Lodging -
Where Mountain
Meets Sea
The movies of the '80s
With no early box office breakouts, Hollywood rapidly lost
interest in gays and lesbians as primary subject matter
Liaisons', Deitch surfaced again on television
in 1989 with The Women of Brewster Place,
featuring a prominent lesbian relationship.
he success of La Cage aux Folles in
The immensely talented Sherwood has not
American in 1979 — it was the highest-
grossing foreign language film to that time — been heard from since, although one of his
stars, Steve Buscemi, has been aiming up
brought the movies into the ’80s with a
regularly
in supporting roles (New York
willingness to try gay and lesbian themes
Stories, Mystery Train, Bloodhounds of
again. After a burst of interest at the end of
Broadway).
the previous decade, they had pretty much
Torch Song Trilogy tried to be the La Cage
ignored us (with a few significant exceptions,
aux Folles of the 1980s by giving America
such as Dog Day Afternoon) through most of
another drag queen to love; but many critics,
the 1970s.
gay as well as straight, felt Harvey Fierstein’s
pre-AIDS story was inappropriate in 1988.
That most prolific gay filmmaker, Rainer
Werner Fassbinder, died in 1982. Two other
prominent European directors. Franco
Zeffirelli and Patrice Chereau, came out when
reporters at film festivals happened to ask
them if they were gay. Chcreau’s L'Homme
Blesse was one of the best gay films of the
’80s, but he’s been concentrating on theater
work since making it.
Parting Glances
Buoyed by the success of A Room with a
View, James Ivory threw caution to the winds
Hitting the screen in 1980 were the
in 1987 and made Maurice, from the gay
homophobic Cruising and the lesbophobic
novel that wasn't published until after author
Windows, plus the first and better of two
E.M. Forster's death. It was beautiful but
sequels to La Cage; but by 1982 we had the
dull
— very Masterpiece Theatre — but Ivory
more thoughtful, if imperfect. Personal Best
added a brief political message to Forster's
and Making Love. The former had Olympic
chaste gay romance.
hopeful Mariel Hemingway “outgrow” her
Lesbian/gay film festivals that began in
lesbian phase after a hot affair with Patrice
San Francisco and New York in the 1970s
Donnelly; the latter was hopelessly bourgeois
expanded rapidly in the ’80s as the concept
and sanitized by giving Middle America what
spread to dozens of other cities. Besides
someone thought it could handle in the story
rediscovering classic films in closets within
of Michael Ontkean leaving Kate Jackson for
vaults, these festivals have unearthed gay and
Harry Hamlin and both former spouses
lesbian films from many countries, including
winding up happily remarried to professional
Greece (Angel), Israel (Drifting), Taiwan (The
men.
Outsiders) and Hungary (Another Way), some
Nineteen eighty-two also brought us
of which went on to at least limited
Partners, a throwback comedy from Francis
commercial release.
Vebcr, author of La Cage aux Folles, with
John Hurt as a stereotypical gay cop paired
While Derek Jarman, Rosa von Praunheim
and Pedro Almodovar have had some works
with and lusting after Ryan O’Neal, who was
shown widely, they can always count on
masquerading as an equally stereotypical gay
festivals to exhibit their films that don’t get
in a murder investigation.
distributed elsewhere.
With no box office breakouts among the
Festivals also give American (Marc
above films, Hollywood rapidly lost interest
Huestis, Barbara Hammer), Canadian (John
in us as primary subject matter, although
Greyson, Anne Claire Poirier), West German
foreign films (e.g., Querelle, Caravaggio,
(Monika Treut, Alexandra von Grote) and
Another Country, Colonel Redi) didn’t.
British (Paul Oremland, Richard
American filmmakers, however, became
Kwietniowski) independent filmmakers a
increasingly aware that we weren’t going to
go away, and they began making more use of
place to show their films and videos. Gus
Van Sant parlayed festival showings of his
us in minor roles as part of the fabric of life.
Mala Noche into a contract to make
By 1988, probably the peak year for the
Drugstore Cowboy, a nongay but hardly
phenomenon, roughly one film in four
mainstream movie.
contained some lesbian or gay character,
reference or plot element — though not
always a positive one.
