The Writing of Rich Grzesiak

© 1987 Rich Grzesiak, all rights reserved.

Queers on Film

There are really only 3 writers worth reading about queers in Tinseltown: the late Parker Tyler, who was obsessed about the sissy cinema and genderfuck; the late Vito Russo, whose Celluloid Closet will be required reading for film majors in colleges for years to come; and Boze Hadleigh.

Hadleigh is the penultimate gay film fanatic: if there was a Thomas Guide to show the highways and byways of queer cinema, his writing comes closest. What makes reading (and talking to) him fun is that he really enjoys his life's avocation. Tyler came across as a high priest, Russo, a well intentioned ideologue.

Thirtyish Hadleigh met me in Beverly Hills recently for a long kaffeeklatsch about his latest book, The Lavender Screen: The Gay and Lesbian Films, Their Stars, Makers, Characters and Critics [Citadel Press; $17.95/softcover]. In the course of critiquing more than 100 gay flicks, he throws more light on the subject of gays in the cinema than might be thought possible, and makes some serious points about the homophobic rhythms to the film industry in a serious but highly entertaining vein.

"When I write a book, I try to mention who's gay or lesbian, not to 'out' them but to educate the public," he boasts. "Lavender Screen is really my first gay book that has really crossed over with straights and I am hearing things from them like, I never realized that Dirk Bogarde or John Gielgud were.... Most straights have no idea that Gielgud is openly gay—I couldn't mention it if he hadn't said it."

From what Hadleigh labels "lavender tandems" (gay/lesbian marriages like Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor, which were arranged) to gossip about Katherine Hepburn (he thinks she's a closet case) to revelations on exactly how Brando came about his accent for Reflections in a Golden Eye, Hadleigh will fascinate everyone from the most intense film buff to the most casual watcher of The Late, Late Show. It's no wonder Gore Vidal calls Lavender Screen "very entertaining"—it's the proverbial Hard Book to Put Down, and for those homophobic movie moguls anxious to blight our image, a tough book to pick up.

Hadleigh's previous books have included Conversations with My Elders, talks with everyone from the late Rock Hudson to Sal Mineo and The Vinyl Closet: Gays in the Music World. He is to gay cinema what Ross is to Perot in the world of politics: honest, uncompromising, and no matter what you think of him, fun!

Rich Grzesiak (RG): I recently viewed Cruising and was shocked by how tame it was: when it wasn't melodramatic it was just plain boring. I found myself wondering what was all the hullabaloo about this really dull film?

Boze Hadleigh (BH): The excitement was that the cop in the film may himself turn out to be gay and also the murderer, too. In other words, what was new here was that the murder involved gays killing gays. I think that's what really pissed off the activists like the late Arthur Bell, who helped orchestrate so much of the demonstrations against the film. In the movie Cruising all the gay characters in it, other than Al Pacino, are very minor characters, they're really just murder victims.

RG: I can't help but speculate the main reason the Village Voice's Arthur Bell was so opposed to the film was his personal dislike of Gerald Walker, the novel Cruising's author. There was some sort of undefinable rivalry or animosity between these two writers—Bell and Walker—that functioned behind the scenes. I remain convinced Walker intended no homophobia in writing that book.

BH: That does happen... I wouldn't doubt your theory as there is so much rivalry among gay journalists and critics. Wow, just look at The Advocate alone: I have heard more stories about how that one hates this one, this one eventually gets that one fired, etc.

Often you will have a novel like Midnight Cowboy which is more pro-gay than the movie. There's even a scene involving violence against a gay man, and it's in the movie in a way different from the book. Director John Schlesinger [who's gay] should have known better, but that scene is here in Midnight Cowboy for the audience to think to itself, "Yeah, beat up that so and so."

RG: It's rare in the cinema for the director to be faithful to the writer's vision.

BH: While Cukor was faithful to a book and writer's intentions, director John Huston by contrast always thought, well, I can improve upon the source. Alfred Hitchcock wrote with Raymond Chandler for the dialogue on Strangers on a Train, but then went and worked with yet another relatively unknown writer to further improve upon the very same dialogue. Very strange.

