would this new movie rekindle the magic of the original 1970’s-1980’s triad of films? Or would it be so disappointing that their love would turn to bitter hatred, forcing them back to the message boards to tear the new annoying characters to shreds.

We all know how it turned out for Star Wars fans in 1999 when the release of ‘The Phantom Menace’ “ruined their childhoods”, making George Lucas, once their idol, more despised than a Sith lord.

Jason Segel, the lovably goofy actor and screenwriter who took on the task of reviving the Muppet franchise, had reason to be nervous. Muppet fans, like their Star Wars equivalents, are paradoxically desperate for new films, yet stubbornly protective of the characters and their fictional world. Which Segel understands, as he’s one of the biggest Muppet fans of all.

The new Muppets movie (simply titled ‘The Muppets’) would not have happened without Segel’s nerdy persistence. After the success of his film ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’, Segel met with Disney, which owns the rights to the Muppets, and expressed interest in bringing Kermit, Miss Piggy and the whole gang back to the big screen.

As Segel tells it, Disney wasn’t overly enthused but left the door open, so, to goad them along, Segel hyped the film in interviews as though it was already in production.  Classic three- minute clips from ‘The Muppet Show’, random before ‘random’ was a thing, were tailor-made for Youtube. Disney decided to give it a shot.

The Muppets have been leaderless since Jim Henson, their creator and the source of their soul, died of an extremely rare bacterial infection in 1990. The Muppets were in three later feature films and several TV specials and appearances, but they lacked the zany spark that had made them household names in the late 1970’s. The characters worked best as underdogs; their Vaudevillian theatre on TV was always falling to pieces, and in the early movies they were often a ragtag group of performers who wanted to make it to Hollywood or Broadway to “make millions of people happy,” as Kermit put it.

But in the 1990’s and 2000’s, the characters were already a band of celebrities, inserted into Dickensian or pirate costumes for ‘A Muppet Christmas Carol’ and ‘Muppet Treasure Island,’ just like Mickey, Minnie and company. Fans knew the Muppets were drifting, directionless.

By handing over the Muppets to Segel, Disney gave the keys to the kingdom to a fan. What results is a film not just for and about Muppet fans, but one which symbolically recognizes and atones for the Muppets losing their way.

Muppet fandom is introduced early in ‘The Muppets’. We meet Gary (Segel) and his brother Walter, an adorable yellow Muppet with a face more expressive than most of the famous Muppets we’ll see later. (Perhaps this is why Kermit the Frog was destined to be the most famous Muppet. His flexible felt face shows far more emotional range than the more-structured heads of Miss Piggy and Gonzo.)

No explanation is given or needed for how a human could have a Muppet brother, but that doesn’t stop Walter from being bullied by kids and feeling left out. As they grow up, the brothers bond over late-night viewings of ‘The Muppet Show’. Seeing his own kind on TV makes Walter feel a little less out of place.

Gary and Walter live in a place called Smallville USA which, judging from the candy-coloured costumes and Norman Rockwell street scenes, appears to exist in the mythologized 1950’s. The classic Muppet movies borrowed nostalgic troupes from Old Hollywood (Miss Piggy tap dancing in an Art Deco restaurant worthy of Fred and Ginger in ‘The Great Muppet Caper’ comes to mind) but Smallville’s naiveté seems too deliberate and ironic to be appealing.

No matter. Walter, Gary and his fiancé Mary (Amy Adams) quickly catch the Greyhound to Los Angeles. Walter wants to see the “Muppet studios”, the supposed location of the original Muppet theatre. They find it derelict and vacant, the psychedelic-painted bus from ‘The Muppet Movie’ rusting on the lot. The empty lot becomes a metaphor for the characters and fans alike. The viewer is left to wonder if we abandoned the Muppets, or they abandoned us.

Walter sneaks into Kermit’s old office, which is treated with the awesome reverence of King Tut’s tomb. On the wall hang photographs of the frog with various celebrities, a prominent spot given to one of Kermit with a smiling Jim Henson. The implication is clear: without this soft-voiced, bearded man, the Muppets have been as forgotten as this cobwebbed old room.

While in the office, Walter overhears the plan of evil oil baron Tex Richman (Chris Cooper) who is notified by Statler and Waldorf that in a week’s time he can buy the theatre and tear it down to pump for oil. (Maybe Cooper’s character should have been a Wall Street banker, but that might have been a bit too political for Disney.)

The plot lays itself out as simply as any Mickey and Judy ‘backyard musical’. The whole gang reunites for one more show to save the theatre. Located in a Norma Desmond-type mansion, the frog leader is reluctant to get involved.

“I guess everybody kind of forgot about us,” Kermit says, and if that doesn’t bring a tear to your eye, his following song to paintings of Fozzie, The Swedish Chef and the Electric Mayhem Band definitely will.

It’s clear Segel is pandering to Muppet fans, but so what? Unlike fans of sulky teenage vampires and dreadlocked pirates, we never get pandered to.

Kermit comes on board, of course, and gets the old gang together, which leads to the movie’s funniest strings of jokes. The humour is obviously indebted to ‘The Simpsons’ and even ‘Family Guy’, with the sort of meta-movie jokes that peppered the original films. “May I suggest,” asks Kermit’s robot assistant, named Eighties Robot, “that to cut down on time, we resort to using a montage?”