Because Academy Awards bestow a kind
of validity (not always warranted) on the
movies and performers they touch, we must
consider as key events of the 1980s the Oscars
to Robert Epstein and Richard Schmeichen for
Best Documentary of 1984, The Times of
Harvey Milk, and to William Hurt for Best
Actor of 1985 as a gay character in Hector
Babenco’s Kiss of the Spider Woman.
Vera
A mini-wave developed mid-decade, with
not only Spider Woman but Stephen Frear’s
Van Sant’s experience is indicative of the
My Beautiful Laundrette, Donna Deitch’s
most significant trend of the end of the
Desert Hearts and Bill Sherwood’s Parting
decade, the move toward the mainstream of
gay-identified and gay-sensitive directors.
Glances getting more than a handful of
bookings. None of these low-budget films
John Waters, who had in 1981 progressed (?)
lost money, but none made enough to get
from midnight cult films to the widely-seen
attention in an era of blockbusters. Frears
Polyester, shocked everyone when his 1988
followed Laundrette with the Joe Orton
Hair spray got a PG rating. Suddenly it was
OK for Divine to wear a dress, as long as he
biography Prick Up Your Ears before
didn’t say the F word. We’ll see what
returning to his own preference in Dangerous
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W A R R E N
happens to Waters’ Cry Baby in 1990.
Terence Davies, whose autobiographical
Trilogy had been acclaimed, followed it in
1989 with the equally personal Distant
Voices, Still Lives, this time omitting the gay
aspects of his life.
Former Andy Warhol colleague Paul
Morrissey released two pictures in 1988, the
campy but somewhat homophobic
Beethoven s Nephew and the campy but filled-
with-lesbophobic-dialogue Spike of
Bensonhurst. Both featured pretty but
untalented leading men, and both failed to
find an audience, offending the people most
likely to appreciate them.
Pedro Almodovar did tremendous business
with Women on the Verge of a Nervous
Breakdown, Spain’s most successful film ever
and one of Pedro’s few with no gay characters
or themes, though his gay sensibility shone
through. So did Paul Bartel’s, although his
sex farce Scenes from the Class Struggle in
Beverly Hills included only one bisexual
character (Ray Sharkey) and one male-male
liaison (Sharkey and Robert Beltran).
Mexico’s Jaime Humberto Hermosillo
segued from his breakthrough gay romantic
comedy Doña Her linda and Her Son to the
barely-released Clandestino Destino, which
had a bisexual plot but favored hetero sex
scenes over gay ones. Bruce Weber showed
less of what appeared to be a gay sensibility in
Let's Get Lost than in his debut feature,
Broken Noses. Multinational Argentine
Martin Donovan will follow his homoerotic
Apartment Zero in 1990 with the nongay
Close Enemy.
Another Country
While there was no gay content in Derek
Jarman’s 1989 War Requiem, the music
(Benjamin Britten) and poetry (Wilfred
Owen) were by gay men and war as a cause of
mass death was intended as a metaphor for
AIDS.
AIDS films and videos became a genre of
their own in the latter half of the decade. The
late Arthur Bressan, Jr. started the ball rolling
with Buddies, before the disease claimed him
and one of his stars, Geoff Edholm. Rob
Epstein worked on The AIDS Show and
Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt,
while John Erman reached the largest
audience via NBC with An Early Frost.
Micki Dickoff’s concise drama Mother,
Mother is touring the country in benefit
showings for local AIDS organizations.
Here’s the ultimate in subjectivity, with a
long list of runners-up between the lines after
each name on the list:
Best Lesbian/Gay Films of the 1980s
Best Gay Film (English-Language): Parting
Glances (Bill Sherwood, USA)
Best Gay Film (Foreign-Language): Tras el
Cristal (Augustin Villaronga, Spain)
Best Lesbian Film: Vera (Sergio Toledo,
Brazil)
Best Documentary: Before Stonewall (Greta
Schiller, USA)
Best AIDS Film: Mother, Mother (Micki
Dickoff, USA)
Best Short Film: Alfalfa (Richard
Kwietnowski, England)
Most Suddenly (and Happily) Dated Film:
Westler — East cf the Wall (Wieland Speck,
West Germany)
y
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