It's real fashionable nowadays for people to blame the film industry for either the absence of films about gays or the homophobic moments that do make it into the final cut. But let's dissect the industry's response. Their party line is they would make more gay films if only more people would flock to buy tickets for them. We can't seem to find a bottom line of appeal that would pull middle America in to see a gay film. What do you think of their rationale?

BH: I think it's true but there are two different levels here. As far as the gay themed film with major gay characters is concerned, their explanation is certainly true. But remember that in the majority of films if they have any gay character in them, it's a relatively minor one. Most of the time if there's anything gay in a film it's just a reference or a word. How often you see a film and you wonder why 30 minutes into it there's this bit of homophobia? Or why do they put a gay character in the background? Or why isn't the gay element there balanced for fairness? No one is going to argue or walk out because there's something pro-gay in a movie that lasts for 2 seconds.

So what can the film industry do? On the whole they can be less homophobic and less encouraging of gay bashing, hatred and stereotypes. But of course it is absolutely true: if we're discussing a gay film with major gay characters even most gays don't go to see it until it comes out on video.

RG: The movie industry is like many businesses in that its operations reflect the laws of supply and demand. We've just discussed the supply side of the equation. The demand factor functions too in that I don't see a lot of gays flocking to see gay films, no matter how mainstream they are.

BH: I think we have a quote from Harvey Fierstein who says if all the gays went to see Torch Song Trilogy it would have been a big hit, but instead they go to see Batman or Lethal Weapon 3 which is homophobic, and some even go because Mel Gibson is so cute.

Well, yes, Mel Gibson is very attractive but he's certainly a very negative man and definitely a very homophobic one. So why spend your money and go to see his naked tush and give money to a homophobic star in a very homophobic movie? There are other films to see.

Of course, we want entertainment, but it is true gays in general don't patronize gay movies because the vast majority of these films have not been big hits or they take a long time to make a reputation, like The Killing of Sister George, its director, Robert Aldrich claims it took until 1982, some 15 years after the movie's original release, to show a profit. And that was partly thanks to video.

That's another reason, too, I wanted to do this book. I first got the idea in the late seventies when videos came out. I had one of the first video recorders, a huge clunky thing, but you could now, suddenly on demand, watch certain gay or lesbian films that you had never seen before. Now almost all of these are available on video. Some films, like Staircase or Fortune and Men's Eyes, you will never even see on TV. Some might make it on to cable, but it's usually the censored version.

For example, broadcast TV has shown Making Love, but they've always shown the censored version without the close up kiss, they even cut a scene of the two principals of Making Love in bed together. Instead they show a guy at a hamburger stand with a voice over of the two guys in bed. It's unbelievable. Plus, commercial TV always advertises Making Love as if the star of the movie was Kate Jackson and yeah, there are these two guys in it too.

RG: For argument's sake, let's assume we've solved Hollywood's money problem and people did flock to see gay oriented movies. What kind of movies should Hollywood be making about the gay experience? If you were in charge with an unlimited budget what would you film?

BH: There's another trend—things have gotten worse in that there are less gay movies being made than ever. Those that are being made are more positive mainly because somewhere along the creative line the producer, writer, director, usually the writer and the director, are gay and cares about something more realistic, not a Cruising.

So it is important gay people make movies whenever possible because straights usually won't have the sensitivity or care; they'll tend to go by stereotypes. In other words they'll have the villain but they won't have the gay cop or something to balance it...

But in terms of what kinds of movies should be made, I don't think you can mandate that. It's up to writers who come up with an interesting story, whether it be all or part gay with an interesting gay hero or villain or both. Then if it's interesting and you have a star attached to it or both, that should see it through, with or without stars. But you can't say, well this kind of gay movie should be made, because it won't happen. That's not how show business works, either art or the business of it.

RG: I view you as the Vito Russo of the 90's. The difference between you and Russo was if I had asked him the question of what type of [gay] movies should be made, I would have gotten a long, polemical answer. Your reply points more to the freedom of expression, not wanting to constrict the creative process.

BH: Well, you do want a balance. I hear from certain people and I consider myself an activist. I consider an activist as someone who cares when so many people don't. An activist tries to do something about it in their work and in their lives but on the other hand I do get irked when I hear a gay put down. But there has to be balance in that not every gay or lesbian character is a hero—that doesn't happen with any group.