Once reunited, our gang of furries faces another challenge. “I’m going to level with you,” Rashida Jones, as a TV producer tells them. “You guys aren’t famous anymore.” A “hard cynical time” needs “hard cynical entertainment,” she says, and shows a clip of the #1 show at the moment, ‘Hit My Teacher’. The Muppets are underdogs again, Kermit forced to give inspirational speeches about believing in oneself and “making people happy”.

Here an interesting split happens. While Walter, Gary and Mary are from idyllic Smallville and still sincerely love the Muppets, LA is apparently in the modern world, where people compulsively text message, Selena Gomez is a star and “hard, cynical entertainment” beats sentimentality to a pulp. Perhaps the Jason Segel sections of the movie would be more relatable if, rather than living in a camp ‘Leave it to Beaver’ fantasy, he and Walter resided in the real world and needed the fuzzy comfort of the Muppets to cheer them up.

As they repair and clean up the Muppet Theatre (“You guys are the Muppets,” Gary says, “You do stuff like this to music!”) we get reacquainted with a bunch of characters not seen since the end of the Muppet Show. Muppet nerds like myself will be pleased to spot crooners Wayne and Wanda, the Beautiful Day Monster and the gigantic blue Thog. You can picture Segel stamping his foot and telling  the Henson company, “No, no, no! I don’t want any new ones! I want all the old, weird monsters that used to be on the show!”

Turns out that the “standard Rich and Famous contract” Kermit signed in The Muppet Movie (for Orson Welles no less) releases ownership not just of the Muppet Theatre, but of the Muppet name itself, which Tex Richman intends to sell to the Muppet tribute band ‘The Moopets’. How hilarious that, in a film produced by Disney, the greedy villain wants to acquire the Muppet name and use it for his own purposes.

Miss Piggy, who at first holds out from the reunion (she’s a big time fashion editor in Paris), eventually returns, complete with Zac Posen outfits and a different hairstyle for every scene. She and Kermit, all their differences resolved, reunite on stage for the finale.

The songs, written by Flight of the Conchords’ Bret Mackenzie, are serviceable, but how can they compete with ‘Moving Right Along’, ‘Together Again’ and ‘The Rainbow Connection’.

The highlight of the new show is Camilla the Chicken singing, or rather clucking, Cee-Lo’s ‘Fuck You’ in showgirls’ feathered headdresses. Catchy, unaccountably funny and with the right level of “WTF?!” randomness, it’s just the kind of number that made the original Muppet Show popular.

For a movie tasked with paying tribute to the original TV series and movies, acknowledging the gap in years and popularity, and reviving the brand with spunky humour and a fresh take, it’s impressive the film doesn’t collapse under its own weight. Rather, it’s as light as a marionette. The audience I was part of was thrilled.

Having captured the viewers and paid tribute to the Muppet fans and creators alike, Segel could move in new directions with a sequel. ‘The Muppets’ could be the start of a new era for Kermit and company. But the film also works as a coda, a fitting farewell to cherished characters who, like Henson, have a “gentle soul and a wicked sense of humour.”

Private Parts

“There are no second acts in American lives,” F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said, although recent years have provided a number of exceptions. Figures as varied as Al Gore (former V.P. and failed presidential candidate, now international environmentalist icon), Steve Jobs (Apple founder, then Apple exile, then Apple savior) and Rosie O’Donnell (interrupting her sporadic career as a bubbly daytime TV host with bouts of angry activism) all demonstrate why the obsessives who update Wikipedia biographies get so little sleep.

And while an actor would love to get a regular part on a beloved, long-running TV series, it is a mixed blessing: with fame and financial security comes the straightjacket of being trapped in a specific character in the public’s mind. While Kramer, Niles and Phoebe may now exist only in reruns, they cast long shadows on the careers of Michael Richards, David Hyde Peirce and Lisa Kudrow.

It’s probably why Sarah Jessica Parker, who had an interesting if not A-list movie career as a young character actress prior to ‘Sex and the City’, has had a difficult time since taking off her Carrie Bradshaw shoes. In her latest film ‘I Don’t Know How She Does It’ she played a financial advisor who was also a mother, two positions very difficult to imagine Sarah Jessica/Carrie filling.

But, as the giant ‘Sex and the City’ nerd that I am, I only want the best for those ladies. So when I first spotted the fabulously art deco posters for a revival of Noël Coward’s ‘Private Lives’ starring Kim Cattrall (alongside ‘Due South’s Paul Gross), I felt it my duty to attend.

I should admit, though, that, unlike a lot of gay boys out there, Cattrall’s Samantha was never my favourite. I related to Carrie’s romantic yearning and idealism about how life should be (as well as her occasional incoherent incompetence) and cheered on Cynthia Nixon’s Miranda as she provided the show’s feminist voice and demonstrated that beneath toughness can be insecurity. But the cartooniness of Samantha (her porno situations, her over-acted orgasms, the garishly bright colours of her outfits) seemed to personify the worst things people thought about the show.

But my Mother (yes, my Mom and I stay up late watching old ‘Sex and the City’ episodes together), noted an occasional softness in Cattrall’s performance. As the oldest character she suggested a wisdom and far-sightedness the other ladies’ in-the-moment reactions lacked.

