Cranky Lesbian

Look what the homosexuals have done to me!

Tag: Movies Page 1 of 5

A Heritage of Infamy: Pulp Art and Movie Posters

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On October 14, 2022

In Crass Consumerism

A sapphically-oriented guest bedroom nook.

It’s been a hectic week here, with my wife wrapping up a grant as I’ve prepared for company. When your homophobic in-laws are coming to inspect your new-ish digs for the first time, you want to pull out all the stops, which in my case meant framing some old gay pulp fiction paperback art for their viewing displeasure. Guest bedroom window nooks are now home to Daughters of Sappho (“A Heritage of Infamy!”) and Lesbian Queen (“Crowned campus queen, she chose to rule a small, hot female realm of off-beat lust”).

There are male-centric prints (like Gay Cruise) in the room currently serving as our gym, and of course men were the centerpieces of the pulp art in my previous home, where Hot Pants Homo was framed on the refrigerator alongside a dramatic photo of Jane Bowles. The Hot Pants Homo tagline is a doozy: “Women lusted after this handsome, virile jazzman… It took him years of agony to realize he wanted a man.” Wherever we live, the guest bathroom’s the same, featuring a large Gay Traders, a soapy visual feast where the naked women seem like more of a group-shower afterthought. “The trouble with swap is where to stop!” it warns. Who knows what the plumber thinks we’re up to.

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Rue McClanahan Plans a Wedding and a Funeral in Mother of the Bride

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On December 29, 2021

In TV Movies

The ever-expanding Becker-Hix family in Mother of the Bride.

What a whirlwind of a week it has been. It was only Monday that I first met the Becker-Hix family, who had gathered to quarrel, self-destruct, and reveal the occasional secret in Children of the Bride (1990), all while celebrating their mother’s marriage to a significantly younger man. And it seems like just yesterday (because, in fact, it was) that Baby of the Bride (1991), its first sequel, incensed me by turning that amiable husband into a floppy-haired jerk who threw a 90-minute fit when his wife wouldn’t have an abortion.

To say my hopes weren’t high for the final entry in this made-for-TV trilogy, 1993’s Mother of the Bride, would be an understatement. How surprised I was, then, to find this the most enjoyable installment of all. In the words of Vanessa Williams, “Just when I thought our chance had passed, you go and save the best for last.” That’s right, stars and executive producers Rue McClanahan and Kristy McNichol, that song is dedicated to you.

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Rue McClanahan Explores Geriatric Pregnancy in Baby of the Bride

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On December 28, 2021

In TV Movies

McNichol gave birth to a baby girl; McClanahan a bouncing baby wig.

When last we met, dear reader, we were enjoying the emotional highs and lows of Children of the Bride (1990), in which Rue McClanahan’s offspring squabble against the backdrop of her wedding to a younger man. Baby of the Bride (1991) picks up shortly thereafter, as Margret (McClanahan) and John Hix (Ted Shackelford) return from their honeymoon, but instantly we see things have changed.

The camera lingers on a recreation of the wedding photo from Children. Patrick Duffy has been replaced by his Dallas castmate Shackelford. Dennis, the son who can’t keep his pants zipped, is now played by John Wesley Shipp in place of the more lighthearted Jack Coleman. Their faces are curiously free from bruises, reminding us that the centerpiece of the first film was a kooky brawl the night before the wedding that left a mark on several characters.

Everything old is new again in Baby of the Bride.

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Rue McClanahan’s Matriarch Trilogy Begins with Children of the Bride

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On December 27, 2021

In TV Movies

Children of the Bride‘s one big happy family

While I’m stuck on the couch for the next couple weeks, having been told to avoid the Omicron surge while immunosuppressed, the timing seems right to dedicate myself to the study of one of the holiest trilogies in cinematic history: Rue McClanahan’s made-for-TV Bride series.

This is where it all began, folks, in 1990, with Children of the Bride. The credits, including “Special Guest Star Patrick Duffy” and “Music by Yanni,” hint at something memorable. Things begin promisingly, with Kristy McNichol dressed as a nun, and of course I’m here with a screen cap for those of you who are into that sort of thing. And who’s that over there, once again not acting too homosexual? Why, it’s Dynasty’s second Steven Carrington! They are but two of McClanahan’s many kids, one more troubled than the next.