RG: In Oliver Stone's JFK, there happens to be a historically accurate personage accurately depicted in the film. It's a particularly eccentric gay character who participates in the plot to kill the President. Now Stone could have chosen to omit that character in toto or make the choice to portray him accurately, not for sensationalistic ends but to tell the whole story that needed to be documented and portrayed. Yes it's going to offend someone, particularly GLAAD activists, but if it's intention is not to be homophobic, why object?

BH: I haven't seen JFK but I have heard from people that it's the most homophobic film in years. It is perfectly legitimate to include a real life gay villain: there have been J. Edgar Hoover, and Ray Cohen, etc. But let's try to have some balance.

What I heard was that all the gays in it were predatory stereotypes, all either effeminate or out to seduce boys instead of men—that just excites the fear of the straights: they want not just our men, but our boys. Plus there was all this drag done in so degrading a way and anti-gay.

RG: But these are all people on the fringes of society—just like Oswald. You wouldn't expect Oswald to be connecting with respectable gays who were positive role models, would you?

BH: Well, let's look at Kevin Costner. He's a hero partly because of his straight family life. That's what I read in some of the reviews.

Notice how often in films, gay or straight themed, the villain, whether he's supposed to be gay or not, does not have a wife or girl friend or children. They very rarely do.

In general, including TV movies, the villain is almost always a loner and therefore, by implication to many straights, gay or secretly gay. In other words, he doesn't have the wife or kids at home as the hero always does or a girlfriend who will provide him with kids.

RG: In Lavender Screen, you claim the Catholic Church is responsible for homosexuality in the movies. Would you care to explain that statement?

BH: When Sam Spiegel wanted to film Suddenly Last Summer he went to the Catholic Church... The answer in part is that the Catholic Church is to blame. When people say, why do we have to have all this homosexuality in our movies, the answer is that they had to get the Catholic Church's O.K.

The Catholic Church would say, O.K., this is fine, this shows what a horrible life he leads with cannibalism and he gets what he deserves at the end: this will show them, don't be that way or surely this will happen to you as you, too will get cannibalized in a Third World resort.

Suddenly Last Summer was a hit. People were so fascinated and that encouraged more on the same theme. SO by they're giving their yes to such distorted views of gays on the screen, they brought homosexuals into the cinema. Whereas they could have said no, and movies like Suddenly Last Summer wouldn't have been made. That movie was the first to depict it and be a big hit despite having that theme.

RG: Nowadays it doesn't matter a hill of beans what the Catholic Church thinks about a film's content.

BH: Thank goodness that it doesn't matter what any religion thinks. That's what people forget. They think maybe we need a little more religious influence. It was religious influence that brought in the motion picture censorship code in 1934 and forbid the depiction of gays or lesbians or even mention of the word from 1934 until about 1960 because of the right wing, born again influence, primarily Catholic and Protestant. All these ladies clubs: these were the same women who tried to boycott Carmen Miranda when they found out she didn't wear underwear. It's unbelievable. These very self righteous women, prigs, who had nothing to do and they loathed the Marilyn Monroes. I remember when Monroe was thought of as a prostitute by half the public. Now she is revered and idolized.

RG: That points to progress. Since the days of Cruising there has been lots of good gay film moments, too. You can point to progress on the Lavender Screen in the last decade and a half, can't you?

BH: Mostly you can and mostly it's thanks to gay people doing films themselves instead of the studio system where it might get seen by more people obviously, even if it were a flop.

When you have the filmmakers as you did behind Longtime Companion or Merchant Ivory Productions, who are gay, you will have something with more integrity and reality or you might also have a gay character or a gay love story. Another thing that's improved a lot is that in the old days when you had a gay character, that gay or lesbian never had a best friend or a lover who was gay or lesbian let alone a companion of longstanding. They were always loners who represented the sole gay in the world, especially when they are a minor character, like Hotel New Hampshire, where you have a character who's a gay brother. He's so lonely because there are no other gays.