When I bought tickets to ‘Private Lives’ for the two of us online, my Mom made me paranoid that Cattrall might sit out some performances. While I understand that every actor needs an understudy and that ‘the show must go on’, as the date of the performance drew nearer, I feared that little piece of paper stuck in the program which would inform us that “Sitting in for Ms. Cattrall…”

There’s the paradox of it: while I support Kim Cattrall moving on with her career and playing different parts, I, like many people at the theatre, bought tickets because I was familiar with her from TV. She could win the Nobel Peace Prize and in the first paragraph of the news story would be the sentence, “best known for her role as Samantha Jones on ‘Sex and the City’…”

The rain was pouring down as people crowded under the illuminated marquee of the Royal Alexander theatre. As we stood in the lobby, Mom in a scarf and me in a bow tie (my nod to the fashions of the 1930’s), we flipped though our programs.

“Oh no,” Mom said, discovering a little slip of white paper.

“At this performance,” it read, “due to the indisposition of Paul Gross the role of Elyot will be performed by Gareth Clarke.”

I audibly sighed. “Thank goodness it was just him,” I said.

“I’m disappointed,” my Mom said. “I wanted to see Paul Gross.”

The play itself is a painfully witty and sophisticated concoction, at once as classic and of its time as a 1930’s martini glass. It begins on a luxurious hotel terrace in Deauville, France. Two couples are celebrating their honeymoons next door to each other. The audience learns that the wife of one pair, Amanda (Cattrall), and the husband of the other, Elyot (not Paul Gross), were not only both married before, but married to each other. When they discover one another what follows is one of the funniest exchanges of awkwardness and mounting anger ever put on the stage, and it reminds one how much sitcoms owe to their drawing room comedy forebears.

Most of the past revivals of ‘Private Lives’ have stuck to the dry, deadpan delivery of Gertrude Lawrence and Noël Coward in the original production. (Norma Shearer and Robert Montgomery even based their performances for the 1931 film version on a recording of that show.)

Cattrall delivers her lines both broader and more realistically, speeding up when she’s upset and occasionally dropping into a demonic shriek when muttering something nasty. Her voice, which sometimes sounded stagey on ‘Sex and the City’, fits nicely with a British accent. (Cattrall was born in England, but grew up in British Columbia.)

It must be noted that Cattrall, who’s playing a part she’s twenty years older than, looks beautiful and incredibly youthful on stage. Although she spends much of the play in dressing gowns, when she steps out in a bias-cut gold evening column, you could almost hear the audience gasp.

And since we’ve admitted and accepted that Kim Cattrall will never fully escape Samantha Jones, what is it like to hear Coward’s sophisticated lines (“Extraordinary how potent cheap music is”) coming from the mouth which once declared, “My boyfriend has the funkiest-tasting spunk”?

With Cattrall in the role, we can better see Elyot and Amanda for their modern hedonism, contrasting with the boring traditionalism of their new spouses. Elyot has a speech defending treating life “flippantly”, which could almost be a founding manifesto of Camp, and Amanda keeps up with her desires to be “wild”. Dare I even suggest that there are some proto-Samantha lines, such as when Elyot claims it’s natural for women to have less affairs and Amanda shoots back, “It’s useful for men for women to have less affairs!”

As they took their bows, Cattrall grabbed Clarke’s hand and allowed the cast and audience to give him a special round of applause, to which he humbly nodded. As a survivor of stage and screen, she knows that, as difficult as it is to be in the shadow of a TV character, for an understudy to emerge from the shadow of the absent star is even harder.

Jessica Rabbit

I love this photo of a Barnum and Bailey circus performer in 1946. Isn’t she pretty? And her fur is as sweet as cotton candy. It reminds me of a photoshoot you’ll see in the upcoming WORN Fashion Journal No. 13. There’s more pics like these, and many others of equal interest, on the How To Be Retronaut blog. I have been wasting a lot of time there.

Hey McFly!

Read my post about Marty McFly’s awesome shoes in ‘Back to the Future II’ on the WORN blog. Great Scot!

“Constructed truth; very much in vogue these days. Construction workers too.”

– James McCourt, Queer Street 

Happy, Happy Turkey Day

The film makers of the Addams Family movies had a difficult task; how to keep the spirit of the original 1960’s sitcom, which was inspired by Charles Addams’ macabre cartoons for The New Yorker, while moving past the one-joke premise (“They’re creepy and they’re kooky…” the cartoony theme chimed.)

Their solution was brilliant. They simply rotated the perspective. So while the 1990’s versions of Gomez, Morticia, Uncle Fester and the rest of the clan were still “creepy and kooky”, they were the ones we related to. They were a foil for mocking the superficiality and latent racism of conformist, suburban, Republican America.

Even the title of the sequel, ‘Addams Family Values’, subverts a conservative catch phrase, while acknowledging that the family, despite their ghoulishness, does actually have values; Gomez and Morticia are lustily devoted to each other; the Addamses promote family pride and tradition; Wednesday and Pugsley enjoy playing together, albeit at killing one other.

The Addams Family as stand-ins for society’s outcasts is never made more clear than in the Thanksgiving scene in the sequel. Wednesday and Pugsley are sent to the conformist Camp Chippewa, where the Fascistically cheerful counselors force them to play sports, watch ‘The Sound of Music’ and take part in the end of session play, which commemorates the first Thanksgiving despite it being late summer. All of the rich, blonde, rhinoplastied kids get to be the pilgrims. All of the Jewish, black, middle-eastern, overweight, bespectacled and children with disabilities are cast as the Indians, with Wednesday as their leader, Pochahontas.

