As a dweeb, I collect not only DVDs and VHS, but also laserdiscs-- a hybrid of the two formats that has sadly become defunct over the years. The SD quality transfers are very special to me because they come from a time when studios didn't "restore" their films to a point where their manipulations share little difference from a Ted Turner colorization (read my earlier post "Blue Bombs Everywhere" to see what I was talking about). I also love that many laserdiscs have many special features that did not make their way to DVD and Blu-ray for some reason or another.
Well, my laserdisc player started to go kaput, and a good friend of mine, for a cheap price, sold me two new players and a ton of discs. In this batch my wonderful friend, also gay, blessed me with RAINTREE COUNTY, seen here.
A 3+ hour GONE WITH THE WIND knockoff from 1957, this 70mm epic is one of those bizarre films from that era when it didn't matter how good it was, as long as it was long, lavish, and expensive. The film has also never been released on DVD in the United States.
The first time I attempted to rent this film, after hunting, I got a DVD copy of a VHS from an anonymous source. It was, of course, cropped to 1.33:1, and being an early widescreen movie that was meant to COMPETE with the small screen of television, it did not fare well to the pan and scan process. Also, most VHS tapes made after 1983 have two audio tracks on them: Hi-Fi and Mono. The DVD was made with the Hi-Fi track, and the track had worn out, so the entire time there was a buzzsaw like static on the tape. After about 20 minutes, I called it a day. So, my little heart went a-flutter when I found this disc in my bundle, as I could now enjoy the film as intended.
Now, where's the gay link in this, beyond the fact that its main male star, Montgomery Clift was gay, and Elizabeth Taylor, the female lead, was a gay icon? Well that goes back to my history of the 1982 gay classic MAKING LOVE, with Harry Hamlin, Michael Ontkean, and Kate Jackson.
In this film, Hamlin plays a gay Los Angeles writer who sleeps with a married man, but before doing so, breaks fourth wall to talk about how much he enjoys his life as a bachelor in LA. In that moment, we see him popping a Betamax tape into a tape player, flipping on a video projector and enjoying a scene of RAINTREE COUNTY with a bowl of popcorn.
I first saw MAKING LOVE when I was 17 and it would be years before I would see it, but this scene had always stuck with me from my initial viewing. I remember thinking how much I was like Bart in that moment-- having friends, but being an outcast, preferring to spend my Friday night watching an obscure film at home. I ran to my computer to find out what film Bart decided to watch on that evening. IMDB led me to the answer of my connection of cinema to this character: for me, it was MAKING LOVE, for Bart, RAINTREE COUNTY. Years later, I would obtain a video projector, like Bart, and spend my evenings in Los Angeles winding down with movies alone with a big bowl of white popcorn on a nightly basis...that is until I was domesticated.
After receiving my laserdisc of RAINTREE COUNTY recently, I thought again about this scene in MAKING LOVE, and just how much a four shot sequence of Hamlin watching the film can add to his character. For starters, home video machines were very expensive at this time-- many over $1000, and that was 35 years ago. He's also not watching this on a TV but a video projector, another home entertainment rarity of the time! Bart clearly enjoys lavish things.
But it goes beyond the equipment. Did anyone else notice that the cover of the Betamax is solid brown and not with an official label? Thus adds another layer to the character. In doing an online search for RAINTREE COUNTY, I found that the film was not officially released on any home video formats until a 1986 release by MGM/UA (verified in this Tom Shales article from the Washington Post). And yet, the filmmakers chose to purposely illustrate that Bart is watching RAINTREE COUNTY, even if it wouldn't be released for another four years on home video.
Another point in fact: RAINTREE COUNTY is an MGM film, MAKING LOVE was a 20th Century Fox film. Why would the producers go through all of that trouble to secure a film not available on home video from another studio's library as Bart's film choice when Fox has a NUMBER of films in its library that gays idolize? The shot of the screen over Bart's shoulder specifically has Liz Taylor say to Monty Clift the most memorable quote of the film: "Tell me about the rain tree......." The filmmakers wanted the viewer to know that Bart was watching RAINTREE COUNTY for some reason. And yet, no reference to the film is made.
The questions just kept on rolling as I thought about this: Where did Bart get his copy of RAINTREE COUNTY from? Wealthy cinefiles in Los Angeles, such as actor Roddy McDowall (also gay), were known to have high quality, albeit bootleg, copies of films in their homes, going back to a time when home video wasn't an official market. In fact, according to this Mental Floss article, when McDowall was investigated in 1975, FBI agents found 1000+ video cassettes in his garage of movies-- none of which were officially released on home video. Sidenote: McDowall would also be the main source of contact with the restoration of CLEOPATRA, another Liz Taylor film.
Could the character Bart be in a clique of wealthy gay cinema nerds such as McDowall who pass around bootlegs of films? Was it possible that Bart was modeled after McDowall? Could RAINTREE COUNTY be a reference to CLEOPATRA? Was it possible that it was a cheap replacement for CLEOPATRA footage, even if CLEOPATRA was a Fox film and RAINTREE COUNTY was from MGM?
Another possibility: could Bart have taped the film off of TV? Listings show that the film was run on TV as far back as 1972. Betamax was released in 1975 but the film did run on TV several more times that decade, according to afternoon and late night movie listings in newspapers. Perhaps Bart or one of his friends acquired it this way? Could this potentially be one of the earliest examples of someone watching a film they taped off of TV?
I do not know the answer to any of these questions. Perhaps one day, when RAINTREE COUNTY finally makes its way to DVD and Blu-ray in the United States, answers will be given. Still, it stands to reason that using archival footage in a film can really add to the depth of it, and MAKING LOVE is a perfect example of this.