The film Fame was filmed at the High School for the Performing Arts where many students would be gay and again there's a very similar character played by the same actor from Hotel New Hampshire: a lonely, isolated gay character who thinks he's the only gay person in New York City or at least in that high school.

RG: I suspect European audiences, unlike their American counterparts, are more broadly tolerant toward the production and viewing end toward gays.

BH: Definitely! When you read the books foreign movies are based on, you do notice that. The film Victim, for example, was the first film to use the word "homosexual". That got it almost banned in the U.S. and Time magazine, in their snippet of a review, said this is one reason this movie shouldn't be allowed: it uses the word that shouldn't be used instead of describing homosexual in the Biblical sense or as a psychological phenomenon or something.

RG: I enjoyed your use of a photo still in Lavender Screen of Robert Morse kissing Sir Robert Morley, apparently during the making of The Loved One. I didn't remember that scene in the movie at all.

BH: That shot was photographed between takes on the set. There were rumors that Robert Morley might be bisexual; he played Oscar Wilde twice in the movies (not that that means he was). And Robert Morse is openly bisexual: he has 5 children and he is openly bi-. I guess you can afford to be bi- if you have that many kids. I was taken to task in one of the straight L.A. papers which charged I captioned that photo misleadingly. That scene was not in the film, I merely was saying that here are two of the costars who are bussing each other.

There are so many wonderful gay performers in brilliant cameo roles in The Loved One: Sir John Gielgud, Liberace, Roddy MacDowell, Tab Hunter.

RG: I never knew Marlon Brando modeled the inflection of his voice used in the film Reflections in a Golden Eye on the vocal patterns of Tennessee Williams! How did you discover that?

BH: In one of the biographies. Charles Higham did a bio of Brando and in his entire book never mentioned about Brando's coming out as bisexual. His whole reference—again, here we're dealing with a homophobic gay man—in the entire book is that James Dean had a crush on Marlon Brando and that Marlon's reaction was I can recommend a good psychiatrist. That's all.

Later in the seventies, in France, Brando said, I, too, have had homosexual experiences and I am not ashamed of them. And I put that comment right in the caption underneath his photo.

When many people are in the bookstore, they won't buy the Lavender Screen—they'll look at the pictures for 5 minutes engrossed by the pictures. So if they're not going to read the text of the book, I want them to learn things from the photo captions which will succeed at attracting their attentions such as Marlon Brando, Richard Chamberlain and comments on other well know performers in Hollywood today.

RG: Is there something about the air in France that compels actors like Brando or a Richard Chamberlain to grant interviews where they come out? Did Chamberlain really come out in France? After all, his publicist denies that is true.

BH: What apparently happened to the best of anyone's knowledge—and remember only Richard Chamberlain can entirely clear it up—he did come out in France and he came back to the U.S. His agency is CAA who are known to be the top one now and they are known to be more homophobic than ICM or William Morris. He left them or he was fired because of that—some big disagreement maybe with Mike Ovitz, he went to ICM, and his publicist, a Danish woman who should know better, denied on his behalf that he was gay at all. Did he give the interview, did he say what he said? Everybody in town knows that he is gay. He's not even bothered to get married or do the things that certain other actors do.

Maybe when you're in a foreign country where the climate is a little more tolerant or liberal, you think to yourself, well, what have I got to lose at this age and so on and so forth? And you get back to Hollywood and the reaction at CAA is much stronger than you thought. So instead of you denying it, thereby turning out the whole gay community, your publicist does it for you, so she/he can be the scapegoat for the gay community and the apologist to the straight community.

It's not what you would have hoped for from Richard Chamberlain but at least he did say what he said in France, apparently. I have much doubt that it was totally fabricated and I think he should come out. In Lavender Screen's photo caption I use the word "reportedly" came out in France. That's all you can say, really.

When David Cassidy was in Germany he apparently went with his boy friend to various places and came out. When he came back here, things changed. In the media in Europe, people don't care.

RG: Let's talk about a very famous Italian director, Federico Fellini. How could he ever make a statement like the one quoted in your book that there "are no homosexuals in Italy"?

BH: Remember, he said that in '69 after the filming of Fellini Satyricon. I doubt he would say that today. Visconti and Zeffirelli would never make such a statement. There has been such a change since Stonewall that certain statements people made before that seminal event are perfectly ridiculous.