When Christina Ricci commits her sweet revenge (the likes of which hadn’t been seen on film since Carrie was crowned Prom Queen) she is acting for everyone who ever felt like the underdog. For this reason, the Addams Family can be seen as ‘queer’ while featuring no homosexuality, although I have my suspicions about Wednesday.

‘A Lady Is A Lady, After All’

At the WORN office the other day we were talking movies, like we do, and the much-maligned ‘Sex and the City 2’ came up.

“It is literally the worst movie ever made,” one of the Wornettes claimed.

“No,” I sighed. “It is not literally the worst movie ever made.”

My objection came less from loyalty to Carrie and company and more from my problem with the continued watering down of the word ‘literally’. It does not mean ‘really’. ‘Literally’ literally means literally. That’s all.

Sure, you may balk at ‘Sex and the City 2’s materialism, it’s stiletto-heel-thin plot line and its treatment of an Arab country as an exotic backdrop for frothy fun, but are the shadows of the camera men visible? Does the story, unbelievable as it may be, at least make logical sense? You may not be laughing at the jokes, but at least you’re not laughing at the serious dialogue.

There are hundreds of films worse than ‘Sex and the City 2’.

Literally.

Two movies, both alike in indignity, in Fair Hollywood where we lay our scene: ‘Glen or Glenda’ (1953) or ‘Myra Breckinridge’ (1970).

On the surface, the pair would seem to have little in common: one was a low-budget exploitation flick to titillate drive-in audiences in the conservative fifties; the other, a would-be blockbuster from a major studio, based on a best-selling book, staring a sex symbol and a couple of fossilized Hollywood legends.

But the two films, which both deal with cross-dressing and gender confusion (albeit, making opposite points), have more in common than just their inanity. ‘Glen or Glenda’ and ‘Myra Breckinridge’ redefine what it means to be bad. And the stories of how they were made are as interesting as what ended up on screen.

In the early 1950’s, inspired by the public’s interest in Christine Jorgensen, the first person to make news for having sex reassignment surgery, B-movie producers rushed to get sex change movies into the theatres while the story was still hot. Ed Wood, the unknown scriptwriter with no previous film directing experience, pushed his way in to direct what was then called ‘I Changed My Sex’. Along with wanting to be a legitimate director, Wood had a secret motivation: he was a secret cross-dresser and wanted to show the world that that was no great sin.

The resulting film, which is one part preachy public service announcement and one part coked-out nightmare of devils, vampires and sadomasochistic porno, must be seen to be believed. Wood stars as a regular, all-American guy named Glen (the narration makes a big deal that his character is heterosexual) who happens to feel comfortable in women’s clothing. Playing his oblivious fiancé was Dolores Fuller, Wood’s real life girlfriend who, in an incredible bit of art imitating life, didn’t know about Wood’s cross dressing while making the film.

In Tim Burton’s loving tribute movie ‘Ed Wood’ (1994) she is played by Sarah Jessica Parker, a reminder that she once had a successful film career.

Hovering above the action is Bella Lugosi, the original Dracula, who by this point was a drug addict and un-hirable. Wood befriended him and gave him the part of ‘The Scientist’, a would-be narrator who doesn’t narrate so much as sit in an armchair and yell, through his Hungarian accent, insane things like “Pull the strings!” and “Beware of the big, green dragon that sits on your doorstep. He eats little boys, puppy dog tails and big, fat snails.”

At the end of the movie, Glen confesses to his fiancé that he enjoys wearing women’s clothing and she, after a pregnant pause, (spoiler alert!) hands over her angora sweater. One can only imagine all the thoughts which went through the producers’ heads when Wood dropped off the film roll, but we know at least two complaints: the film was too short and featured no sex change operation. They had ordered a movie to cash in on people’s interested in (what was then considered) a freakish operation. Wood had given them the opposite: a movie about a normal guy who just happens to like angora sweaters.

“Glen is not a homosexual,” the narrator intones. “Glen is a transvestite, but he is not a homosexual.” This line is delivered as the viewer is shown shady men, presumably gays, lighting cigarettes for each other under street lights. One of the greatest ironies of ‘Glen or Glenda’ is that, fifty years later, homosexuals are winning the PR war, while straight men who cross-dress (not transgendered people) are as little talked about and understood as they were in the 1950’s.

To fill up the rest of the movie, they tacked on a second plot (‘Alan or Anne’) which featured a sex change operation, and an extended fantasy sequence with women writhing around on sofas in their underwear. By the time Bella Lugosi’s is cross-cut, supposedly reacting to the sexy ladies with arched upside-down ‘V’ eyebrows and pursed lips, my friend Jeremy and I were laughing so much we had pause the DVD.

Which leads to an interesting conundrum: the movie is undoubtedly horrible, but if you get so much pleasure from it that you are practically crying with laughter, should it really be considered bad?

‘Glen or Glenda’, though bizarre, is watchable. ‘Myra Breckinridge’ is not.

