July 23, 2013

"Feeling nostalgic? Can’t get enough body hair? Want to experience the celluloid life pre-Stonewall?"

"Here’s our guide to some of the most notable (and gayest) old-school flicks from before the millennium."
These films may not be perfect. In fact, some are downright offensive by today’s standards. But they are all in some way groundbreaking for their time period and considered in sequence they provide a record of mainstream culture’s changing attitudes towards gay men.
It's nice to be in a place where these movies can be seen from a distance and even enjoyed. I was living in Greenwich Village where they were filming movie "Cruising" (circa 1980) and remember the protests. By then, the pushback was already strong, and it was embarrassing for Al Pacino to be involved in the project. Now, this weird old artifact of unhappier times can be watched for fun, apparently. I guess it depends on who you are and where you are on the that's-not-funny spectrum of human psychology, which might be gender-linked.