RG: On the subject of homophobic jokes, the screenwriter Ernest Thompson furnished anti-lesbian jokes to the Fondas as part of the screenplay for Golden Pond. Is that because he's a homophobe or does he simply have a bad taste in jokes?

BH: Well, if you see them on film you don't know, but he has done this repeatedly, so he is homophobic. When Stockhard Channing could not continue in a play with Burt Reynolds, Charles Nelson Reilly continued in her place and they played the love scenes straight. It was a hit; audiences liked it. They asked Thompson what he thought of this and he said something like "I thought it was disgusting" Or "I'm going to be sick."

Ernest Thompson first film as a director and a screenwriter was called 1969. Its opening scene is a 10 minute one with Kiefer Sutherland and another actor who repulse in a very homophobic way this older gay guy who's coming on to them.

When these kinds of things are consistent in a director or writer's work. then you know.

RG: When The Band Played On premieres, what do you think will happen to Richard Gere's career? Will it help or hurt?

BH: Probably neither. First of all, it's an HBO film, so it won't hurt his career. Many people perceive him as gay. Since he did American Gigolo there have been interviews since with Lauren Hutton and Paul Schrader who told interviewers that Gere didn't mind if he was perceived as bisexual. Gere is certainly very active in gay and lesbian causes.

RG: There have been a lot of rumors about Gere's sexuality, haven't there?

BH: There have, yes. There was a rumor the Hollywood Kids printed in their newsletter. It gave no names but provided hints so strong, using titles of their movies so you knew who it was, that he and John Travolta at that time were living together.

RG: Speaking of Travolta, I found it tremendously ironic to read in your book that in the plot to the sequel to Saturday Night Fever, Staying Alive, Travolta's character gets his big break by replacing a gay dancer.

BH: Even though that film was directed by Sylvester Stallone, who commented to Harry King "Don't play no fags" re A Different Story, it was sensitive to the gay character. He was not put down; he was treated with respect. Whereas there was homophobia in Saturday Night Fever.

RG: What do you think of the occasional movie reviewer and essayist, John Simon? Is he a homophobe? Why would he go on tirades about the director Visconti so much if he weren't a homophobe?

BH: Oh he is, he's proud of it. Of all the people in the book on the right wing, anti-gay side, Pauline Kael and even more so John Simon, he's a ranting, raving lunatic about it. He's as homophobic as a critic could be.

There was a play he didn't like about which he wrote, "I submit that this is all faggot nonsense." Afterwards there were so many protests that he be dumped from New York Magazine, where that line appeared.

On the other hand, on the pro-gay side you have Rex Reed who is gay. It's been in print he's gay, yet when I was living in San Mateo I tuned into a San Francisco afternoon talk show. Reed came on to greet an audience partly made up of teenage boys, one of whom asked, "Do you like or have you ever seen a Clint Eastwood movie?" He said, I've seen some, liked a few They were putting him on the defensive [as if to ask] are you gay or straight?

So he was clearly intimidated by them and then he went on to make this comment: "Well, then you have all these violent, drug infested movies, and this is why our teenagers today are turning to cocaine and homosexuality."

I wrote a letter to him in which I said, you're gay and perceived as gay and how could you say this and play into their hands? They're still not going to like you and call you names.

RG: Did Reed ever respond to our note?

BH: No, but when Conversations with My Elders came out in hardcover, they submitted it to him for a blurb and he did eventually provide a very nice blurb for the book, but way too late for it to be on the back of the hardcover. However, it is on the back of the softcover.

RG: How did you discover that the director George Cukor included the late Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy in a party scene of Rich and Famous?

BH: Not by watching the film, as it goes by so quickly. It was mentioned in the press kit. You'll find interesting little tidbits in press kits—most people don't read them.

RG: I forgot the role Robert Redford acted in Inside Daisy Clover was that of a gay movie star, yet Redford today is notorious for never taking an "unsympathetic" role. Do you think he was so burned by that one time jaunt that he chooses roles the way he does today?