Based on the slim but engrossing novel by Gore Vidal, ‘Myra’ was 20^th Century Fox’s attempt to tape into the Swinging Sixties youth market. But by 1970, when the film came out, the killings at Altamont and the Charles Manson murders had cost the flower children some of their bloom. But that was only the beginning of problems for this cursed production.

The book told the story of Myra, a knock-out beauty who is obsessed with old movies (she alleges that the entire range of human emotions was filmed by Hollywood between 1935 and 1945) and who is on a mission to exterminate the traditional male. She claims to be the widow of an effeminate man named Myron and blackmails his uncle, a former cowboy film star, into hiring her as a teacher at his mediocre acting school. Myra takes an interest in a hunky student named Rusty, graphically penetrating him in the climax scene. By the end (spoiler alert!) we discover the beautiful Myra is actually Myron after a sex change.

It seemed to everyone that the plot was unfilmable, but one of the most frustrating things about the making of ‘Myra Breckinridge’ is the movie that could have been. Gore Vidal wrote the first toned-down screen treatment, which was promptly rejected by the studio for being too conservative. Vidal disassociated himself from the production and has said bitchy things about it ever since.

There was also talk of getting legendary director George Cukor (who, in the 1930’s and 1940’s, made the type of movies the character Myra cherishes). Instead, Fox hired Michael Sarne, a novelty song-writer and occasional actor from England with one film credit to his name. Fox wanted a director who wouldn’t follow established rules; Sarne wouldn’t even follow the elementary rules of movie making.

Until you submit yourself to ‘Myra’, in which entire scenes are incomprehensible and seemingly pointless, you don’t know bad movies.

Although he auditioned drag queens and transgendered actors for the lead, Sarne eventually approached sex symbol Raquel Welch, who was eager to be taken seriously as an actor. Although I admire her chutzpah, why Welch ever thought playing a former-man who rattles on about Tarzan films and rapes people would make her a legitimate actor God only knows.

Wearing brightly-coloured, 1940’s inspired outfits with matching hats (looking like some whacked-out drag version of Joan Crawford), Welch digs into the role with energetic gusto. You can sense her desperation for this to be a good picture just below the surface, and hers is the only performance which matches the cartoony camp-ness of the film.

In a smaller part, Sarne coaxed Mae West, queen of the suggestive double entrendre, out of retirement. West, of famous lines like “Is that a rifle in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”, was the original Samantha Jones. In her seventies and blanketed in black and white Edith Head gowns and a high-piled blonde wig, West delivers her dirty jokes in the exact way she did in her twenties (in the ‘20s!). She was fanatically jealous of Welch, and legends abound of her stealing her costumes and refusing to share a scene with her.

Everybody on set was on edge. Nobody trusted anyone. They began shooting before the script was finished and Welch ran to her dressing room in tears, perhaps sensing the train wreck she had attached her career too. Sarne would spend hours tinkering with the props for unimportant scenes, or would disappear to “think” about his next step. A heavy haze of marijuana smoke engulfed the lot.

Sarne became convinced that the studio was going to take the film away from him. Remarkably, they didn’t, even though they probably should have.

Fox even allowed the director full access to their archives, so to punctuate certain scenes Sarne inserted old clips of Laurel and Hardy, Mareline Dietrich and Judy Garland. At the climax of a scene featuring a blow job, he placed a clip of little Shirely Temple milking a cow and getting sprayed in the face. This clip got an especially warm reception from the test screening in San Francisco, but a letter was sent from the White House on behalf of Ms. Temple (who was an ambassador) and the scene was pulled.

One wonders what the character of Myra would have thought of Sarne sullying classic movie clips and Old Hollywood actors by using them to make dirty visual puns.

Obliviously buoyed by the good reception in San Francisco (studio execs had not yet realized that the taste of gay men wasn’t always the same as the taste of the mainstream), the film makers began to think that, despite all the drama that had gone into its making, they might remarkably have a hit on their hands.

“About as funny as a child molester,” cried the most famous review. Although curiosity spurred some early attendees, ticket sales plummeted soon after ‘Myra’ opened, and took purchases of the book down with them. Everyone involved allowed Sarne to take the blame and, having become a leper in Hollywood, he went back to England.

I’m most sympathetic towards Welch, who wanted so much from this movie and got so little. Her career survived (although she never became the acclaimed actor she wanted to be), but she did get to do a duet with Miss Piggy. Interviewed for the DVD release, looking remarkably similar to have she did in the 1970’s, Welch is candid and self-effacing about the disaster which was ‘Myra’.

Interestingly, ‘Glen or Glenda’, made during the red-baiting early 1950’s, is the film which argues that people who cross dress are just like everyone else. Although a satire, the cross-dressing character in ‘Myra Breckinridge’ is as large a threat to tradition, normalcy and the manhood of everyday blokes as conservatives would fear. Glen may wear angora because he likes the feel, but Myra pulls on pumps to start revolution.

You could claim that certain aspects of ‘Myra Breckinridge’ were ahead of its time, like the recycling of old movie clips and the movie’s proto-post-modern editing. Its mixture of the elevation of the frivolous (Myra’s love of old movies and retro fashions) with its questioning of the traditional male foretold the creation of Queer Studies, which would combine these disparate ideas. ‘Myra’, of course, has garnered a cult following. For a movie as bizarre as this one, it would be surprising if it didn’t.

