AKA William

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Because the old school gay is fast becoming the new modern man, AKA William theater contributor Ben Rimalower will, now every Monday, document exactly how, when, and where everything old becomes new again.

Straddling the line between old school showbiz cheesiness and contemporary short attention span whateverness, Ben is the New Old Gay. He loves Patti LuPone.

It’s not news that gay movies are usually crap. I still see them, or watch them on TV or Netflix or whatever, but my expectations are invariably low. As a matter of fact, I think over the years, my standards have been substantially lowered by the constant influx of dreck.

Why do I keep going back?

I guess there’s something satisfying about seeing aspects of my own life reflected in – I was going to say art, but that hardly describes flicks such as Another Gay Movie (which I enjoyed, but come on!); even entertainment feels like a stretch for the genre that includes Eating Out, let alone (painful memory shudder) Eating Out 2.

Nonetheless, living as a second-class citizen in this heterosexist society, and having grown up invisible in an even more homophobic climate, I crave gay movies and I don’t stop trying to find the good ones.

The situation is so dire that oftentimes, all a gay movie has to do to lead the pack is merely not be idiotic. Regardless of the skin quotient, gay movies are frequently like porn in their embarrassing dialogue. But there have been a few over the years that were truly good, and they have affected me deeply and given me hope to straggle on through all the incorrigible performances of incomprehensibly cheesy material.

I remember being 20 years old and seeing the preview for Stonewall.

I didn’t care whether it was an accurate depiction of the birth of the gay rights movement and I didn’t even realize that it was a quasi-musical with drag queens lip-syncing to great songs by 1960s girl groups to comment on the narrative. I just gleaned that it was the story of a young gay guy moving to New York City and finding love and good times. There’s a youthful abandon and joy and romance that I love in movies and I knew, from the preview, I would find it in Stonewall. It’s like how I used to watch Meatballs before I went to summer camp, or Sixteen Candles before school started, the movies would get me revved up for what I was about to experience – I yearned for movies that would get me excited to start my life as a gay man.