BH: I don't think Redford got burned by it but there are some people who, like Katherine Hepburn, will never play a villain. They want to be loved all the time. Except of course, for the role she played in Suddenly Last Summer, which she hated doing.

I spoke with James Spada, author of The Films of Robert Redford, and he claims Redford definitely did not want to play gay or bisexual characters at all.

Inside Daisy Clover is that rare gem of a movie which deals with someone who's gay in show business who needs a straight woman to act as his wife for cover.

When Spada interviewed Redford on this role in Inside Daisy Clover, he claimed he didn't see the character as bisexual, let alone gay, he perceived him as someone who swung with men, women, cats, whatever. They did to make it a little clearer in the script [that he was gay] since he would not say certain lines of dialogue even though he was a newcomer.

RG: I forgot that one of the earliest screen appearances of today's James Bond, actor Timothy Dalton, was in the final Mae West film, Sextette.

BH: Yet he's played so many gay and bisexual characters; he has also never married. He even had a nude love scene in a film called Permission to Kill; Sir John Gielgud also had a role in that flick. Dalton's first role was in The Lion in Winter, in fact, as the gay king.

RG: Just an aside, do you think the Bond series is finally dead?

BH: Well, there's talk in Variety periodically about hopes of reviving the series with Dalton. Incidentally, the one Bond film where the rights are shared, Thunderball, also has a part that is impliedly homophobic: one of the villain Largo's henchmen is obviously a closeted gay.

RG: Do you think lesbians are being better served by the cinema than gay men and if so, why?

BH: Almost all of the lesbian films mentioned in my book—up until Desert Heart—are by men. There are 2 different levels to lesbian movies in Hollywood: one is that because heterosexual men make them, it's a voyeur thing: you'll see the women naked (Personal Best). Of course, when you have a gay themed movie, you hardly see the men naked ever (Making Love).

These movies tend to be positive to neutral in depicting women because by the end of the film, they're not lesbians anymore! They have either a boyfriend or a fiance. In other words, Hollywood still believes that if you're gay or lesbian, you're still in a phase, and if you're still in that "phase," you're immature.

Whereas in the gay male films, they commit suicide, or get killed or go straight.

RG: Or Hollywood omits the gay male aspect to the plot or character: In its adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche's prior marriage to a gay male is not mentioned. In Cat on A Hot Tin Roof, Brick's character goes from being gay (in the original) to being neutered.

BH: It's because the men who run Hollywood, gay or straight, are much more threatened by male homosexuality than by female homosexuality. For the straight male, lesbianism is a chance to look at two female bodies instead of just one. That's also why even in "straight" movies, when you have a love scene, she's practically still naked, while he probably hasn't even gotten around to taking his shoes off.

RG: Do you think the late (and liberal!) actor Henry Fonda was a homophobe? You cite that infamous remark he made to Charles Laughton ["What a would a fat, ugly homosexual know about men"?]

BH: You have to remember that during the fifties when that remark was made, everyone was homophobic, including most gay people. At least with someone like Henry Fonda, he could evolve from that, unlike the late Ray Milland who was notorious for being homophobic. I would tend to think that over time Henry Fonda, unlike Milland, became less homophobic and maybe pro-gay. That's true of a lot of people, especially actresses who made certain comments and 15 years later retracted them.

RG: That sort of pro-gay evolution is not true for Katherine Hepburn, however?

BH: That's because she's closeted, though. When you're closeted your homophobia in public tends to remain forever especially when you're from that generation and you stay in the closet forever which is what she will do.

Certainly she has nothing to lose anymore and she is so revered. She would be a wonderful role model and really strike a great blow for lesbian rights.

RG: What's your source on Katherine Hepburn?

BH: A well known writer who told me that the "only person in Hollywood who doesn't know she's a lesbian is Katherine Hepburn. She spoke about her female companions and how she would lovingly braid flowers for them on a hillside whenever they would take a rest. So many people who have worked with her have said that. There were even rumors that Spencer Tracy swung both ways. There's a guy I know here in Hollywood who works for one of the agencies who used to be a prostitute who claims he used to have Spencer Tracy as a regular client.