But ‘Myra’ is bad. It’s a bad film. While ‘Glen or Glenda’ is unintentionally hilarious and ‘Myra’ is a terrible movie.

Remember it next time you’re ready to judge Kim Cattrall purring “Lawrence of my labia” in the desert.

The Man That Got Away

Late August, 2010. Rushing, I changed my shirt and my deodorant in the bathroom at work. After an eight-hour shift, I was meeting up with a guy from an internet dating site. We shall call him Scott. I had recently been broken up with in an email by the man who I ironically nicknamed the Gentleman. I was emotionally vulnerable, but wanted to get back in the game. No matter what I’ve been through with men, no matter how disastrous my heartbreaks, I’ve always been willing to try again.

I met Scott at Pauper’s Pub on Bloor Street. He was adorable, with curly red hair and a boyish smile. We talked about the Muppets, Joan Crawford and Canadian politics. Our first disagreement was about Michael Ignatieff.

“I actually like Ignatieff,” he claimed.

“Isn’t he just the worst example of a pompous, other-worldly academic who…”

“Okay. I lied. I agree with you.” He laughed.

“What a classic Liberal you are!”

It was the best first date of my life, made better when he agree to come back to my place. We cuddled in my bed and then began to kiss. Overjoyed, I blurted out, “I’m so relieved you’re kissing me!”

“Um,” he started. “What are you looking for right now?”

“What?” I asked, moving away from him. “What are you looking for right now?”

“Nothing serious. I’m still getting over my ex.”

It was like the bomb was going off slowly. In denial, I tried to curtail the unpreventable. “Okay. Scott, this is a first date. It’s going very well, and I want to have a second, but we just met.”

“I think I might have to leave it with one night.”

“Oh…”

We lay in silence for some minutes.

“Scott, do you really think you’re going to meet another guy who wants to talk about the Muppets, Joan Crawford and Canadian politics?”

“Probably not…”

“Listen, it’s okay to go slow. I also have an ex who broke my heart. But you take it day by day…”

Then he began to cry.

He slept in the spare bedroom. The next day, he sent me an email which gave the excuse, “I think we both had too much to drink.” I never saw him again.

 

Late August, 2011. I rushed from work to meet Derrick. Having sworn off dating websites, I had met him on facebook when he ‘liked’ a status of mine. (My status updates are kind of a big deal.) I met him at Pauper’s Pub and he was even cuter than I expected. If you had written a list of features Max likes, you would check off every one: big dark eyes, check; scruffy beard, check; a face which would be intimidating in its handsomeness were its owner not so bashful, check! He had an easy going nature and an admirable community-building job to boot.

We talked about ‘Sesame Street’, Liza Minnelli and American politics. He stared intensely and a couple times openly mentioned that he was interested in me. I liked the Max I saw reflected in his eyes.

He offered to walk me home, and half way there (“Okay, Max, you do not live ‘right by’ Ossington Station!”) we both had to pee, which provided a good excuse to get him upstairs.

“I love your room!” he exclaimed, scanning the walls of all my Edward Gorey, Barack Obama and Vogue pictures. I fidgeted around, excusing the clutter, babbling on. I sat beside him on the bed to show him a book and was interrupted by him kissing me. It was nice kissing.

And this time I was determined to keep my mouth shut. Er, what I mean is, I was not going to say anything to provoke a scary “what do you want” conversation. We made out for ten minutes and he murmured my name softly. No one had ever done that before.

“Max,” he said, looking down on me with a smile, “Have I told you about the difficulty in dating me.”

“What?”

“Oh…”

“What is it!” I demanded, sitting straight up.

“I don’t do monogamy.”

Ba-boom.

“Okay…”

“I just can’t close myself to experiences with anybody right now.”

“Right now…?”

“Or ever, I guess. Although I think I will find a special person to share my life with, I always want to be free to explore others sexually.”

“I see.”

“Are you all right?”

“Why is there always another shoe?” I asked the universe more than him.

“You’re not all right.”

One year after I met Scott, another ‘perfect’ man and I lay in silence. I could have thrown a hissy fit and kicked him out of my house. But what would I gain from that? I didn’t want a repeat of last summer. I didn’t want to lose him before getting to know him. How many guys out there want to discuss ‘Sesame Street’, Liza Minnelli and American politics?

“Maybe I shouldn’t have come,” Derrick said.

“Can you do me a favour?” I asked. “All my dating life people have made decisions without me. Can we just hold out on figuring this out?”

“Yes,” he answered. I kissed him. “I’m so glad you’re kissing me,” he said.

“I have one more question: do you think we might have something really special.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Okay, that’s all you need to say right now.”

It was dawn before we fell asleep.

The next day brought no more clarity. He rode with me on the subway as I went downtown for Jack Layton’s memorial. I told him I was going to my cottage for a week and a half.

“So I guess, if I’m lucky, I’ll see you in a week and a half…?”

He kissed me goodbye at the platform.

The getaway to Lake Simcoe was well timed: I didn’t take my lap top; I watched Indiana Jones movies and read P.G. Wodehouse and P.D. James (who I kind of thought were the same person until I bought paperbacks by both); I thought things over.

During day light, laying in the hammock or going for muddy walks, I’d think, ‘It’s not a big deal. Normally, You wouldn’t ask for exclusivity after a first date. He admitted you have something special and maybe he’ll adapt. He’s the best guy you’ve met in a really long time.’