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A Terribly Important Quote from Edie: An American Girl

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On August 31, 2014

In Books

As a companion piece of sorts to “A Touching Tale of Truman Capote’s Hatred of Gore Vidal,” I submit without comment my favorite quote from another George Plimpton oral history:

“I can tell you, I’m nearly the last person in the world who
would ever consider doing a sex scene for a movie in a rubber raft in the middle of an indoor swimming pool at the health club.  But that’s the way we wound up with it.”

Richie Berlin in Edie: An American Girl, by Jean Stein and George Plimpton

Wait, I lied, I do have a comment: If you read their autobiographies, a lot of DeMille actresses shared similar stories. 

Just Make Sure Tony Scott Doesn’t Direct

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On March 30, 2009

In In the News

Penélope Cruz has already been getting into character during press conferences.

The story of the two female police officers in Israel who posed undercover as a lesbian couple to help bust 46 drug dealers needs to be made into a movie, right now. The plot will have to be tweaked a little, in typical Hollywood fashion, so the officers slowly find themselves attracted to each other in real life, but you can’t disagree that gay audiences aren’t owed as much after the travesty that was Partners. And I can’t be the only one who thinks this would be the perfect project for Penélope Cruz and Salma Hayek — it would easily draw twice the audience as Bandidas, which means at least four people would see it.

A Semi-Secret Lesbian in “A Secret”

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On March 29, 2009

In Home Video

Julie Depardieu tends to Quentin Dubuis in A Secret

I don’t recommend you seek out Claude Miller’s Holocaust drama A Secret for its lesbian content, which is virtually nil, or for any other reason. The story of François, a young French boy who was born to Jewish parents in the 1940s and spent his childhood convinced he was competing against a “phantom brother,” it’s a handsomely made film that shows little interest in most of its characters (when Ludivine Sagnier hardly registers as a presence in a film, you know something isn’t right) or, ultimately, anything that happened to them. (It also skips between the ’40s and ’50s and the 1980s somewhat hokily; the black and white scenes with Mathieu Amalric as the adult François are nice to look—until they take on the appearance of perfume ads, with matching emotional depth.)

But one of its characters is a lesbian, which I hadn’t seen mentioned in any of the reviews I read prior to renting it, so I thought I’d mention it here for those of you who keep tabs on these things. That character, Louise (played winningly by Julie Depardieu), a massage therapist and long-time friend of François’ family, is in some ways the emotional heart of the film: It is Louise, not his mother, who François runs to for comfort in times of distress, and it is Louise who eventually answers his questions about the past.

Not much is made of her orientation, which is first hinted at when a 7-year-old François asks why she doesn’t have a husband and her response suggests she’d simply have no use for one; in a later scene that serves no purpose other than to illustrate that she does have a personal life, she greets a smiling female acquaintance on the street and leads her into her apartment. (She also, in a minor but noticeable touch, sometimes wears pants while the women around her are in dresses.) Louise’s defining moment comes during a heated exchange with Esther, a character who believes the husband of a woman who was taken away by the Germans is cheating on his absent wife:

Esther: Doesn’t it make you sick?

Louise: I’ve seen worse.

Esther: You say that because you also…

Louise: Go on, say it. I also think Tania’s desirable? It’s true. She’s beautiful and desirable.

Esther: So you excuse them?

Louise: No, I just don’t judge them.

Louise is able to calm Esther; her gentleness and pragmatism has that effect on everyone. She is an interesting supporting character who would have been even more interesting in a better movie.

A Great Way to Bring a Conversation to a Grinding Halt

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On March 1, 2009

In Stories of Triumph and Inspiration

“I met three men in a Tiki bar once in Texas who were married to each other.”

So said Chloë Sevigny in a recent Los Angeles Times interview with her Big Love costars Bill Paxton, Jeanne Tripplehorn, and Ginnifer Goodwin. Here’s the reaction to Sevigny’s remark:

[Silence]

Paxton: Wow.

Tripplehorn: That was a conversation stopper! What do you call that? Gay-lygapous? Gay-lygamy.