Who knows? But the media, noticing only that one's female and one's male, immediately talks about the love affair between the two. Of course they may have had sex at some point, and it may have briefly been a love affair or whatever, but basically they were best friends. And basically she is a lesbian accordingly to anybody who's ever known her who is willing to talk about it.

RG: One gay book which you might think would be a safe vehicle for being made into a film is The Front Runner, since it deals with sports. Why hasn't that book been filmed? Why can't someone with the clout of even Paul Newman (who once owned the book's film rights) get it filmed?

BH: That's a good question, because Newman certainly did have the clout. Perhaps the people around him said, "Oh, Paul...." I disagree with you in that athletics is one of the last taboos to go because the average American thinks this is the one place where you could never run into gays.

Jerry Wheeler, the producer who wanted to do the movie, died of AIDS. He even went to the extent of placing ads in Variety listing the actors who played gay parts and then went on to win awards.

That has changed in that during the 60's hardly anyone would want to play a gay role. Now any star will jump at the chance.

RG: The prototype lesbian film from the twenties, the German Mädchen in Uniform, was withheld from circulation during part of the seventies because the copyright owner of the work objected to gay interpretations put on the film. Is that film now available for screenings at gay film festivals? Are you aware of similar circumstances prohibiting the use of other films?

BH: It is on video because that's how I saw it. The rights are probably controlled by the people who put it out on video. This aspect of ownership gets so complex with some movies. For example, you would think Staircase, with its two big stars, Richard Burton and Rex Harrison, at some point would have been on TV. Apparently there is a rights question about it, plus the networks wouldn't show it because the two men portray lovers and you see them in bed part of the time: it's censorship by omission, so often the story of how we don't get to see gay themed films.

RG: In Robert Patrick's introduction to your book, he quotes the late actor Peter Finch re how "gays need to be more defiant" if we're ever going to make progress in the film business. Why and how?

BH: Hollywood is all about the bottom line and if more gay people, and there are certainly enough of them who are moviegoers, said I will not see a film with Mel Gibson or Eddie Murphy because they're outspokenly, aggressively homophobic, and so are their movies, that might have an impact. It might counter all the many teenage straight boys who go to see it, it might not, but it's really up to the lesbians and gay males in Hollywood to say, 'We don't need that word in there or that put down and we don't need to kill him.' It just seems that the higher you go in Hollywood when you're closeted, the more you have to say 'let's put in some homophobia' because that allegedly hides the fact that you're gay.

RG: Are gay people who work in the movie business perhaps our worst enemy?

BH: Very often they are, yes, and many people have said that. The [gay] ones have the power of the green light, the ones who can say 'this film gets made' or 'that film does not get made'.

Barry Diller gets out-ed time and again. He never has formally come out of the closet; he was the head of Paramount and Fox most recently and yet he is the man responsible for guiding In Living Color, letting it stay on the air long enough for it to become a long running TV hit. That show is the one that has been the most consistently homophobic in its depiction of those two gay, black male movie critics. The two black stars who do the critic bit are also consistently homophobic in their movies, on TV, and their statements in interviews. It's thanks to Barry Diller that that series and those skits proliferated. He apparently didn't see fit to either tone it down or bring in a positive gay character. In other words, keep doing the two characters, but once in a blue moon, like The Tracy Ullman Show did, bring in a gay male character who's not a totally idiot or a stereotype or a villain, and you can still be outrageously campy. There are many ways to get around it, to be funny or entertaining and not have to put down this whole group of people in a way that no other group is put down.

Yes, there is so much homophobia but could what happened in Colorado have happened to Jews, blacks, Hispanics or orientals? No! You don't hear Polish jokes anymore on TV because they protested but with gays they're just about the only group that not only in general, other than the activists who are a small minority, don't fight back but who actively cooperate with their oppressors and say, 'Oh, no, I'm not gay, I'm not gay' or participate in an anti-gay joke or an anti-gay film. "I'll just internalize homophobia" is so often the approach that is taken by too many gays when it comes to movies and TV.

Boze Hadleigh's next book is entitled Hollywood Babble On.

This feature is dedicated to the memory of the late Frank Broderick, periodic contributor to Edge and editor of the weekly Philadelphia gay newsmagazine Au Courant.