At night, though, the demons of doubt would come: ‘Max, are you nuts? This guy was willing to jeopardize it on your first date? Non-monogamy is that important to him! What do you think is going to happen? He’s going to change for you, like the end of a romantic comedy? End it with him on facebook tomorrow!’

I should add that I support people’s right to have whatever kind of relationship they chose. The queer community has always pioneered different ways of loving and I admire that…in theory. But polyamory is not for me. I find it emotionally icky.

A drama-free open relationship, like visible abdominal muscles, is a myth of the gay community.

So I was left with a complex Catch 22. Start the conversation soon but risk ending it and always wondering what could have been, or give it time and wait for Derrick to fall in love so that he’d be open to compromise, but risk getting even more hurt.

I succumbed and borrowed my Mom’s laptop and snuck over to our neighbours’ log cabin to use their internet.

I had a message from Derrick: “Is it weird that I already miss you?”

“No weirder than me using my Mom’s laptop and our neighbours’ internet connection to check and see if you’d written me,” I typed.

 

Our second date went well. We rented ‘Burlesque’ and drank a lot of red wine. We managed to not bring up the pink elephant and, more surprising, I didn’t worry about it.

On our third date, I wasn’t so lucky. We were at an art event in Parkdale and Derrick started telling a supposedly funny story about going to “one of” his lover’s parties, an anniversary for him and his partner. Derrick, unknowing of whether the partner understood how close they were, got up to the open mic and told embarrassing stories about the lover. Afterwards, the partner gave him a hug of recognition.

Beyond becoming instantly jealous (Was this a current lover?) I asked myself if I actually wanted to be with someone who was so comfortable being the other man. I want to be part of a committed partnership, but not one in which our younger lovers come to our anniversary parties. With the seed planted in my mind, for the rest of the evening when he mentioned a boyfriend I couldn’t avoid thinking ‘Past or present?’

The next morning, I was so wracked with unease I almost made myself sick from worrying. Oblivious, he cuddled me.

Derrick and I didn’t talk for a week, but he continued to comment on everything I put on facebook. Perhaps I was postponing the conversation (which, despite my best efforts, I still thought of as an ultimatum) because I was hoping something would change.

One night in bed he had said to me, “Do you know how hard it is to meet nice, cute guys who are good conversationalists and good kissers?”

“Yes, I do.”

He surprised me by showing up at the Word on the Street festival. I was tired from being there all day at the WORN table and a little ill from too many sweet potato fries. My heart sunk when I realized I’d have to have the talk with him then.

“You look really hot today,” he said. My heart entered my stomach.

We went for a walk on the UofT campus. Although I could barely make eye contact with him, once I started, everything I had been worried about spilled out.

“I like you more than I’ve liked a guy in a long time. You’re incredible. I probably should have brought this up earlier, but I didn’t want to lose you before we had a chance to get to know each other. You were honest with me about monogamy on our first date, but I also let you know how I felt about your position. If I wasn’t more clear, it’s only because I liked you so much. If you had treated me less romantically, like a casual friend with benefits, maybe I wouldn’t be feeling this way. But I can’t fall in love with someone who wants to sleep with other people.”

We sat down on a grassy knoll in Philosopher’s Walk.

“Derrick, don’t make me ask the question you know I need to ask.”

“I like you a lot,” he finally sighed. “And I don’t treat anybody else the way I treat you. You are amazing and I think we have something special. But I can’t promise anybody monogamy.”

“Can’t promise monogamy?”

“You’re right, that’s bad wording. I don’t want monogamy.”

I told him the joke that had been brewing in my head for three weeks: “I can make you this deal: we can date other people after we break up.” He smiled weakly. I said, “Can I ask why?”

“I want to experience my friends and people I may meet in a lot of different ways, including sexually. I told you, I can’t close myself to good experiences.”

“Thing is, Derrick, you’re closing yourself to me right now. What about when you meet that special someone, you still want to be open?”

“Yeah. It’s something I’m always going to want.”

“Well,” I said. “I think that’s selfish. Being with someone, loving someone, sometimes means giving up stuff which would hurt them.”

He didn’t respond.

“Hasn’t this happen to you before?”

“Not really. I’ve had boyfriends, it’s just always ended over something else.”

“You’ve been lucky.”

“Yeah, I’ve been told that,” he said.

“This sucks,” I said.

“Can we at least be friends?”

I shook my head. “I don’t stay friends with exes. Most of my exes have hurt me too much.”

“You’re breaking up with me, Max.” I needed to hear the words come out of his mouth to actually believe it. “I’m going to really miss you. It makes me sad.”

“It makes me sad too.”

We got up and walked to the subway, mostly in silence. “Any extra time I can spend with you,” he said, wistfully. He stopped to pick up some smooth chestnuts and I almost started crying when he tried to give me one.

“Derrick, please, no…”

Outside the subway station he asked if he could invite me to his birthday party in December.

“No. I’m always going to wish I was your boyfriend.”

“Are you even going to delete me off facebook?”

“I don’t know. I’m going to go.” We hugged. It was tight and lengthy. “Listen, this sounds weird,” I whispered in his ear. “But I sort of love you.”

“Not weird at all,” he said, tears coming to his eyes.

“Please don’t message me. I’ll email you if I want to.”

“Okay,” he said.