Sevigny: They loved the show.

As well they should! By the way, for anyone who has ever asked him or herself “Gee, I wonder what Bill Paxton thinks about gay marriage,” you get your answer here. In response to a question about the Mormon campaign to pass Proposition 8, Paxton says: “I just feel like, God, live and let live. As long as somebody’s not trying to make me live a certain way, or people are consenting adults, I have no problem with it. But I’m a libertine and a liberal.”

So there you have it — the guy from Twister (and my personal favorite Apollo 13 astronaut) supports your right to get gay-married. No word on whether the stars of Volcano, Dante’s Peak and every other disaster movie Hollywood hurled at us post-Twister are of similar minds.

P.S. As a parting bonus, here’s a kind of gross clip of Jeanne Tripplehorn making out with Salma Hayek in Time Code. (For those of you who haven’t seen it, it’s an experimental film in which four story lines are followed by four different cameras simultaneously and in real time with no edits; the audio you hear in the YouTube clip belongs to the action taking place in another quadrant of the screen the YouTuber didn’t bother showing. Tripplehorn plays a typical nutty lesbian character in the movie, which was oddly appropriate given her involvement in Basic Instinct.) If you prefer the retro butch look, you can check out Chloë Sevigny in If These Walls Could Talk 2. A few of the search results will probably be age-restricted, but some of you pervs might like that.

Between Awards, An Oscar Observation (2009 Edition)

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On February 23, 2009

In In the News

Boy, those musical numbers are really going to go a long way in making people think Hugh Jackman isn’t gay, aren’t they?

“What? Marisa Tomei for My Cousin Vinny?!”

UPDATE (10:04 AM Monday): Holy Bob Hope, was that a boring night. Lots of predictable and undeserving winners, which was par for the course, but the producers didn’t offer anything to make up for it. And most of the speeches were so scripted and awful (still, anytime Penélope Cruz wants a date, I’m free), with the exception of Dustin Lance Black’s, which was the best and most moving of the night.

The insipid New Age-y/Oprah-style “We Speak Your Name” nominee ego-stroking in the acting categories was also problematic; only a few of the presenters (Eva Marie Saint, Whoopi Goldberg and Robert De Niro come to mind) were able to pull it off. Next year I propose having Steve Martin hand out all of the awards. Yes, my love for him is known far and wide, but he excels at taking the piss out of the same pretentious, self-congratulatory nitwits whose approval Hugh Jackman so nakedly desires. And so what if Jackman’s a song-and-dance man? Anyone who has seen Pennies from Heaven and All of Me knows that Martin can cut a rug with the best of them.

Are You Ready For Some Football Oscars?

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On February 22, 2009

In In the News

Awards are essentially meaningless, like almost everything else in life.

Last year, as you might recall, I covered the Oscar telecast. I’ve been asked if I plan to do the same tonight, and the answer is probably not. I’m underwhelmed by a lot of this year’s nominees and don’t think it’d be much fun to write about them, though a last-minute change of mind is possible. (A last-minute change of mind is always possible, unless it’s about something like voting Republican.)

Also blasé about tonight’s ceremony: the normally excitable Robert Osborne, the reigning queen of Turner Classic Movies and a professional Oscar historian, who recently told The Chicago Sun-Times: “We forget that the importance of the Oscars is to award artistic achievement. I’m not sure it is anymore.” I’m with Osborne on two things — that the Best Supporting Actress push for Kate Winslet in The Reader was ridiculous (she ended up being nominated in the Best Actress category and is widely expected to win; I’d rather see Melissa Leo take it for Frozen River), and that it would be great if Frank Langella won Best Actor for Frost/Nixon.

Langella isn’t thought to stand a chance in the year of Milk and The Wrestler, but he’s my sentimental favorite because Oscars, as we all know, are often awarded not to the winning performance, but for a performance previously overlooked by the Academy. In my opinion, Langella deserved to win last year for Starting Out in the Evening, but his work in that film wasn’t recognized with a nomination. Honestly, I’m still shocked by that — how dare the Academy disrespect Count Dracula! Hopefully he makes the rounds at the after-parties tonight and bites all their necks.

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