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

I walked all the way home.

 

Postscript: That first evening, I grew angry that he hadn’t budged in his position. He didn’t waver about the non-monogamy in any way, wasn’t even tempted to try to stay with me. But soon I realized that this also showed that I did the right thing. We would have fought about it eventually and the break up would have been even harder.

I also realized that I was just as stubborn as him.

But the difference is that I’ve been a push over with guys in the past. The Max of four years ago might have stayed with him longer, or changed his mind mid-break up. The silver lining of this whole mini-romance is seeing plainly that I know who I am and can put myself first. Offered a relationship with a beautiful and wonderful guy, but one who would hurt me, I chose to be single.

And the freedom of choice is a wonderful thing.

Dancing With Myself

The stereotype that gay men are good dancers, along with the idea we’re better dressers, can be alleviated after one night at a gay bar. What gay men are good at is dancing by themselves, swaying and gyrating to get the attention of other guys (that is the purpose of gay fashions as well).

Although I am not a particularly un-awkward person, I can do this kind of dancing adequately, if not spectacularly. My brother and I both have a pretty good sense of rhythm, inherited from we know not where. But I still met the invitation from my co-worker Rain to be her partner for a ‘blues dancing’ workshop with hesitation.

Rain is the coffee roaster at my café. She is knowledgeable about the different beans and coffee-growing regions and can answer inane questions (“Which coffee is the best?”) with a level of professionalism I sometimes fail at. She also pasts Captain Picard stickers by her work station and her uniform’s white shirts and black pants just barely conceal her tattoos.

She wanted to do more fun things in the city, found the ‘blues dancing’ event online and wanted someone to dance with. Wanting to say ‘Yes’ to life, I eventually agreed to go. A gay guy and straight girl going to dancing lessons together seemed like a cute concept from a late 1990’s romantic comedy.

So one evening I ventured east past Dundas Square to a neighbourhood which wouldn’t seem unusual on a CTV crime drama. The dance studio, which was up a flight of stairs, looked exactly how you’d expect a dance studio to look, with large windows on two sides and beautiful hard wood floors. As is my habit, I came twenty minutes early and shyly padded around in my socks watching the others arrived. I was very relieved when Rain showed up.

As we gathered in a circle, I noted that the 15 or so assembled dancers were a good mix of ages and ethnicities. The instructors stood in the middle and introduced allegedly simple steps. ‘Blues dancing’ it turned out was like swing dancing, but slower and sexier. And a lot of it relied on the male leading his female partner.

This was my first problem.

Because there were more men than women present (question mark, exclamation mark) we were told to stand in two circles, males on the outside, females on the inside, and rotate every three minutes. This meant that, when we were trying to learn the moves, we were essentially starting from scratch with a different person every 180 seconds.

‘I wanted to dance with Rain!’ I thought petulantly. ‘That’s what I signed up for.’

Instead, I had a different female partner every couple of minutes, and where I placed my hand on their sides never seemed to be the exact right spot. Whether they were experienced dancers (in which they would help me out, with varying levels of patience) or newbies like myself, all the women expected me to lead.

“Sorry,” I would fluster, trying to brush off my clumsiness with self-effacing charm. “I don’t really know what I’m doing…”

“Well, it’s up to you. You’re leading…” some of the women would say, staring blankly at me.

“Listen,” I felt like snapping back, “I’m gay. I opted out of your heteronormative dancing binaries a long time ago!”

A little bit of history: because it was illegal for men to dance with each other, gay men in the 1950’s and 1960’s developed a form of dancing which upended the couple-based one which had dominated from Jane Austen line-dancing to the waltz to swing. (In some places, it was even illegal for men to go onto the dance floor until at least one woman was on it, so sometimes a brave, lone woman would dance with a gay guy so all the other men could start. I salute these proto-fag hags.)

What’s interesting is that, as lesbians and gays gained wider social acceptance, we didn’t dance more like straight people. Instead, it went the other way around, as straight people danced more and more like us.

A number of factors killed couples dancing, like the change in rock over the 1960’s and the popularity of disco in the 1970’s. But even after the swing revival of recent years, at any given club you’ll see people, particularly women, dancing with themselves or in little circles with their friends.

The days when the proverbial wallflower sat on the sidelines, her wilting corsage reflecting her waning hope, waiting for a man to ask her to dance are long gone. Good riddance.

After what felt like forever, I was reunited with Rain.

“How’s it going?” she asked.

“I don’t know what I’m doing!” I whined. “Just because I’m a man doesn’t mean I know how to lead. I wanted to dance with you. ”

“Well, now’s our chance.”

“Will you lead?” I asked.

“I would love to,” she answered.

Seasons Change, So Do Cities

 

The last episode of ‘Sex and the City’s fourth season, titled ‘I Heart NY’, was filmed in August 2001 but not aired until the next spring. Viewers were shocked at the prescience of the last few minutes, in which Carrie feels nostalgic and a bit melancholy because Mr. Big has moved to California. Completely by accident, the show’s creators produced a season finale that reflected some of the feelings of 9/11 without having anything to do with 9/11. I have often re-watched it during times when I felt like my life was about to start a new chapter.

“After all, seasons change. So do cities. People come into your life and people go. But it’s comforting to know, the ones you love are always in your heart and if you’re very lucky, a plane ride away.”